Yesterday, the New York Times reported that another publication reported that Julian Assange told someone that there was a “Jewish conspiracy” against him.
Now, I’m not fan of Assange’s, but it strikes me as odd for the New York Times to be publishing someone else’s second-hand account of an incident for which the Times itself has no independent confirmation. Glenn Greenwald notes that in say, its past reporting on torture, the Times has adhered to editorial standards have forced them to deny empirical facts based solely on the grounds that the Bush administration disagreed on the definition of “torture.” So the confidence with which they’re reporting Assange’s remarks strikes me as odd.
