WASHINGTON – Reporters and editors at The New York Times and the Daily News had their heads in the sand about Sen. Barbara Boxer’s bitter personal screed against Condoleezza Rice – only the biggest story on Capitol Hill yesterday, thanks to The Post.
For missing – or ignoring – Boxer’s shocking broadside in their two full pages of coverage of Rice’s congressional testimony and the war in Iraq, readers bombarded the Times with accusations of a liberal bias, sources said.
The flub even prompted the paper’s ombudsman to call reporters in Washington, wondering why they didn’t cover it.
The Daily News also was asleep at the switch, devoting a lengthy story to lawmakers ripping President Bush’s new Iraq strategy during Rice’s testimony before Congress Thursday – without quoting her once.
Boxer, a liberal California Democrat, was largely given a free pass by the mainstream media for her questioning of Rice, during which Boxer intimated that the secretary of state can’t understand the sacrifices made by families of U.S. troops in Iraq because she has no children.
The Post featured the Boxer-Rice story on its front page yesterday. Both the White House and Rice took Boxer to task yesterday for her remarks.