A New York Times article from Monday on “Rickrolling” (the practice of luring people to click on a promising web link that ends up taking them to a video of 1980s pop star Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up”) prominently featured an incident that supposedly took place during a timeout at a recent Eastern Washington University women’s basketball game. The thing is, the YouTube video of the live Rickrolling never actually took place—the footage was spliced together by an aspiring filmmaker named “Pawly P.” When Spokane, Washington’s KHQ-TV, who uncovered the hoax, asked him if he’d pranked The New York Times, Pawly P said, “You could say that, uhhhhhhhh, you could say that.”

HT: fishbowlNY

The fact that major league baseball teams want to attract Christians to their stadiums concerns New York Times baseball writer Murray Chass. These thousands of ticket-buying believers who want to spend money on hot dogs and peanuts and a souvenir or two and then maybe hang around after the last out to listen to a Christian band and hear a couple players give their testimony appear to be a major threat to the game Chass holds so dear. He’s bewildered that even the Jewish owners of the Washington Nationals apparently have no problem with this tainting of the game. For Chass, these “Faith Nights” at the ol’ ballpark need to be legislated out by the powers that be:

The idea has caught on in baseball because clubs want to sell tickets. That’s why Major League Baseball will never halt faith nights. Anything for a few dollars more. But it has no place in baseball. Baseball crowds are made up of people of all faiths and no faith. No segment should be singled out.

It doesn’t matter to Chass that these special Faith Night events take place either well before or after the actual games, or that in this age of celebrating diversity that Christians ought to be celebrated, too. But maybe Chass is right; with all the foul-mouthed, drunken fans that usually end up sitting around you and your family, who’d want a bunch of Christians in the stands to spoil the party?

Last week was the non-story on John McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist, and now this week The New York Times tosses out the question of whether McCain’s eligible to be president:

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

Just who is reviving this “musty debate”? The article’s writer only refers to vague “Internet buzz” as the culprit. I can’t wait to see what the Times comes up with next week.

In response to last week’s infamous article on John McCain (see these two posts, “Does the NYT have a story?” and “Take a shot at the Times for their shot at McCain,” for earlier discussion), The New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt wrote yesterday:

The article was notable for what it did not say: It did not say what convinced the advisers that there was a romance. It did not make clear what McCain was admitting when he acknowledged behaving inappropriately — an affair or just an association with a lobbyist that could look bad. And it did not say whether Weaver, the only on-the-record source, believed there was a romance. The Times did not offer independent proof, like the text messages between Detroit’s mayor and a female aide that The Detroit Free Press disclosed recently, or the photograph of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart’s lap. …

A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.

As the public editor, Hoyt serves as the readers’ advocate for the Times. Read his entire column here.

I don’t think so, but the Times apparently wanted to create a scandal involving John McCain so bad that it had to splash this on its front page this morning. The piece, which is based mainly on anonymous sources, is thinly reported and has no hard facts to support the innuendo. It’s no wonder people have a hard time taking the Times seriously anymore.

This morning, McCain held a press conference to answer the article’s claims, saying, “I’m very disappointed in The New York Times piece. It’s not true.”

It’s interesting to note that the Times sat on this story for months and in the meantime endorsed McCain for the Republican nomination.

UPDATE (5:55 p.m.): New York University journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen has written an interesting post on his blog about the Times article. Rosen writes, “For the New York Times, self-confidence on ethics poses its own risks, as well. From the looks of it, the paper is going to have to fight for its story—and its ethics—in the court of public opinion, but this is not something the Times is ever comfortable doing. It vastly prefers ‘the story speaks for itself.’ … I don’t think that will be good enough in this case because the story speaks so thinly for itself. …” Rosen also asks why did the Times endorse McCain? Why did it go with the “tabloid stuff”? And why did they wait to run the article now”

In its presidential primary endorsements, The New York Times has thrown its weight behind Hillary Clinton:

When we endorsed Mrs. Clinton in 2006, we were certain she would continue to be a great senator, but since her higher ambitions were evident, we wondered if she could present herself as a leader to the nation.

Her ideas, her comeback in New Hampshire and strong showing in Nevada, her new openness to explaining herself and not just her programs, and her abiding, powerful intellect show she is fully capable of doing just that. She is the best choice for the Democratic Party as it tries to regain the White House.

And on the GOP side, John McCain:

We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president. The leading candidates have no plan for getting American troops out of Iraq. They are too wedded to discredited economic theories and unwilling even now to break with the legacy of President Bush. We disagree with them strongly on what makes a good Supreme Court justice.

Still, there is a choice to be made, and it is an easy one. Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe. With a record of working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation, he would offer a choice to a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field.

It is interesting to note that in its endorsement of Clinton, the Times uses most of its column inches to explain why it didn’t pick Barack Obama. And does the support of the Times help or hurt John McCain with conservatives?