VERY BAD JOURNALISM – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  One week after an extremely dubious "report" on Benghazi, which had the effect of exonerating Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, The New York Times does it again.

As if to show that it truly is a leftist, not a liberal, newspaper, The Times stunned the journalistic world with an editorial essentially describing Edward Snowden, the turncoat now living in Russia, as a hero and a whistleblower.  A sense of outrage is growing, since most people understand the damage Snowden has done, and understand that a whistleblower doesn't go to China, then Russia, all the while negotiating for asylum with Venezuela.  From The Politico:

Federal officials are ticked about a New York Times editorial published Thursday, not so much over its call for clemency or a plea deal for leaker Edward Snowden, but for accusing intelligence agencies of intentionally violating the law.

Drawing the particular ire of Obama administration officials is the Times's suggestion that Snowden should be off the hook because he revealed that the government set out to act illegally on a broad scale.

"When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government," the Times's editorial board wrote in making the case for a deal to return Snowden to the U.S.

Some practices of the National Security Agency, such as the collection of telephone metadata in the U.S., may be ultimately ruled unlawful or unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. However, that's a far cry from justifying the Times's implication that officials set out to violate the law. In this case, officials repeatedly obtained authorization from 15 federal court judges for the metadata gathering.

Spokespeople for various government entities, including the White House, declined to offer an on-the-record response to the Times editorial. Some referred questions to the Justice Department, since the central theme of the Times editorial was about Snowden's potential criminal liability.

However, one government official speaking on condition of anonymity called the editorial "frustrating."

"There's absolutely no evidence any government officials or employees violated the law," the official said Thursday. "The piece is based on an absolutely inaccurate premise and that is that laws have been broken…Snowden broke the law and the people conducting these activities were doing so in compliance with the law."

COMMENT:  The Times doesn't care what's true here.  It only cares about its ideology.  Its "report" on Benghazi has been ridiculed even by some Democrats. 

The Times has become embarrassing, but the issue is more serious than that.  It is still the world's most influential newspaper.  I do think that even some liberal journalists are becoming uneasy with the self-destructiveness of The Times, and the shallowness of some of its work.  But it will continue to do damage to the nation and to the profession of journalism.

There have always been problems at The Times.  It has never been quite the "great gray lady" that is described in fantasy.  It has had problems with left-wing journalists, problems that have intensified under its current, decidedly left-wing publisher.  The problems are getting deeper. 

January 3, 2014