I realize that:
1) Everyone in the New York media world is still sleeping off their post-Jayson Blair hangovers and that no one wants to hear about yet another NYT scandal;
2) The level of interest in a "media" story is directly correlated to its geographic proximity to Manhattan (The Center of All Things Media.)

But:
I really can't believe people have tread so lightly on [NYT Pulitzer Prize winner] Judith Miller's reporting from Iraq. It's almost like "but the nice government official told me the guy in the baseball cap was a scientist with WMD experience who knew where weapons labs were but couldn't show me and I didn't see them" is a legitimate excuse for failing to verify damning information. Or that once it was established that the sources were questionable, advocating on their behalf was an acceptable substitute for investigating.

A few journalists re-report a bad story about a paintball game ("bambi hunt") and it at least merits a few irate letters to Romenesko. A NYT reporter helps build the basis for an entire war using questionable sources (that she now knows are questionable) doesn't retract them, comes dangerously close to defending those sources rather than/without investigating them, and people have absolutely no interest in the subject. (Food writer, Amanda Hesser probably generates more NYT-related controversy.) I mean, reallysome types of narcissistic media world navel-gazing are more important than others, if only because the stakes are higher. Here's a hint: War vs. naked women being shot with paintballsone of these registers slightly higher on the atrocity scale.
The Times scoops that melted [Slate]