"'New York Times' Spiked Obama Donor Story" (voicemail message from reporter?)

[SEE UPDATE 2]

A couple days ago, a story claiming that the New York Times spiked an anti-Obama story involving ACORN appeared: link

On tonight's Bill O'Reilly show, he played a voice mail from the reporter involved - Stephanie Strom - in which she apologized to her source for not being able to follow up on some of the allegations the source was making. Paraphrasing, she said it wasn't her decision but that of higher-ups.

UPDATE: Video of the segment added, via this. As pointed out there, some part of the message may have been skipped over. It would be great of Fox if they'd play the whole message.

Excerpt from the article follows:

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the ommittee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”

Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her.

UPDATE 2: This story is apparently much more complicated than originally described; see the details here. In addition to other things, the voice mail message was indeed edited and may have been intentionally so in order to make the NYT look worse than they would have.

Wed, 04/01/2009 - 20:23 · · Importance: 4