Free Republic

By Byron CalameNew York Times Public Editor (Page 7 of 7) ITEM 5: BANKING DATA: OOPSIE One final note -- the job of public editor requires me to probe and question the published work and wisdom of Times journalists, even when my constant probing and poking and prodding and questioning invariably turns out to be a monumental waste of time because the work and wisdom has already been purified though layers and layers of The Times' fail-safe editorial charcoal filtering system. But here at The Times, "Qualtiy is Job One," and this means there’s an extra special responsibility for me,...

The lead story for the June 23 New York Times exposed a U.S. terrorist surveillance program involving international bank transfers ("Bank Data Sifted In Secret By U.S. To Block Terror"): "Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials." The word "secret" has been highlighted for reasons that will become clear. The surveillance of transactions by the Belgian global banking cooperative, known as...

New York Times reporter Judith Miller speaks during the 2005 SPJ Convention & National Journalism Conference in Las Vegas Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2005. Miller, who was jailed 85 days for refusing to reveal a source, defended her decision to go to jail to protect the source and told a journalism conference Tuesday that reporters need a federal shield law so that others won't face the same sanctions. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) WASHINGTON -- In the latest fallout from the CIA leak investigation, reporter Judith Miller and The New York Times are engaging in a very public fight about her seeming...

New York Times executives are "stonewalling" on questions about the paper's decision to publish top secret information about the Bush administration's use of the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance operations against terrorists, the paper's public editor charged on Sunday. "The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate," public editor Byron Calame wrote in a New Years Day column. In its initial report on Dec. 16, Times said that editors held the story at the request...

The full grovelBy Thomas LifsonJan. 1,2006 Byron Calame, public editor of the New York Times, addresses his newspaper's role in publishing leaked classified information about the NSA's surveillance program. As the Department of Justice has launched an investigation of the probably criminal leaking and possibly criminal publication of the data, interest in the matter could not be higher. Shockingly enough, his superiors stonewall him when it comes to explaining why they waited a year to publish the revelations. Moreover, their story about the actual time interval of the delay has certain inconsistencies. Usually, when those under investigation for possible criminal...

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...