The testimony of the three Buddhist nuns -- venerable Man Ho, venerable Yi Chu, and venerable Man Ya -- made headlines everywhere the day after their first appearance at Sen. Fred Thompson's campaign-finance hearings. But it didn't make the same headlines. The Washington Times had the most sensational front page: "Nuns admit shredding evidence of event." The cross- town Washington Post played it almost the same: "Nuns Tell of Panic About Fund-Raiser, Documents Destroyed or Altered to Conceal Temple's Role With DNC. " And the Wall Street Journal weighed in with "Buddhist Nuns Tell How They Funneled Money."
The New York Times, on the other hand, sifted through all of the uncontroverted testimony of nuns destroying documents and came up with this front-page headline: "Nuns Say Temple Event With Gore Was Not a Fund-Raiser."
Some conservatives will argue that the Times's Page One editors are being liberal hacks, trying to put a preposterously positive spin on what was in all respects a devastatingly bad day for Al Gore. THE SCRAPBOOK, though, certainly does not believe in anything so crude as liberal bias. We believe that the Times's headline writers are superior journalists who always play it straight. We base this on the historical record, which shows many similar New York Times headlines in years gone by, notably 1973's "Nixon Is Innocent: President Assures Us He Is 'Not a Crook,'" and only a decade ago, this: "Oliver North Sets the Record Straight: Patriotic Witness Tells Iran- Contra Senators He Did His Duty."