“Zernikizing” = NYTs Reporter’s Sliming Technique

The New York Times reporter Kate Zernike should be the source of a new term for purposely slanted, incompetent reporting: “Zernikizing.”

Her latest contribution to establishing the term is “Veterans Fight to Reclaim the Name ‘Swift Boat’. ”

Zernike starts with an important point, one often made by conservatives:

“Swift boat” has become the synonym for the nastiest of campaign smears, a shadow that hangs over the presidential race as pundits wait to proclaim that the Swiftboating has begun and candidates declare that they will not be Swiftboated.

Swift boat veterans — especially those who had nothing to do with the group that attacked Senator John Kerry’s military record in the 2004 election — want their good name back, and the good names of the men not lucky enough to come home alive.

Notice anything missing? You won’t find it in her piece: it is the Left that coined the term and who repeatedly use it.

Notice anything else missing? You won’t find it in her piece: it is conservatives who have repeatedly protested the pejorative use of the term, as charges made by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth were substantiated beyond a doubt, like Kerry’s imaginative Christmas In Cambodia, and many others were well-documented by Swiftee witnesses.

So, Zernike’s undermining of these witnesses is displayed in her misleading statistic:

By the [Swift Boat Sailors Association] association’s count, about 3,600 men served aboard Swift boats in Vietnam, 600 officers and 3,000 enlisted. About 200 signed the letter that became the basis of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign in 2004.

What she tellingly omits is that the majority of men who served with John Kerry, and his entire chain of command, supported the SwiftBoat Veterans For Truth.

Then, Zernike takes up the cause of several of the Swiftboat veterans who worked for Kerry in 2004 to collect on a bet by Boone Pickens.

This month, a group of veterans who served with Mr. Kerry took up the challenge by Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove anything in the group’s campaign against Mr. Kerry. [emphasis added]

Again, Zernike omits that Pickens says he challenged Kerry to disprove the ads, not anything else. Zernike could have performed some elementary journalism, like seeking witnesses, but didn’t. Here, the founder and editor of the American Spectator, at whose November 6 dinner Pickens made the wager, says Pickens said “ads.” Investigative journalist Thomas Lipscomb performed basic journalism, and quickly found two other attendees at the dinner who affirm Pickens said “ads.”

Together with Zernike’s discredited earlier mouthing of Kerry contentions (see here and here, here and here), Lipscomb may be justified in calling Zernike the “New York Times kneepads in residence reporter” for John Kerry. She certainly deserves journalism's Lewinski Award.