Pictures posted online clearly show that thousands of people attended the annual March for Life in Washington on January 22.
Washington Post reporter Michelle Boorstein, who attended the rally, put the crowd at “thousands.”
But The New York Times is standing by its demonstrably false claim by somebody who apparently wrote their story entirely from his desk that just “hundreds” of people marched.
Why? Because, just like a pair of eight-year-old bratty twins who refuse to eat their vegetables, they just don’t feel like it.
Washington bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller and other editors at the paper, which promised more public accountability after the disaster that affirmative action hire Jayson Blair wrought, ignored repeated emails since the story was published January 22.
But reached on the phone late this afternoon, Bumiller said, “We’ve been through this” and demanded to know why she was being asked about it anyway.
Uh, maybe, because she is the paper’s DC head?
Bumiller replied that, “We decided it did not merit a correction.”
On what basis?
“Because the information was correct.”
Oh, that explains it.
Asked if her underling even attended the march and if she looked at the pictures, Bumiller accused her caller of “incivility.”
After dodging more inquiries Miss Manners hung up without saying goodbye.
Nicholas Fandos, who penned the story and is apparently a news clerk because he answered the main DC bureau number Thursday night, stonewalled when asked if he was at the rally and how he knew hundreds attended.
“Sir, I am not going to be able to help you.”
You need to help yourself, man. How can anybody trust anything you write about anything now?
The initial mistake here was just plain laziness. There is no reason to think Fandos was determined to shortchange the marchers. It seems that he just assumed from Times video taken at close range that only hundreds attended. And found it too taxing to check what other people wrote.
But the paper’s unwillingness to correct the falsehood is a testament to a hodgepodge of liberal bias and arrogance.
Depicting the rally as minuscule fits the liberal story line that anti-abortion movement is just a fringe crusade.
It is doubtful if the Washington bureau reported that only “hundreds” attended a Black Lives Matter demonstration clearly populated by thousands they would not correct the error.
But the activities of thousands of peaceful anti-abortion activists are clearly not fit to print.