Michelle Malkin draws attention to an editorial by Byron Calame,
[a] stunning Sunday column calling the Times to task for its false, sloppy, and unrepentant pro-abortion propganda packaged as a New York Times Magazine cover story on abortion in El Salvador by freelance writer Jack Hitt.The original Times' article referenced the imprisonment of Carmen Climaco and dramatically alleged her 30-year sentence was the consequence of having an abortion after 18-weeks.
At it turns out, Climaco was convicted of strangling her newborn baby, a fact uncovered by LifeSiteNews last November.
Calame writes
Authorities found the dead baby hidden in a box wrapped in bags under the bed of Mrs. Climaco. Moreover, Lifesite reported, forensic examination showed that it was a full term normal delivery. The child was breathing at the time of birth. The official cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation.Malkin provides more background,Mr. Hitt never checked the 7,600-word ruling in the Climaco case while preparing his story. And Mr. Hitt told me that no editor or fact checker ever asked him if he had checked the court document containing the panels decision.
Turns out Hitt's main sources of info came from a pro-abortion group called IPAS. The group would profit from legalized abortion in El Salvador since it sells abortion vacuum aspirators.As noted, at the time of this writing, the fund-raising propaganda remains in Googles cache:Hitt's translator consulted for IPAS, which ran a fund-raising campaign to free Carmen Climaco and bring her to the United States. They've yanked it from the site, but here's a cached version touting the NYTimes piece.
You may have read Carmens story in Pro-Life Nation, the April 9 New York Times Magazine article by reporter Jack Hitt. Carmen, a mother of three, says she had a miscarriage. But medical and legal authorities say that she aborted the fetus and, by the harsh standards of Salvadoran law, committed aggravated homicide. Carmen got a 30-year sentence in a womens jail.What an amazing and obvious circle of propaganda. And, according to Malkin, the Times has yet to correct their false story:You can help Carmen and women like her. With your donation
The Times' pro-abortion poster child is a woman convicted of infanticide. But the Times, questioned by its own public editor, refuses to acknowledge Jack Hitt's false reporting.Malkin provides contact information for the Times, asking if they will ever acknowledge the truth about Carmen Climaco? I wonder if they will ever acknowledge the truth about Climacos child, the person who was murdered and left in a box?
E-mail the New York Times - letters@nytimes.com
E-mail Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman & Publisher - publisher@nytimes.com
Related: HotAir's Vent
Expecting the Times to correct a blatant piece of proabortion propaganda is like expecting Baghdad Bob to admit that the US tanks were rolling across the airport tarmac. Good luck.
The Times magazine knew what it would get from author Jack Hitt. In 1998, Hitt published a long piece on abortion in the magazine called "Who Will Do Abortions Here?" lamenting the diminishing number of abortionists in the USA. To research his article, he accompanied an abortionist and an abortionist-in-training as they butchered a perfectly healthy but unwanted baby in a partial-birth abortion. Hitt described the procedure in grim detail and admitted feeling some guilt about the "10-inch homunculus" whose brains were drained into a bucket. But he consoled himself that if the procedure were not legal, perhaps the woman would have perished in a back-alley abortion.