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July 15, 2006

Is Karl Rove Running the New York Times?

SatireNewsService reveals that Bush advisor Karl Rove has allegedly been secretly running the New York Times for almost four years.

According to Time Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, Rove's surreptitious control came to light when Pinch

ordered an investigation to determine how the Times had come to publish detailed information about a top-secret government monitoring operation of the international financial transactions of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. ... Unfortunately this story fits a pattern of publication that has almost ruined the Times' reputation for probity and journalistic honesty as well as causing incalculable damage to the Democratic party that our editorial policy supports.

Times internal investigator Edith Steingehirn points to the unmasking of the program to monitor al Qaeda's international calls and emails as another example of Rove's treachery:

We published that story just as the successful Iraqi elections were making the news and the Senate was voting to reauthorize the Patriot Act. The timing could not have been better for the Bush administration — it made it look as though the Times would do anything — absolutely anything — to undermine the administration and Iraqi efforts to build a functioning society.

Rove's political motives are obvious. As the Times is closely associated with the Democratic Party, Stein notes that the Gray Lady's actions

make Democratic leaders seem unserious about terrorism, ungracious toward America's soldiers and sailors, petty about any Iraqi successes in bringing modernity to a backward region, mean-spirited about the President, careless about America's reputation in the world, unwilling to work with Republican colleagues on important legislation and profoundly ignorant about America's history, culture and meaning.

It can hardly be denied that the NY Times' credibility among anyone other than left-wing extremists has been reduced to nil. Tearing at his hair, Pinch shouts that "the only hidden hand that is twisted and evil and demented and malicious enough to pull this off is the one attached to the hard right arm of Karl Rove!"

But White House spokesman Tony Snow denies that W's advisor has had anything to do with it:

Karl Rove has a whole planet to run, he doesn't have the time or inclination to run a parochial newspaper with a declining stock price and diminishing readership.

Nonetheless, BBC and CNN have reportedly launched internal investigations to see if they're being run by Karl Rove too.

Posted by Van Helsing at July 15, 2006 11:14 AM

Comments

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