Apparently the NY Times is unhappy with a segment that aired Saturday morning on Fox News. They claim Fox and Friends smeared them and they want an apology:
NY POST – The New York Times is asking Fox News’ morning show “Fox & Friends” to apologize for what the newspaper calls a “malicious and inaccurate segment” about the newspaper, intelligence leaks and the Islamic State that aired Saturday.
New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said Sunday that she requested an “on-air apology and tweet.” The paper, she wrote, took issue with a Fox host on the segment saying that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “was able to sneak away under the cover of darkness after a New York Times story” in 2015 and a host’s comment that the U.S. government “would have had al-Baghdadi based on the intelligence that we had except someone leaked information to the failing New York Times.”
The segment referred to comments by a top military official noted in a Friday Fox story. In the Fox story, Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, said his team was “close” to al-Baghdadi after a 2015 raid but the “lead went dead” after it “was leaked in a prominent national newspaper.” The Fox story connected Thomas with the Times, saying that Thomas “appeared to be referring to a New York Times report in June 2015 that detailed how American intelligence agencies had ‘extracted valuable information.’”
They not only hit back and Fox News, but also Trump for attacking them in a tweet on the very same issue:
The Times wrote a story Sunday saying President Donald Trump was wrong when he tweeted Saturday morning that the “failing” New York Times “foiled” a government attempt to kill al-Baghdadi, apparently a reaction to Fox’s story. The Times also pushed back against Fox’s story, noting that the Pentagon issued a news release more than three weeks before the Times article that could have tipped off al-Baghdadi. The paper also said the Pentagon “raised no objections” with it before the 2015 article on the intelligence gleaned from the raid was published.
Here’s the NY Times article from yesterday if you want to read it.