Guiliani lies - again and again

Various blogs have been hammering away on the many falsehoods that drip from Rudy Giuliani's lips each time he stands in front of a microphone, but now the New York Times commits a rare case of journalism and lays it all out.

Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani told a television interviewer that New York was “the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since 1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down by 7 percent.”

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong. And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record.

Go read teh article for the details.

So why is the New York Times actually committing an act of journalism? I can only assume that the New York Times editors have decided that Rudy is already political toast, so they no longer feel too threatened to get in and actually expose what a slimeball and fruitcake he really is.

This demonstrates that the New York Times is now a repository of yesterday's news. It is often a place we find news that was first reported by blogs, but the New York Times almost never will give credit when they are rewriting and reprinting stories first reported in places like Talking Points Memo or other blogs. We already know from the Judy Miller disaster that the NY Times is the place to find an unquestioned report of today's Republican spin. Looks like they have established the niche the NY Times should fill in this, the new age if Internet news.