Posted on 08/13/2006 7:30:49 AM PDT by george76
The New York Times' public editor, Byron Calame, publishes a startling admision from Bill Keller regarding the publication delay of the most explosive story in his short reign as managing editor.
Earlier, when Keller told people that the NSA surveillance story got delayed from December 2004 based on requests from the White House, speculation circulated that the story had actually gotten shelved before the presidential election.
Now Calame confirms that Keller lied about the publication history of the Lichtblau/Risen effort:
Keller has destroyed what's left of his paper's credibility.
He lied to everyone about the timing of this publication, baldly and publicly.
It also damages the credibility of everyone associated with this story. After all, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau certainly knew that the story was ready before the November 2nd election -- and yet they chose to play along with Keller's lies that the decision to spike it was in December 2004 rather than October and November.
The Paper of Record managed to utterly destroy the trust it still had left with readers across the political spectrum with this story.
(Excerpt) Read more at captainsquartersblog.com ...
Kerry would of been for secretly tracking terrorist before he would of been against it. Capice?
Here is the NY Slimes piece :
"Eavesdropping and the Election: An Answer on the Question of Timing ..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/opinion/13pubed.html?ex=1313121600&en=804bfc4623ab003c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Thank you, george. I was having a bit of a struggle with this myself. So Keller and the Times did not want to do anything that might boost confidence in the President and put Kerry in a difficult position.
That seems to be the point.
It seems consistent with history of the Slimes.
"What else has Bill Keller and the NYTs lied about?"
A better question might be: "Name one time that Bill Keller and the NY Slimes hasn't lied about Iraq, GW and the WOT?"
helps a LOT!
""Left-wing pundits and bloggers have insisted that Keller spiked the story to keep George Bush in office.
Keller, however, has a different take on his decision. He insists that the news would have likely helped Bush rather than hurt him, and the public support for this program after its delayed revelation last December supports that analysis.
John Kerry and the Democrats had castigated Bush for the lack of visible effort to find and track terrorists, and the program's exposure would have forced Kerry to recant and suddenly argue that Bush had been too enthusiastic about fighting terrorism, a tough pirouette to execute in a grueling presidential campaign. "
helps a LOT!
""Left-wing pundits and bloggers have insisted that Keller spiked the story to keep George Bush in office.
Keller, however, has a different take on his decision. He insists that the news would have likely helped Bush rather than hurt him, and the public support for this program after its delayed revelation last December supports that analysis.
John Kerry and the Democrats had castigated Bush for the lack of visible effort to find and track terrorists, and the program's exposure would have forced Kerry to recant and suddenly argue that Bush had been too enthusiastic about fighting terrorism, a tough pirouette to execute in a grueling presidential campaign. "
It would also have been harder for the Democrats to attempt impeachment on this matter if the voters were aware of it when they cast their ballots.
The Paper of Record what exactly?
The Times was getting ready to release the NSA surveillance story befor the '04 election, hoping it would hurt George Bush.
Unfortunately for the Times, Kerry was shooting off his mouth about the Administration's lack of visible effort to find and track terrorists.
If the Times had published the story, Kerry would have had to make an embarassing about face, and say that the administration was doing too much! In essence: "I was for tracking terrorists before I was against it."
So, the Times didn't print it right away, and they lied why they didn't.
You've got it. They then published it later when they thought it might do some damage.
Thanks Doug.
In terms of timing, I suspect that editors like Keller time the release of their stories to damage sitting Republican presidents with campaigns of many small cuts. The story would have boomeranged towards Bush with the red states during the election, but played well to the Beltway crowd and their Bush is Evil dinner party chatter.
It is yet another (as if we need more) confirmation that the NY Times is the official newspaper of the Democrat Party first, and the newspaper of record second.
bump
Thanks for explaining this to me.
"I was for aggressively tracking terrorists before I was against aggressively tracking terrorists."
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