New York Times has damaged Pakistan at crucial junctures. During the Bengladesh crisis, it portrayed Mukti Bahini as Bengali patriots. It parroted the propaganda coming out of India’s propaganda organs. Its Delhi correspondent, Sydney Schanberg wrotes false and prejudicial articles against the Pakistan Army, and he was in the forefront of promoting the canard that Pakistan Army had butchered several million East Pakistanis.
On August 30, 2009, the New York Times ran a story about an allegation coming from the US Congressional sources that Pakistan has reverse-engineered and optimized an American legacy Harpoon missile bought by Pakistan in the 1980s. The timing of this article is rather curious; the story was leaked by anonymous sources on the same day that Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani left for a three-day visit to Libya on an invitation from the Libyan government.
Pakistan’s US Ambassador in Washington, DC, Hussain Haqqani, quickly dismissed this story, saying: “The accusations are incorrect and based on wrong intelligence. We will make sure that the US understands the correct picture and we will fight back periodic efforts to falsely blame Pakistan, which remains a critical US ally in fighting terrorism. Instead of false accusations, US media should help Pakistan secure the help it needs to fight our common enemy, viz terrorism.”
The most questionable aspect of this story is the source itself; without naming names, the New York Times makes assertions that can neither be proved nor disproved. Over the years this daily has accumulated a bulging clippings file full of splashy, yet often maddeningly unverifiable expos
