Posted on 01/01/2006 6:23:00 PM PST by John Jorsett
Let’s remember, as we contemplate public editor Barney Calame’s stinging Jan. 1 column, Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence, that Bill Keller hired Calame and he’s the only one who can fire him. (His term runs to May, 2007.)
This is relevant because Calame has called Keller’s decision-making “woefully inadequate,” while charging that both Keller and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. have “stonewalled” him. Also because Steve Lovelady, editor of CJR Daily, has already suggested that Calame’s position may be tenuous. “Keller and Sulzberger have finally run head on into an honest man who will not bend; and he has the balls to tell both of them that they have come up wanting,” said Lovelady in the comments to my previous post, “I’m Not Going to Talk About the Back Story.” He added: “I think it’s time to start speculating who will be the Times’s next public editor.”
Keller anticipated this situation in an exchange in 2003 with Geneva Overholser, former ombudsman of the Washington Post. (I wrote about it here.) Overholser had criticized the Times’ decision to allow Keller to hire and fire the public editor. It would not guarantee the same kind of independence the Post ombudsman had by virtue of having a contract with the publisher, she said. I am going to quote his reply at some length because it has renewed meaning now that Calame has challenged Keller on the refusal to answer 28 questions about the Dec. 15 article revealing warrantless eavesdropping by the National Security Agency. Here’s what Keller wrote in 2003:
First, I’m not so sure that the critical guarantee of independence lies in the nature of the contract. I can readily imagine an ombudsman supplied with all the contractual assurances of independence — long tenure, a dimissal-proof contract, a weekly column — who would still be timid in criticizing the paper, because of lack of self-confidence or a desire to preserve relationships with colleagues or an ingratiating personality. I can also imagine a person of integrity and uncompromising judgment who would be independent even knowing that I had the power to fire him or her. Indeed, I could argue that the latter situation confers GREATER, not lesser, leverage. I can render a tenured, “independent” ombudsmen ineffective simply by ignoring the advice, and who will really notice? But If I fire my supposedly less independent ombudsman, I’m inviting a whale of a scandal. My point is, the independence rests mainly in the character of the person who holds the job. And it will be most evident in how he or she performs the job.Second, the only power I will assert over the ombudsman is the power to hire and fire. I won’t be prescribing procedures or deciding when to publish and when not. As I’ve just said, I fire such a person at my peril. But by hiring such a person, I bestow a declaration of trust and authority that should enable the ombudsman to influence the internal workings of the paper on behalf of readers. A person who has the executive editor’s blessing carries some weight in a newsroom. Michael Getler’s internal memos are incisive. Do they carry any weight? Or do editors and reporters treat them as an annoyance? I don’t know. As you say, the internal role is, if anything, more important than the external role. Isn’t it possible that having a public editor who is appointed by me and has ready access to me may confer a greater ability to change our culture, to get us to live up to our own responsibilities to readers?
One thing jumps out at me from this statement: Keller’s observation that “the internal role is, if anything, more important than the external role.” Meaning the public editor, acting on behalf of readers, ought to be able to influence the workings of the paper, and not just criticize it. His views should carry some weight. Reflecting on the newsroom committee report that recommended the new positon after the Jayson Blair mess, he told Overholser: “They preferred that the ombudsman be first and foremost the readers’ advocate for changes in and by the paper rather than a columnist whose subject happens to be The Times.”
I guess we’ll see if Calame’s advocacy is effective and carries any weight, but it’s clear that Keller thought it should in 2003. Of course now that there’s a Justice Department investigation of the leaks that led to the wiretapping story, the Times may be even less inclined to go into what Keller called “the back story.”
Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times wrote a dismissive, snooty column about those who wondered why the Times held the story for more than a year, and—in the absence of explanations from the Times—took to forming their own theories. Only people who are clueless and paranoid about newspaper journalism would wail about that, he said:
Bill Keller, the Times’ executive editor, responded to all this with a statement saying that “publication was not timed to the Iraqi election, the Patriot Act debate, Jim’s forthcoming book or any other event. We published the story when we did because after much hard work it was fully reported, checked and ready, and because after listening respectfully to the administration’s objections, we were convinced there was no good reason not to publish it.”Now that isn’t going to satisfy anybody, unless of course they’ve ever been around investigative reporting or newspapers. It is in the nature of investigative reporters to believe in their work and push to get it in the paper yesterday. It’s the job of editors to caution, restrain, rethink, second guess and demand more… Nothing about this should surprise anyone — unless he or she is already convinced that the country’s major newspapers are biased participants in some vast and amorphous conspiracy or his or her brain has gone soft from watching too many reruns of “All the President’s Men.”
“The New York Times deserves thanks and admiration for the service it has done the nation,” Rutten wrote, and I strongly agree with that. (The service continues too.) “Instead, it’s getting bipartisan abuse and another round of endless demands for explanations and ‘transparency.’” That was absurd and misleading. Absurd because “transparency” is a demand that Times has been making on itself for several years. (Again, see my prior post for the details.) As Calame wrote, “I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper’s repeated pledges of greater transparency.”
Rutten’s column was misleading because it suggested that no one with experience, no one in the Big Journalism club, no one who’s “been around investigative reporting or newspapers” would find Keller’s communication with readers lacking. This is simply untrue. Rutten knows it’s untrue because he reads Romenesko.
Among those who were discomforted by the Times unwillingness to adequately explain itself were former Times-men Alex Jones and Bill Kovach, and Tom Kunkel, dean of the J-school at University of Maryland and a former newspaper editor. (For more see Editor and Publisher and CJR Daily.) Now we can add Calame and his 40 years of newspaper experience to that list. Rutten has expressed his skepticism in the past about various transparency demands— a defensible position. But he refuses to acknowledge that this is a live debate among his peers. It’s just easier to pretend that clueless outsiders and know-nothing bloggers are the ones who want more transparency from the Times.
Influenced by Rutten, Jason Zengerle wrote in the New Republic’s blog, The Plank, that “if the Times and most other media outlets actually abided by Rosen’s transparency prescription, they wouldn’t be able to produce first-rate stories like the one about the NSA’s warrantless surveillance. Rather, they’d be spending all their time working on meta stories.”
He said that it was my lack of newsroom experience that permitted me to make such absurd and impractical suggestions. But here’s Calame (20 years as an editor for the Wall Street Journal) criticizing the Times for failing to live up to its own transparency prescription, which was the whole point of offering mine.
It’s a cliche to end columns with the phrase “stay tuned.” But in this case it’s apt. Reporter James Risen’s book was scheduled for publication mid-month. But it’s been moved up to Tuesday, Jan. 3, according to Calame. He ends his piece with this:
“If Mr. Risen’s book or anything else of substance should open any cracks in the stone wall surrounding the handling of the eavesdropping article, I will have my list of 28 questions (35 now, actually) ready to e-mail again to Mr. Keller.”
Michelle Malkin: “Hey, speaking of transparency, why doesn’t Mr. Calame publish his 35 questions so the rest of us can see what his bosses refuse to answer?”
Jeff Jarvis:
Times public editor Byran Calame writes his first almost-tough column taking The Times to task, properly, for not revealing why they did not reveal what they know about warrantless NSA spying — and why they did reveal it when they did.
At TPM Cafe, see Larry Johnson (ex-CIA) on the difference between “officially-sanctioned” leaks and leaks of the whistle blower variety.
While the Bush White House is certain that those responsible for these leaks are political partisans hell bent on damaging the President, it is really a sign that folks on the inside with a conscience finally decided to speak out.
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit:
The Times’ behavior on this story, and the Plame story, has undermined the unwritten “National Security Constitution” regarding leaks and classified information. Since the Pentagon Papers, at least, the rule has been that papers could publish classified information in a whistleblowing mode, but that they would be sensitive to national security concerns. In return, the federal government would tread lightly in investigating where the leaks came from. But the politicization of the coverage, and the outright partisanship of the Times, has put paid to that arrangement. It’s not clear to me that the country is better served by the new arrangement, but unwritten constitutions require a lot of self-discipline on the part of the various players, and that sort of discipline is no longer to be found in America’s leadership circles.
Follow other blog reactions at Memeorandum.
Calame added an entry at his web journal re-printing Keller’s two statements to the news media (made in lieu of answering questions.) “Given the paucity of comment from The Times about the article, I think readers might find these statements interesting,” he writes. He also directed readers to other commentary, including PressThink and Rutten.
thanks, for the post/thread of this unfolding scandal...
I certainly would be interested in seeing what these
35 questions are. Even without the answers it would tell
us a lot.
Sure he said that he had no cooperation from the NYT powers that be but the way I read it, his column goes on to explain how important it was that the NYT employees have secrecy to protect themselves and their sources.
I don't recall any concern for the secrecy often required to protect American lives.
I wonder if any MSM employee who's adopted the "standards" of our Leninist agitators see the double standard of secrecy for we but not thee. To wit,
Influenced by Rutten, Jason Zengerle wrote in the New Republic’s blog, The Plank, that “if the Times and most other media outlets actually abided by Rosen’s transparency prescription, they wouldn’t be able to produce first-rate stories like the one about the NSA’s warrantless surveillance. Rather, they’d be spending all their time working on meta stories.”
They did a nice job of keeping the contents of John Kerry's service record secret.
The "New York Times" and Newsweek" are not monolithic faceless alien oracles.
They are run by the the likes of the leftist homosexual on the right, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, and the socialist crook on the left DONALD GRAHAM, Chair and CEO of Newsweek and Washington Post, son of CATHERINE GRAHAM MEYER, former owner of the Washington Post.
Every day these 2 enemies of the state unleash a horde of minor league propaganduists on the American psyche in a blatant attempt to topple any GOP governement that is elected by the American people.
2006 is the year they will be stopped.
They will no longer be able to hide unde a cloak of annonymity.
They will be exposed and their names equated with treacherous acts.
They and their komrades will be surveilled and brought up on charges.
OFFICERS
Chairman Emeritus: Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger, age 71, $1,397,200 pay (prior to title change)
Chairman; Publisher, The New York Times: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., age 46, $960,200 pay (prior to promotion)
VC and SVP: Michael Golden, age 48
President and CEO: Russell T. Lewis, age 50, $882,235 pay (prior to promotion)
SVP Operations and Acting CFO: John M. O'Brien, age 54
SVP and Deputy COO: David L. Gorham, $796,000 pay
)
Yes, leftist agitators and their decades-old, "Bring it all down, man." It's a real prize to destroy a wartime administration, got one going for the second!
I think you are correct to declare "that's the way it is."
It's a fact but how many realize it? Here is just one example. It's shocking that so many conservatives praise NYT's ombudsman Byron Calame for writing about NYT bigwigs avoiding questions raised by the NSA articles. Yes Mr. Calame did expose that but my reading suggests that he went on to describe MSM employees' (he called 'em journalists) rights.
Others (a few, at least) have noticed also. Here was the MSM employees' declarations that they must protect the methods and sources used to reveal the Administration's highly classified methods and sources used to reveal the enemies' plans to kill us.
"Why, our right to secrecy is a given! How dare you question us about revealing your (the Nation's) secrets!"
I've often suggested that this "cultural war" would decide whose America would survive the wars against radical Islam and other enemies. I now wonder if America will survive at all if we continue to tolerate insanity and treason! Internment for the duration may be the only way to save the United States of America.
Mr. President, put on that stovepipe hat.
The new way for the loony left libs, DemonRATS, and the MSM to claim they are "Patriots" is the whistleblower routine. They have not only an obligation, but a right through the 1st Amendment to divulge all of these EVIL SECRET PROGRAMS THAT BUSH HAS PUT IN PLACE. The American citizen has a right to know what it's evil SECRET Government is up to and so the NYT fulfilled its duty and printed for all the world to see. /sarcasm Treason is what I call it and they are TRAITORS in my layman's mind. But with thousands of lawyers available to the left nothing of consequence will happen - probably appoint another Fitz and work on it for 3 years. Nothing will happen mark my word. Our Federal Government is sooooo constipated.
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