NYT front-page-slanders U.S. troops again

"Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles"

Sunday NYT actual front page headline, above; actual front page accompanying photo, below:

NYT frontpages their dead tree version, and goes on for nine internet pages, about the number of domestic murders committed by American troops who have returned home. It's a national crime wave! Should the U.S. Military be blamed?!

Powerline uses middle school math to eviscerate NYT's sky is falling "reporting". Powerline asserts the homicide rate amongst returning troops is vastly lower than the homicide rate amongst nonmilitary Americans aged 18-24

Somehow, the Times managed to publish nine pages of anecdotes about the violence wreaked by returning servicemen without ever mentioning this salient fact.
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It's bad enough that the New York Times smears our military personnel when they are serving overseas. Can't they at least leave them alone once they return home?

Philip Carter, of Intel Dump:

So, basically, the reporters went trolling on Lexis-Nexis and other databases to find "murder" within the same paragraph as "veteran" or "soldier," and built a front-page story around that research.
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The article makes no attempt to produce a statistically valid comparison of homicide rates among vets to rates among the general population.
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I've got a one-word verdict on this article and its research: bullshit.

Media doesn't give big play to stories of media mistakes. Therefore, though this story will get a thorough debunking in blogworld, major media will ignore the debunking.

In ensuing months and years, you will hear stories of a murder spree by returning Iraq veterans. Everyone will know it is true, b/c everyone will have seen Hollywood's versions of both post-Vietnam vet troubles and of post-Iraq vet troubles; and everyone will have heard the NYT wrote about Iraq veterans committing homicides(Sunday front page!). Other news outlets - maybe CBS and MSNBC - will "report" on NYT "reporting" about traumatized, drunk Iraq veterans creating a wave of homicides.

The story will be horse manure, but it will be repeated enough times that everyone will know it is true - just as everyone knows alligators are green*, just as everyone knows Clarence Thomas harassed Anita Hill; just as everyone knows the Clinton impeachment was about sex; just as everyone knows Gore won the 2000 election; just as everyone knows the Swift Boat Vets were calculating liars; just as everyone knows Bush lied about uranium and Niger; just as everyone knows the NSA is illegally wiretapping citizens and violating civil rights; just as everyone knows Scooter Libby blew Valerie Plame's CIA cover.

Why does everyone know things which are actually nonexistent fantasies?

Except for the color of alligators, these are instances of our agenda media at work.


*alligators are black when wet; grey when dry and sunning. (h/t: Michael Yon)