  You may have heard by now that the urlLink New York Times apologized Wednesday for not being critical enough of its own stories on the subjects of Iraq and &quot;Weapons of Mass Destruction&quot; over the past year. The editorial appearing in their Wednesday Edition blames the failure on its own editors for failing to challenge its reporters on the facts they were reporting, as well as depending too heavily on the veracity of now-discredited INC (Iraqi National Council) leader Ahmed Chalabi . Competing papers are criticizing the NYT &quot; urlLink for not highlighting the close connection between Mr Chalabi and a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, who wrote many of the articles. &quot; It was barely 12 months ago that the same paper was rocked by scandal when one of its reporters, Jayson Blair, was discovered to be making stories up, stories that were sometimes sold and reprinted in newspapers across the country. That scandal resulted in the resignation of one of its lead and deputy editors. In Wednesday's 1,100 word editorial, the NYT cites six &quot;misleading&quot; stories, four of which were either written or co-authored by Miller.
&quot;Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge&quot;, states the article. Doug Clifton, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer , had run two of the questionable Times stories on its front page, and then found its self in the unenviable position of having to scramble to get the correction on page 2.
This adds new meaning to the term &quot;coalition of the willing&quot;, only this time, it is the willingness of a major newspaper to maintain a reputation as a news leader and its editors willingness to believe what was being reported enough to not question what was being reported. Unfortunately for them, the end result was that they now are less respected and less credible . Who will trust them the next time they make a claim? Gee that sounds familiar! Haven't we seen this somewhere before? Like, say, when a President goes to the UN to prompt war over a nonexistent threat and then wonders why the UN doesn't trust him when he goes back a year later? 
