Posted on 06/30/2006 10:53:12 AM PDT by mathprof
After remaining mum for the past week, even as controversy swirled around newspapers' revealing the banking records surveillance program, the Wall Street Journal editoral page weighed in today. Although the Journal published its own story just hours after The New York Times -- which has taken the most heat -- its editorial defended its own action while blasting the Times.
It even included a personal slam at Times' publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. and said the Times did not want to win, but rather obstruct, the war on terror.
Sulzberger responded this afternoon: "I know many of the reporters and editors at The Wall Street Journal and have greater faith in their journalistic excellence than does the Editorial Page of their own paper. I, for one, do not believe they were unaware of the importance of what they were publishing nor oblivious to the impact such a story would have."
Among other things, the editorial criticized the Times for using the Journal as "its ideological wingman" to deflect criticism from the right. And it pointed out that the news and editorial departments are quite separate at the paper and if given the option the editorial side would not have printed the Times' story.
Finally, it explained how it got its own story, then slammed the Times for a wide range of sins, claiming that the "current political clamor" is "warning to the press about the path the Times is walking."
The Times has defended its reporting, saying publication has served America's public interest. Its executive editor, Bill Keller, said in a statement on Thursday that the paper took seriously the risks of reporting on intelligence.
"We have on many occasions withheld information when lives were at stake," Keller said. "However, the administration simply did not make a convincing case that describing our efforts to monitor international banking presented such a danger. Indeed, the administration itself has talked publicly and repeatedly about its successes in the area of financial surveillance."
Journal editors have not responded to repeated requests from E&P for comment this week.
Here are a few excerpts from Friday's Journal editorial. *
We recount all this because more than a few commentators have tried to link the Journal and Times at the hip. On the left, the motive is to help shield the Times from political criticism. On the right, the goal is to tar everyone in the "mainstream media." But anyone who understands how publishing decisions are made knows that different newspapers make up their minds differently.
Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn't mind seeing in print. If this was a "leak," it was entirely authorized....
The problem with the Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't. On issue after issue, it has become clear that the Times believes the U.S. is not really at war, and in any case the Bush Administration lacks the legitimacy to wage it.
So, for example, it promulgates a double standard on "leaks," deploring them in the case of Valerie Plame and demanding a special counsel when the leaker was presumably someone in the White House and the journalist a conservative columnist. But then it hails as heroic and public-spirited the leak to the Times itself that revealed the National Security Agency's al Qaeda wiretaps.
Mr. Keller's open letter explaining his decision to expose the Treasury program all but admits that he did so because he doesn't agree with, or believe, the Bush Administration. "Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress," he writes, and "some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight." Since the Treasury story broke, as it happens, no one but Congressman Ed Markey and a few cranks have even objected to the program, much less claimed illegality.
Perhaps Mr. Keller has been listening to his boss, Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who in a recent commencement address apologized to the graduates because his generation "had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government.
"Our children, we vowed, would never know that. So, well, sorry. It wasn't supposed to be this way," the publisher continued. "You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights," and so on.
Forgive us if we conclude that a newspaper led by someone who speaks this way to college seniors has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it.
I am pretty much where you are at. I cannot give them any praise considering the timing. I am still a little skeptical of their explanation. Peggy Noonan wrote an opinion piece in the journal yesterday in which she criticized the NYT and said she disagreed with the decision to publish by the WSJ and in which there was none of the explanation that was provided today. I loved the opinion page in the old days under Bartley when he was ripping Clinton on Whitewater and the Vince Foster "suicide". But to anyone who wants to differentiate between one MSM elite in the NYT and WSJ, I say there is not much difference, and in support of such an assertion, I respond with the following, Do the name Mr Judy Woodruff, aka Al Hunt ring a bell?
Yes, I did.
The fact that anyone published it, with or without error, is inexcusable, in my opinion.
Wow, functionally illiterate...would you care to share your qualifications for that judgment?
Well done!
OMIGOSH!
THAT is MOST EXCELLENT!
Reckless cowboy BUMP!
Thanks a lot for the NYT's "keepsake edition." LOL.
Where reason goes to die
The brotherhood of journos -- right or wrong -- is a pretty tight bond -- a bond that does the public no service, though. So, yes, the WSJ must have gotten an avalanche of complaints/cancellations in order for it to publish such a vociferous condemnation of the NYT.
I believe the WSJ's explanation (this and other admins have often used the WSJ to counter, or bury, bad news, since it really is not on the cutting edge of straight news), but this line disturbs me:
"Would the Journal have published the story had we discovered it as the Times did, and had the Administration asked us not to? Speaking for the editorial columns, our answer is probably not."
"Probably not" isn't exactly reassuring, and this opinion comes from the "editorial" staff, which the piece makes perfectly plain, has no control over the Journal's news department.
I cancelled my WSJ subscription some time ago due to a local "news" story that I personally knew to be a crock, and the fact that I generally agree with the paper's editorial opinions wasn't enough to keep supporting the news staff's misrepresentation of facts.
It was an observation, not a judgement and as for "qualification?" How about a well developed sense of the ridiculous? <];^)~<
Most adults understand the difference...
Sulzberger's homosexual rage has made him unbalanced. Pinch's gay lifestyle is a key reason why he has decided to play the role of flamboyant traitor and ally to Bin Laden and Zarqawi.
Try working on your sanctimonious ignorance and boorishness.
It made sense because one is used to interpreting and/or decifering what the functionally illiterate believe themselves to be saying. With its mishmashed tenses, syntax and grammar it was evidence of its author's funcntional illiteracy.
But not of his insufferable self-righteousness, boorishness and ignorance.
And lack of sense of humor.
Cordially - Brian
Humor? What would I find humorous about your offering?
<< Humor? .... >>
Oh well, four out of five will have to do, then.
Given your implicit comfort with funcntional illiteracy, insufferable self-righteousness, boorishness and ignorance, I'm not surprised you found nothing funny in my post.
Guess you're more used to being laughed AT?
Cordially - Brian
John Whorewood of the WSJ was on Meet the Press today and he rejected the WSJ Editorial in no uncertain terms. He said the news and editorial departments are very far apart.
Anyone who's competent to diagnose wouldn't attempt to do so at a distance. FR doesn't have a budget to pay grammar cops, and anyone willing to do so for free is disqualified by definition.
Turn that blinding intellect inward, and you'll be amazed how long your to-do list will be.
Oh, and have a nice life.
"...the Times has responded by wrapping itself in the First Amendment..."
I know what I'd like to "wrap" them in...
You are an [(Anonymous) …. creature?] ... [At least you appear to feel so --and to so verbalize]. Not only [Do your actions imply your fantasized competence to “distance diagnose” -- but you are arbitrarily and gratuitously acting] as [FR's "Brian Policeman."]
Anyone …. competent to diagnose [Would not do so at your distance from reality]. FR [Has no] budget to pay ["Brian Police"] -- and any individual who is willing, [Without compensation] to [Pretend to such a role] is, [On the evidence, thus self-provided, of his delusional state, self-disqualified].
[Cease your pathological projections,] turn [Your rather less-than-blinding “intellect”] inward -- and you will be amazed how long your “To-Do” list will be – [And how far beyond your level of competence to achieve].
Oh -- and continue to take such pleasure as is to be taken from your continued employment of such of PoMo Babbling’s mindless and meaningless clichés as: “Have a nice life.” [And please do whatever you feel that phrase to mean]
Cordially – Brian
PS: -- Were you, perchance, "Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French" before you found yourself being compelled to be FR's "Brian Policeman?" ;)
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