Sulzberger Responds to 'WSJ' Editorial Slamming the 'NYT'

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.

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.

How many Freepers, who hate the NY Slimes, are supporting the NY Slimes with their mutual funds. Without mutual funds owning the NY Slimes non voting stock, the NYT would be in real trouble.
How do I find out if my mutual funds own NYT Stock, and what can I do if they do?
Here is something, we can all do today to start eliminating the NY Slimes as a threat to our nation's security. We can do it at our computers and do it in less than 1 hour. Besides sending a severe warning to the NY Slimes and the mutual fund companies, who buy NY Slimes stock, we will stop the fund company wasting our precious investment capital on NY Slimes stock.
If a few thousand freepers did this simple action this week and a few thousand new freepers, friends and relatives each following week, we will have a terminal impact on the NY Slimes acts of sedition. Please send this how to your blogs, friends, relatives and email lists. This action will serve as a cannon shot across the bows fo the other Dinosaur Liberal Fish Wraps re sedition will not be tolerated any more, and any mutual fund daring to buy their stock to support treason and sedition by the NY Slimes.

TODAY, SELL/TRADE MUTUAL FUNDS OWNING NYT!!!:

Want to smash the NY Slimes?
Check your mutual funds to see if they own NYT, the NY Slimes Stock

How many of us own mutual funds which own NY Slimes stock and even worse have increased their NYT holdings this year.
NYT investment by a mutual fund company is a terrible investment re the dollar loss in Stock value the last 2 years. Those investments are an attempt to keep the NY Slimes afloat with our mutual fund $'s.
Now it is very evident that the NY Slimes is an agent and abettor of the al Qaeda Serial Killers. The Slimes is endangering the lives of our families, friends, innocent Americans and every warrior of ours.
Go to this link to see if your mutual fund owns NYT.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/ownership/ownership.asp
When the MS Money stock home page comes up, enter NYT into the search area and hit enter and the following screen will show up re ownership of the NY Slimes stock:
The New York Times Company: Ownership Information

Shares Outstanding 145.00 Mil

Institutional Ownership (%) 83.40

Top 10 Institutions (%) 58.60

Mutual Fund Ownership (%) 42.64

5%/Insider Ownership (%) 7.77

Float (%)

Highlight the Mutual Fund Ownership and hit enter.
If thousands of Freepers, whose mutual funds own shares of NY Slimes did the following:

Sell those mutual funds or trade them for funds not owning NYT.

Send a letter to the fund managers and the CEO's of the mutual fund company telling them why you sold/transferred their mutual fund owning NY Slimes stock. Then demand to know why they are wasting your precious $'s on a treasonous/seditious company which is a terrible investment.

Contact the SEC to investigate why this mutual fund and mutual fund company invested your $'s in one of the worse investments of the past 2 years. On 21 July 2006, NYT closed at the low for this decade. If your mutual fund owns, NYT, was the investment of yours and others a political bailout of the NY Slimes?

The link below will take you to the SEC site and enable you to use the email form shown on this page. Or you can print the form, fill it out and mail it to the SEC.

https://tts.sec.gov/acts-ics/do/complaint

Send this how to re Mutual Funds with NYT stock to everyone on your email list for a wakeup call.

We might have a lot more impact selling/trading any mutual fund, which owns NYT, than trying to boycott companies which sell to the elite liberals of NYC and advertise in the NY Slimes.

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