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January 1, 2006
Times Public Editor: Bill Keller Stonewalled MeLet'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...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. 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.” “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.” After Matter: Notes, reactions and links… “Hey, Atrios: When was the last time that you exposed such a big story?” That’s Franklin Foer at the New Republic’s blog, The Plank. (MSB=The Mainstream Blogosphere) Thanks to the MSB’s sweeping, reckless criticisms, the Times has lost much of the credibility and authority that it needs to mount a robust defense. For this, the bloggers deserve some credit. Well done, guys. Atrios replies: “The Left wants to the press to do a better job, the Right wants to undercut their credibility.” And Foer has a response to that. Also see Armando at Daily Kos who says it’s possible to give praise and support and to criticize. 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?” 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. For bloggers reactions to the leak investigation the Justice Department will undertake, see Joe Gandelman’s round-up. Bill Quick: “I hope they drag every time reporter, editor, and administrator who had anything to do with this story before a grand jury and if they refuse to reveal their sources or other knowledge about the leaks, they clap them in jail until they do.” Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair compare the opening paragraph of the Times Dec. 15 story with this graph from a Seymour Hersh story in the Times 31 years ago: “it’s been a steady run down hill for the New York Times.” The Central Intelligence Agency, directly violating its charter, conducted a massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation during the Nixon Administration against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups in the United States, according to well-placed Government sources. Their point: Then the Times directly stated that the operation was illegal. Today, they say, it would never do that. Calame’s Public Editor column today seemed weak to me. The only place the NYT obviously scrwed up was in not disclosing Risen’s forthcoming book. But taking a year to verify an important story, and getting the right sources to firm it up, is good journalism. I find the notion that this somehow undermines national security a little odd. Do we really think al Qaeda members previousloy believed all their calls to the U.S. were free from any surveillance? 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. Katharine Seelye, New York Times: Answering Back to the News Media, Using the Internet. Subjects of newspaper articles and news broadcasts now fight back with the same methods reporters use to generate articles and broadcasts - taping interviews, gathering e-mail exchanges, taking notes on phone conversations - and publish them on their own Web sites. This new weapon in the media wars is shifting the center of gravity in the way that news is gathered and presented… I am quoted by Seelye thusly: “The printing of transcripts, e-mail messages and conversations, and the ability to pull up information from search engines like Google, have empowered those whom Jay Rosen, a blogger and journalism professor at New York University, calls ‘the people formerly known as the audience.’” Bill Kovach, a senior statesman of newspaper journalism, former editor of the Atlanta Constitution, former Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, was asked how he would characterize 2005 in journalism: The year was yet another in a string of bad years for a journalism of real value to a self-governing democracy. The New York Times and The Washington Post, two of the world’s great newspapers, lost a great deal of respect from their readers when senior reporters were seen to be more concerned with their access to people and institutions of power than to their readers, and senior editors at both papers seemed unable to manage their reporters. Kovach says he reads “Instapundit, LA Observed, Buzz Machine, Power Line, Press Think, RealClear Politics, Daily Kos, The Volokh Conspiracy, etc., etc.” L.A. blogger Patterico published his third annual review of the Los Angeles Times news coverage. The theme is liberal bias. “This year’s installment will cover familiar topics, such as general anti-Republican and pro-Democrat bias, culture wars issues, and media coverage.” It’s a new blogging year! My five favorite PressThink posts of 2005:
Your nominations (posts or comment threads)? Many, many thanks to everyone who participated in PressThink comment threads—especially the regulars—and everyone who lurked. People continue to tell me that the comments are what make this weblog totally distinctive on the Net, and I believe that. So cheers and here’s hoping for a year with more truth.
Posted by Jay Rosen at January 1, 2006 1:03 AM
Comments
What bothers me the most is that Keller accepted the assurances of the White House that everything they were doing was legal. According to Keller, one gets the impression that the story was finally published because the Times found sources inside the administration who did question the legality of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens. It was not the "national security" issue that stopped Keller from publishing, but merely the fact that the program was legal. But the story was not about the existence of dissension within the administration about the legality of warrantless wiretaps; the story was the warrantless wiretaps. The Times would have had no difficulty whatsoever finding experts on Constitutional and statutory (FISA) law that were capable of raising serious questions about the program --- and one gets the impression that Risen had those experts lined up. Given that, the explanation "the President told us everything was legal, and we published when we got anonymous sources in the administration that told us that there was internal dissention" really doesn't add up. Personally, I think that Risen let Keller know that his book was coming out, and that he planned on creating a buzz about the book by giving portions of the galley proofs to other media outlets. This forced Keller's hand -- but he made sure that Risen was "punished" for his act of insubordination by treating it as a "Times" scoop, rather than as a "Risen book" scoop. As for Calame, gosh its nice that he mentions that Pinch and Keller won't answer his questions --- but lets face it, a "public editor" that can't get answers to questions of importance to the public really has no function other than window dressing. Calame really has two choices --- resign, or be a mannequin. So far, it looks to me like he's chosen the latter course. I with ami on this. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. I think this was a messy story because the administration was leaning on the Times to stay quiet, and the Times was conflicted about it. And then when Risen told them it was a big part of the book splash, they decided to publish. I wonder what would have happened if Risen hadn't told them. How did Keller discover the contents of Risen's book? I can't remember if I read about that or not. I think Calame should not resign. No, no. His presence can prove the lack of transparency. He's in a tough spot, and doing a good job of it. I also think he should force Keller's hand: how many questions can Barney ask before Keller fires him? BTW, Jay, this blog may have great comments, but you emcee the events and then spur on the discussion. Let's have more in 2006. Dyspeptic Loveladyland wrote: The breaking of the story of the NSA listening to my phone calls and yours -- or the story of secret CIA interrogation chambers in Eastern Europe -- may yet prove to the the Pentagon Papers of our times. Yep, no hoping for a palace coup there, eh Michael Powell? I guess the old pass receiver extraordinaire took a few hits off Navasky's bong. Posted by: Walter Duranty in the House at January 1, 2006 10:11 AM | Permalink It is incredible how self-destructive this shrinking industry has become while in the throws of re-invention. Here are some comments on the effect on the entire industry, http://canticleforleibowitz.blogspot.com/2005/12/in-midst-of-great-depression.html Posted by: Bob Leibowitz at January 1, 2006 10:48 AM | Permalink As a layperson, I'm inclined to give the Times the benefit of the doubt, as Calame suggests, that the timing of the story could have put the original sources in danger. (And I put NOTHING past this Administration. There apparently is NO end to their assertion that Bush can do whatever he wants.) I am far more interested in exploring the scope of the illegal wholesale spying than the timing of the story. I'd hate to see everyone get focused on the navel yet again. For example, what about Richardson's suspicions that the NSA illegally wiretapped his conversations with Powell about North Korea and gave the transcripts to Bolton? Are they illegally spying on harmless pro-peace groups? I'm more inclined to congratulate the Times for publishing the story, regardless of circumstances. It can't be an easy time for them. Posted by: Phredd at January 1, 2006 12:16 PM | Permalink I think we can all agree that the story itself and the revelations in it are more important than the transparency and timing questions. (Does anyone disagree?) Consider the revelation that on Dec. 6 Bush called Sulzberger and Keller to the White House to pressure them not to run the story. That came out in the reporting other news organizations did about the Times. The Times did not report it. Focusing on the navel? Insignifcant detail? Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 1, 2006 12:56 PM | Permalink "I am far more interested in exploring the scope of the illegal wholesale spying than the timing of the story." That's fine, but just keep in mind that the focus of this blog is on the press and how it does its job. It's not a policy discussion forum on government policy. Those issues are discussed elsewhere in great detail. Jay is trying to examine how the press works and doesn't work. Posted by: kcom at January 1, 2006 1:26 PM | Permalink I don't know, Jay, the 'spying' is petering out into a non-story: Bush Died, Electrons Died. Today anyway, all the unusual actions and rationales or lack of them by the NYT, a powerful institution thick in the business of national security, is looking more and more like a bigger story. I see gloves flying everywhere: Bush v Pinch, Byron v Bill. There are earth-shaking events in the offing, and it ain't Bush gittin' bad guys by being alert. Posted by: kim at January 1, 2006 1:28 PM | Permalink I am far more interested in exploring the scope of the illegal wholesale spying than the timing of the story. I'd hate to see everyone get focused on the navel yet again. that is an admirable and understandable sentiment. However, one aspect of the blogosphere is its "niche-iness" --- The niche of Pressthink is to explore issues relating to journalism -- and that is why we are focussing on the "process" and "transparency" issues here. Indeed, this blog is at its best when the discussion ignores the actual issue at hand, because discussion of the issue results in one of the best comments section in the blogosphere degenerating into political posturing from the rabble (myself included, btw.) In other words, there are lots of blogs out there obsessing about the wiretaps themselves... and I strongly urge you to participate in those discussions in those fora, rather than here. Yeah, I love this site for the stories behind the stories--the critical take on the process of journalism. Because the field is going through some interesting shifts, this kind of story is all the more interesting. In addition, the angle of relationships between government and the press is also interesting. For example, the reported instance of the Bush Administration pressuring the NYT to hold the story--what does pressuring mean in this instance? What is the context? Pressuring does not necessarily infer a negative against freedom of the press, and could equally be construed as "attempting to convince" in the appropriate context, even though both sides have a specific agenda in this case, interpreted differently depending on one's bias. These gray areas are interesting. Posted by: Shawn in Tokyo at January 1, 2006 1:57 PM | Permalink It's difficult to argue that the Times, its readers and journalism generally wouldn't be far better off with greater transparency in this (and most) matters. Yes, Keller et al have stumbled badly in how and what was disclosed. But there are a couple of real-world considerations that critics on the sidelines ought to ponder. 1. Why does you simply assume the Times had a fully publishable story in hand at the time the WH intervened to lobby against it? Complex, high-stakes investigations demand painstaking, rigorous attention. I'd be shocked if the WH wasn't able at least to introduce doubts that needed to be rechecked. Your leakers give you one version; you confront authorities; they supply another batch of information and interpretation that contradicts your sources; you go back and doublecheck, do it again and then triple, then quadruple check. This is true more often than not in the toughest investigations. 2. Being under investigation and facing subpoenas really does require a different level of public comment than that faced by, say, a tenured professor or an unimpeded bystander or even a fellow traveler. Honestly. 3. Why not tell us they talked to the WH? Could it have been an off-the-record conversation? Posted by: Howard at January 1, 2006 1:57 PM | Permalink it seems to me that other held stories may influence the Times response to the public editor. Waht's the backstory on the Iran invasion reported in Der Spiegel, for instance? Why would you think the Times has been completely forthcoming in the handling of the Plame exposures? Posted by: bippy at January 1, 2006 2:05 PM | Permalink Apply Occam's Razor to the stonewall, and you reveal lawyer's advice. I suspect they are not talking because they shouldn't, not because they won't. They are in a fight. Posted by: kim at January 1, 2006 2:21 PM | Permalink Edward Wasserman of Miami Herald: "One of the more durable fallacies of ethical thought in journalism is the notion that doing right means holding back, that wrong is averted by leaving things out, reporting less or reporting nothing. When in doubt, kill the quote, hold the story - that's the ethical choice. But silence isn't innocent. It has consequences. In this case, it protected those within the government who believe that the law is a nuisance, that they don't have to play by the rules, by any rules, even their own." The Times decided to break the story only because it was going to become a fait accompli anyway through the publication of the book. Now that events took an unexpected turn, they are trying to make the best of a bad situation (of their own making) by hiding behind an all-too-familiar ruse - confidential sourcing. That said, this has to be a more common situation that we (excluding a few insiders on this board!) realize. One has to wonder how many such situations the Washington Post was in given that Mr. Woodward was an editor of the paper but often chose to break many stories in his books instead of the newspaper. Inevitably, this would have led to instances where the paper (at least Mr. Woodward) knew stuff that was important to the public (and was perishable) but held off publication till the book was ready. Posted by: village idiot at January 1, 2006 2:37 PM | Permalink In other words, there are lots of blogs out there obsessing about the wiretaps themselves... and I strongly urge you to participate in those discussions in those fora, rather than here.That’s kind of tough to do, because then you are not having an honest discussion here on the process. The problem is that the original articles and most commentary on them assume that the actions were illegal. That is simply not yet a proven. Personally I don’t believe they were. But if this discussion is based around illegal intelligence gathering, it comes out much different than if we all assume the actions were perfectly legal. If they are legal, and harm has been done due to the release of this information, then I for one believe that the NYT should be prosecuted as well as the leakers. Jay says: “The New York Times deserves thanks and admiration for the service it has done the nation,” Rutten wrote, and I strongly agree with that. I strongly disagree with that. I strongly think that the Times has done great harm to our country by running the story. Doing so after specific requests from the WH not to is the height of irresponsibility. I think they should be prosecuted. So transparency has a much different meaning to me. If you assume illegality, you get questions like those here. If you assume the actions are legal but the release of the information is illegal, then you want something different out of transparency. I want Calame to walk me through the process of how a once great paper decided to publish classified information useful to our enemies in a time of war. Think a public editor is up to that job? Hopefully, the trial transcripts won’t be sealed – I’ll get the story there. Posted by: OCSteve at January 1, 2006 3:07 PM | Permalink I think we saw it pretty clearly with the Judith Miller affair, and we see it clearly here - the New York Times has become so institutionally hamstrung that it cannot be transparent. It's institutionally incapable of doing so. It's become too big, too unwieldy, and its institutional interests preclude actual reporting. Like a huge 100-billion + mutual fund which tries to invest in microcaps, only to find the very fact that it's investing in microcaps or selling microcaps to be moving the markets against its own interests, the Times is finding it difficult to report on some matters without finding that it has, itself, become part of the story. And once it has become part of the story, it becomes almost impossible for the NY Times as an institution, to cover the story accurately. Times staffers will not out Times staffers. Compounding this difficulty is the fact that the New York Times, like many coastal media sources, and like Manhattan itself, become an echo-chamber of Northeeaster liberal orthodoxy. Because there is almost no intellectual diversity in its ranks - studies showing that liberals outnumber conservatives in the newspaper world by 4 or 5 to 1 are legion - it becomes even more difficult to honestly and accurately report on anything, because there is no internal system of checks and balances on underlying assumptions. Times staffers live and work in a liberal fever swamp, and then go out and drink in cafes and bars and hang out in parks that themselves have become liberal fever swamps, and are never seriously exposed to other modalities of thinking. Maybe they have one or two moderates in the newsroom whom everyone else THINKS is a conservative. I've contacted the Times, and their editors on several occasions when they've absolutely blown coverage on Iraq or military affairs, asking how many of their newsroom staffers are veterans. I've never received an answer. Undoubtedly, it's very few, or they wouldn't make the kinds of mistakes they routinely make. But it does speak to newsroom diversity - an ideal for which they'll go to the mat, as long as its LIBERAL diversity. Jason Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 1, 2006 3:32 PM | Permalink "Time-Delayed Journalism By ALEXANDER COCKBURN "The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation. The statesman collects his information secretly and by secret means; he keeps back even the current intelligence of the day with ludicrous precautions The Press lives by disclosures For us, with whom publicity and truth are the air and light of existence, there can be no greater disgrace than to recoil from the frank and accurate disclosure of facts as they are. We are bound to tell the truth as we find it, without fear of consequences--to lend no convenient shelter to acts of injustice or oppression, but to consign them at once to the judgement of the world." Robert Lowe, editorial, London Times, 1851. "Lowe's magnificent editorial was written in response to the claim of a government minister that if the press hoped to share the influence of statesmen it "must also share in the responsibilities of statesmen". It's a long, sad decline from what Lowe wrote in 1851 to the disclosure by the New York Times on Friday that it sat for over a year on a story revealing that the Bush administration had sanctioned a program of secret, illegal spying on US citizens here in the Homeland, by the National Security Agency." How come Jay missed this in his compendium? It is available here: Posted by: village idiot at January 1, 2006 3:39 PM | Permalink What's interesting to me is how this is playing politically. Normally, the Democrat leadership, and other Dems, would be cheering the Times on, hoping this leak would damage Bush. But no. Look at what elected Democrats are saying about this leak. Jay Rockefeller says that while he had misgivings about the program, he still wants to know the identity of the leaker. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee is denoucing the leak as hurting national security (!), and when hyper-partisans like Chas. Schumer say "There are differences between felons and whistleblowers, and we ought to wait 'til the investigation occurs to decide what happened", well you know this ain't your daddy's Plame investigation. Since this program was so secret, the pool of possible suspects is limited, and the fact that the DoJ has already started a criminal investigation indicates that they are fairly certain that someone broke the law. My guess is that someone is going to jail and it ain't gonna be Karl Rove. But that brings up another interesting question. Suppose the leaker is found to have been politically motivated (rather than a "whistleblower") in an attempt to undermine Bush and change policy, and in the process, undermined national security? In other words, suppose the Times is wrong that this is only about civil liberties, when it may have national security implications? What happens to the Times if it is a co-conspirator in a criminal act? Do they just get to shrug, say "oh, well" and move on? What is the resposibility of the press in a situation like this? Anything, or nothing? Posted by: steffen at January 1, 2006 3:46 PM | Permalink First, steffen, it's not one leaker; survey the article, and it appears to be closer to a dozen different and distinct leakers. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 1, 2006 4:14 PM | Permalink My compliments on the strawman you've constructed Steve, but show me one article by either WaPo or NYTimes concerning this leak that didn't reinforce the press master narrative of "Imperial President", "unchecked power", Nixon=Bush, civil liberties uber alles in the first few paragraphs. But you didn't answer my question: if the NYTimes is a co-conspirator in a crime, what are the consequences, if any? Posted by: steffen at January 1, 2006 4:29 PM | Permalink I think the public has an interest in prosecuting leakers, but no particular interest in prosecuting reporters who report what the leakers tell them. There's a difference, I think, between a journalist reporting information, even if that information is classified, and someone with a security clearance, in the employ of the people, who has been specifically entrusted to safeguard classified information, and who violates that trust by leaking it - whatever the motive. Now, the Times, of course, and the reporter and the publishers of his book, are profiting from the release of this information. And so while I'd be reluctant to prosecute a reporter except the most egregious cases, if there is, indeed, a terrorist attack, and it can be demonstrated that the disclosure of the NSA program hampered efforts to prevent it, and people are killed and injured as a result, and property is destroyed as a result of the Times' irresponsibility, then I would not be opposed to some substantial civil liability to the estates and families of the victims. The possibility of civil liability in the event of a terrorist attack might go a long way to aligning the interests of the republic and the New York Times itself, and help spark a more responsible risk/reward analysis on the part of the Times and other institutions like it. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 1, 2006 4:57 PM | Permalink From a previous thread... I'm glad I had my showdown with the bias warriors in the summer. There's been a lot less repetitive drilling since then, and some addition by subtraction as a few of the more chronic offenders left. They're baaaaack..... It's hard to pick my favorite post from 2005 but The Downing Street Memo and the Court of Appeal in News Judgment was the one I linked to the most and From Meet the Press to Be the Press is the one I've emailed to the most people. happy new year to all the regulars Posted by: Ron Brynaert at January 1, 2006 5:17 PM | Permalink Apparently the FISA judges have refused or modified a few of the Administration's requests. If a preventable terrorist act occurs in the future as result of these actions, would you believe that the FISA court is liable, and should be prosecuted? There are some obvious differences between the Times' publishing of the story, and above analogy, but I think the logic holds; both are key institutions of democratic governance and are absolved of any culpability as long as their actions are consistent with their respective missions under a democratic system. Posted by: village idiot at January 1, 2006 5:43 PM | Permalink That's a pretty sturdy strawman if he was able to convince the Times to hold off publication for more than a year, steffan. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 1, 2006 5:56 PM | Permalink Jason -- Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 1, 2006 6:01 PM | Permalink I've contacted the Times, and their editors on several occasions when they've absolutely blown coverage on Iraq or military affairs, asking how many of their newsroom staffers are veterans. Why do you consider it to be an important criteria for a newsroom to have veterans? If anything, your question would seem to have much greater relevance if posed of the elected/appointed officials of the executive branch, in as much as decisions of war and peace are made there. Posted by: village idiot at January 1, 2006 6:19 PM | Permalink Is the press outside the law? Posted by: steffen at January 1, 2006 6:31 PM | Permalink Max Weber would have loved the New York Times, and all the shenanigans. This is from a paper about his writings on government "secret-keeping," both its use and goals. "Weber identified such bureaucratic action as official secret-keeping, and stated that it is often an essential mechanism for building and maintaining bureaucratic power. It both enhances the expertise of the bureaucrat by preventing others from knowing what he knows, and it deflects criticism from outside interests by never providing enough information for such criticism to gain legitimacy: In other words, a large institution keep secrets, in an official capacity, as a way to reinforce its power and expertise. The less its "clients" know about the work it does, the less able the clients are to criticize, and the more dependent clients are on the products of the institution. Weber was writing in the 1920s about the rise of bureaucracy in Progressive Era governments. But I think there's a kernel here that sounds like the Times..... No, they're not -- but they do get lawyers. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 1, 2006 6:36 PM | Permalink It does sound like the Times, Jenny. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 1, 2006 6:45 PM | Permalink Just to be clear here. I have not argued that the NSA is doing something illegal, nor have I argued that Keller was wrong to hold the story for a year. I have said I don't know enough to make that determination. I haven't seen any convincing evidence that the Times story would help Al Queda, or harm national security; and President Bush's assertion that it would bring harm is not, to my mind, convincing evidence. Jenny, ami and Ron-- thanks for your comments on PressThink. Andrew Sullivan thinks Calame is being too tough; the only thing Keller did wrong is not disclose the Risen book. My understanding would be that you don't know if leaking NSA was a crime until you know if the NSA program itself was a crime. If it is a crime, then leaking it is whistleblowing. I entirely don't discount the national security argument. But I do wonder that the Times did not consider that it might be BS. The Bush Administration has alrady argued that sending Republicans to Washington is in the best interest of "national security" (see: central argument 2002; 2004). Let's not forget, too, that their ally the presumed innocent Tom DeLay used the national security apparatus to hunt down Texas Democrats in pursuit of his (and Rove's) corruptly-funded voter-proof "Permanent Republican Majority". We also know that the UN was bugged in the runup to the Iraq invasion. You would have to be fairly naive to not suspect that this program was being used against domestic dissidents -- perhaps even against journalists. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 1, 2006 8:37 PM | Permalink Malkin is right, Calame should tell us what his questions were/are. And Keller's insistence on not revealing when the paper had the story before or after last year's election is nonsense: at the least, he could tell us when the paper agreed not to publish the story. That wouldn't compromise any sources, since the White House were obviously aware at that point that the program had sprung leaks. It's a great story, and now that the floodgates have been opened by the Times, we're learning something new about it pretty much daily. I'd go with the Andrew Heyward post as perhaps the most revealing of the year. "Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do And while we're not on the subject, I'd like to nominate Knight Ridder's Washington bureau and international desk and the Toledo Blade as joint winners of the institutional press stars of the year. The Times could learn from both. Posted by: weldon berger at January 1, 2006 8:42 PM | Permalink Steve, I agree. Every institution suffers from to some extent from the failings of a bureaucracies... BUT.... Institutions like the Times have staked their reputations on the claim that they DON'T keep secrets. In fact, they are secret-telling institutions, and they do so for the public good. See this comment above quoting a passage written in 1851. I would venture that journalists would agree with these words, even though the most prestigious newspaper in the nation seems to be behaving like a government bureaucracy rather than a news organization. It's because big news organizations have become indistinguishable from the institutions they cover. Power, money, prestige, celebrity, all of these now flow to bigfoot journalists and their employers. Maybe this was always so, but because of various changes in the way people communicate, it's now easier to see, discuss, and criticize. Steve, I agree that bureaucracies are similar. But I am irritated that journalism institutions pretend they are not bureaucracies and are somehow immune from the ills of bureaucracies. Also, I concur with weldon's nomination of the Toledo Blade. A terrific paper, doing an amazing job of reporting stories, far away from the glamour of NYC and DC. Does Sullivan (or Shafer) honestly believe the Times should withhold from its readers what Keller dismissively refers to as "the back story" -- the fact that its editor and its publisher were summoned to the White House by a president seeking to implement his own version of prior restraint ? Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 1, 2006 8:51 PM | Permalink Jenny, we're in agreement. The Times is nothing if not a big, cumbersome bureaucracy tied up in its own red tape and too often stumbling over its own feet. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 1, 2006 9:02 PM | Permalink You would have to be fairly naive to not suspect that this program was being used against domestic dissidents -- perhaps even against journalists. I'm as moonbat as they come, but I'd like to suggest a more realistic alternative explanation. The program did not target anyone but people who were suspected of being "linked" to people who were "linked" to terrorists -- including people who wouldn't even know they were "linked" to people who had "links". That was part of the problem, but one that lots of folks were willing to overlook. The real problem cropped up when someone requested information from NSA intercepts for "foreign policy" reasons. We spy all the time on foreigners, not becaue they are terrorists, but just because its in our national interest to know what foreign powers are doing. ...and some of the intercepts that were provided to the person requesting them were from this special program -- which was ONLY supposed to be used in the "war on terror". Hypothetical -- John Bolton asks for all intercepts of conversations of El Baradei. Baradei had dinner at the home of an American citizen who was subjected to the "special" warrentless wiretaps program. Baradei made a phone call from that person's house -- and the transcript of that phone call made its way to Bolton. This is the kind of thing that would have made those who were skeptical of the program, but went along with it anyway, put their foot down. Its just speculation, but before we get too paranoid, lets assume that people are acting with the best intentions (and we can do so even if we think that what they are doing is grossly illegal). apropos of nothing...but I think Jane Hamsher has hit on something about blogs and the press that bears repeating (and possibly its own post in Pressthink...hint, hint :) ) I can only speak about my own experience, as someone who regularly speak with numerous journalists who cover the CIA leak case for the purpose of getting a better understanding of what's going on. And these are remarkably smart people, because I'm not going to waste my time talking to the dumb ones. But their job is to stay on the phone all day and cultivate sources, and their memories probably don't extend a whole lot further than the article they wrote yesterday. or, shorter Jane Hamsher... monomania isn't always a bad thing... The Times is acting like the Nixon Administration. This sort of thing deserves a new name. How about "stonewaffling?" Posted by: AST at January 2, 2006 12:54 AM | Permalink Thanks, ami. I think one of the hardest things for professional journalists to accept about the new reality of the Net is what Jane's talking about there: the idea that "the hours and days sifting through raw data now available to average people on the internet" produces real value. They find it impossible to believe that it can be as valuable, and as valid as what they do: producing the "raw material." The blogger's product has to be second order. It has to be derivative, parasitic. It has to be "mere" reaction, "just" opinion. It just has to be. Don't these bloggers realize that without journalists reporting the news there would be nothing to blog about? It's kinda amazing to me how many hundreds of times journalists can make this point as if they are loosing it upon the world for the very first time, and no one with a blog ever thought of it. Over and over and over... Without journalists reporting the news there would be nothing to blog about? Thing is, most bloggers do know that. They will happily admit that without the press they would be lost-- out of business, so to speak. But they also know that what Hamsher said is right: "If you want to know some obscure detail about something Judith Miller did or said in June of 2003 you call emptywheel." (At The Next Hurrah.) In Monday's New York Times Katharine Seelye has an article for which she interviewed me over a month ago. It's quite good. Answering Back to the News Media, Using the Internet. Subjects of newspaper articles and news broadcasts now fight back with the same methods reporters use to generate articles and broadcasts - taping interviews, gathering e-mail exchanges, taking notes on phone conversations - and publish them on their own Web sites. This new weapon in the media wars is shifting the center of gravity in the way that news is gathered and presented, and it carries implications for the future of journalism. Now here is the part that curves back to our subject: Reporters say that these developments are forcing them to change how they do their jobs; some are asking themselves if they can justify how they are filtering information. "We've got to be more transparent about the news-gathering process," said Craig Crawford, a columnist for Congressional Quarterly and author of "Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media." "We've pretended to be like priests turning water to wine, like it's a secret process. Those days are gone." Crawford realizes what Keller and Sulzberger, apparently, do not: transparency is an adjustment mainstream journalists have to make to a shift in the balance of power. The shift is happening whether they make the adjustment or not. It's changing the terms on which trust is generated, and that change is unfolding whether journalists recognize it or not. Keller and Sulzberger (and even more pathetically, Tim Rutten and Jason Zengerle) still think "transparency" is some kind of buzzword or a laughable conceit invented by the cybernetically correct. But really it's about power and the distribution of knowledge. > Hell, no. The analogy fails on several grounds. First of all, you don't file a civil suit against a court for damages. You appeal its rulings. There is no appealing the editorial judgement of the NY Times. Second, you cannot bring a successful suit against a government agent, such as a cop, soldier, or judge, for legal actions taken in the course of carrying out his or her duties. You never could. But you can if it's a corporation, pursuing its actions out of a profit motive. That's how corporations are forced to consider the human costs of corporate decisions. That's how corporations are discouraged from manufacturing a defective and dangerous product. If a news story is factually incorrect and/or compromises national security - ESPECIALLY during a period of armed conflict, then that news organization has manufactured a defective and dangerous product, in pursuit of profit. If they profit, great. But there must be a meaningful moral hazard to their decision: If someone suffers damages, and can point to the editorial posture of the Times as directly contributing to the events causing those damages, then a jury may be convinced that the victims should be made whole, and find the Times liable, in part, for their reckless disregard of public safety. Was National Security compromised? I don't think serious observers will doubt that it was. We learn a great deal from SIGINT. Every daily intelligence brief I read in Iraq had a SIGINT component to it that was extremely interesting. I'll put it this way: Either we were able to monitor Al Qaeda's calls to US residents or we were not. If we were, then it was a valuable intelligence resource, by definition - even if we never picked up evidence of a single op in so doing. Merely the capability is a powerful thing to have. If we were not able to monitor AQ comms with US residents, then there was no invasion of privacy. As for the Echelon project, that's old news going back to the late 1990s. What on earth did people think the NSA did all day? No one yet has been able to demonstrate any damages from the program. Except maybe terrorists. > Nonsense. There is no legal doctrine and no law which absolves the press of culpability of anything, nor should there be. The press, in the aggregate, is simply a collection of for-profit enterprises. Even the nonprofits, like NPR, hire for profit freelancers. The existence of libel laws alone puts paid to your argument that the press is absolved of a damn thing. If you trash someone's reputation in print, you may be held liable for damages. There are certain differences in the standard of proof required to demonstrate libel, but these exceptions attach to the VICTIM of libel, not to the newspaper. For example, if a regular joe sees his name in the paper, and it tarnishes his reputation, all he has to do is show damages, to win the claim. That's it. The newspaper, then can only rebut by PROVING that the information is true. Truth is an absolute defense, but the burden of proof in rebuttal is on the newspaper, not on the plaintiff. If the subject of the story is a public figure, though, the burden of proof shifts somewhat - the victim must not only demonstrate that he or she was damaged, but that the newspaper acted out of "actual malice." I.e., a deliberate intent. If this can be demonstrated, a claim can be successful. The newspaper can then try to rebut the claim by demonstrating its truth, but that is no different than in the first instance. Whether the newspaper was executing its responsibilities to the public is a matter to bring before juries, but there is nothing in the law which absolves a newspaper from civil liability for actuall causing damage to individual private citizens. They are exactly like every other profit making entity in this regard. As it should be. Newspapers are not above the law. The very fact that people here can post to the effect that newspapers are "absolved" of anything under the law by the very fact that they are newspapers is kind of disturbing in itself. Is there really that much Kool-aid being drunk? Jason
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 2, 2006 1:22 AM | Permalink Nice comments Jason! Which reminds me, I need to go visit your blog... Posted by: Shawn in Tokyo at January 2, 2006 1:37 AM | Permalink Jay Rosen: I haven't seen any convincing evidence that the Times story would help Al Queda, or harm national security; and President Bush's assertion that it would bring harm is not, to my mind, convincing evidence. Jason Van Steenwyk: Was National Security compromised? I don't think serious observers will doubt that it was. Jay -- What evidence would you require to be convinced? And, assuming that there is such damage to National Security, how could the President provide evidence to you without further damaging security? Should he come on television and say, "I want to assure Jay Rosen at NYU that we have been monitoring Abdul so-and-so in Pakistan and he has been calling Hassan so-and-so in New York about plans against the NYC subway, so you should be careful over there, Professor! Now, is it OK with you if I kindly ask Bill Keller to stop helping Al Qaeda? Oh, and, make sure it's OK with Steve Lovelady, too. His judgement is at least as valuable as the 60 million Americans who voted for me to serve as Commander in Chief." Your position is not only unserious and potentially suicidal, it is actually anti-democratic. Posted by: Rx for BDS at January 2, 2006 2:16 AM | Permalink ami, he didn't tell you about the showdown with bias warriors he had over on JOM a week or so ago. Milro et al is now out. What about it? Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 4:19 AM | Permalink Hey Jay, it's monomaniacal, purblind, and parochial to believe that bloggers only blog about what journalists have written. That is a shocking comment. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 4:32 AM | Permalink Steve, when is CJR going to print a correction about the Burkett forgeries? Or do you stand by that story? Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 4:45 AM | Permalink Is the lack of blogging about Groseclose and Milyo because journalists aren't writing about it? Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 4:54 AM | Permalink From Brian Calame's article: With confidential sourcing under attack and the reporters digging in the backyards of both intelligence and politics, The Times needs to guard the sources for the eavesdropping article with extra special care. Telling readers the time that the reporters got one specific fact, for instance, could turn out to be a dangling thread of information that the White House or the Justice Department could tug at until it leads them to the source. Ironically, this is almost precisely the argument that the Adminstration itself is making as to how publication of the NSA article ultimately endangers National Security. Posted by: JM Hanes at January 2, 2006 7:36 AM | Permalink Sorry, make that Byron Calame. Posted by: JM Hanes at January 2, 2006 7:38 AM | Permalink ami, he didn't tell you about the showdown with bias warriors he had over on JOM a week or so ago. Milro et al is now out. What about it? Kim, watching Jay take on the bias warriors reminds me of that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the Black Knight -- you know, the one where Arthur cuts off the limbs of the Knight defending the bridge in succession, but the Black Knight won't give up? It ends with this bit of dialogue... BLACK KNIGHT: The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then. Jay's Black Knight impression is perfect. Posted by: Walter Duranty in the House at January 2, 2006 9:37 AM | Permalink Go check it out, ami, it's the 'How long is a year' post at JustOneMinute. He was outnumbered but put up a fight until someone gave him a gracious way out by calling him a troll. The post before that one blogged about Groseclose and Milyo despite the fact that journalists aren't falling over themselves to write about it. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 10:03 AM | Permalink Not even Monty Python can express the absurdity of "taking on" the bias warriors. Anyway that war was lost long ago. Bias is the victorious category everywhere. Who in blazes said newspapers were above the law? The suggestion is absurd. Anyway, they ain't. Libel law and laws against fraud, as well as labor law where there are unions constrain them mightily. But legally they don't have to do what George W. Bush says. Experience teaches me it is unproductive in the extreme to respond to comments like: Was National Security compromised? I don't think serious observers will doubt that it was. or: Your position is not only unserious and potentially suicidal, it is actually anti-democratic. which place debate off limits. But I will say that the difference may be simpler: I don't trust a thing George Bush or his VP say, and would never take their word for anything. You would. That's just a version of the red blue divide and it has no news or discussion value whatsoever. I didn't say bloggers only blog about what journalists have written, either. I said: most bloggers "will happily admit that without the press they would be lost-- out of business, so to speak." Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 2, 2006 10:13 AM | Permalink Jason: I have argued in a previous post that the press should be held liable for injury, at least in a civil manner. That said, how do you square this with the Wen Ho Lee case: For example, if a regular joe sees his name in the paper, and it tarnishes his reputation, all he has to do is show damages, to win the claim. That's it. The newspaper, then can only rebut by PROVING that the information is true. Truth is an absolute defense, but the burden of proof in rebuttal is on the newspaper, not on the plaintiff. The damage is there for everybody to see (It was reported that the judge actually apologized to Mr. Lee). The lack of truth in the Times' accusations is clearly established in the court proceedings and by the verdict. Yet, Mr. Lee's civil case appears to be mired. Second, you cannot bring a successful suit against a government agent, such as a cop, soldier, or judge, for legal actions taken in the course of carrying out his or her duties. Without getting into the 'sovereign immunity' principle (I believe there are several exceptions to this and suits are routinely allowed to go forward against the sovereign) that you probably are referring to, the operative word in your above sentence appears to be 'legal actions'. Do you disagree that the law is now settled (Pentagon Papers) that Newspapers are free to legally publish whatever they discover during the course of their duties? Do you disagree that the 'national security' criteria (as applied to this issue by the Times) are largely a form of self-regulation. Do you see a special role for the press in a democracy and the necessity for some form of immunity to make this role effective? If you do, what is your prescription for resolving the tension between that special role and the for-profit motive? Posted by: village idiot at January 2, 2006 10:38 AM | Permalink Jay sez: "I don't trust a thing George Bush or his VP say." The flip side is that some us don't trust a thing the NYTimes or press say. Why ask why? A hint is contained in the Seelye article which quotes Jamie McIntyre as saying "...so many people (non-journalists)are trying to shape things into their own reality." Then there was this little gem: "It's more important that we take that information and tell you what it means." I suppose if the entire country was made up of east coast liberal elites and proles, McIntyre's model would just be hunkey-dorey. Just as we need to be wary of politicians (hey, Jay, did you "trust a thing" Clinton & Gore said?) we need to be wary of press attempts to make our reality conform with theirs, especially since the press never pays a price for being wrong (which they consistently are). This is the value of blogs---we finally have a venue to fact check the press and we can take back our "reality" from the elites. I always thought a quote from Walter Cronkite was telling. When asked what he missed most about not doing the evening news, Walter said "setting the agenda" is what he missed most. A handful of unelected liberal elites setting the agenda for the entire country! Thank god those days are over and are never coming back. Posted by: steffen at January 2, 2006 10:55 AM | Permalink Concerning current comments on the press, leaks and legal correctives: Keeping Secrets, Free Press and Fair Debate ... The post before that one blogged about Groseclose and Milyo despite the fact that journalists aren't falling over themselves to write about it. the fact that the wingnuts take the Groseclose/Milyo study seriously is all you need to know about how the wingnuts are incapable of logical thought. Here's a clue....in the ranking how "liberal" (closer to 100) or "conservative" (closer to 0) an organization is, the Rand Corporation (60.4) is considered more "liberal" than "Amnesty International" (57.4)--- and the ACLU is actually slight right of center (49.8). I believe that this study can best be described by a single acronym --- GIGO Go look at G&M before you GIGO it. Your comment is uninformed. Despite it not fitting your intuitions the conclusions are intuitively correct and the method is sound. Let's here some real criticism. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 11:36 AM | Permalink The very fact that people here can post to the effect that newspapers are "absolved" of anything under the law by the very fact that they are newspapers is kind of disturbing in itself. Is there really that much Kool-aid being drunk? Oh, by the way, if you are able to keep it civil, we can have a discussion. Alternately, I will assume that you need to vent, and will refrain from disturbing your soliloquy:) Posted by: village idiot at January 2, 2006 11:37 AM | Permalink I quote you, Jay. " Don't these bloggers realize that without journalists reporting the news there would be nothin to blog about?" That's an astounding commentary on navel-gazing. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 11:42 AM | Permalink Go look at G&M before you GIGO it. where do you think I discovered that G/M designated Rand as considerably more liberal than the ACLU? G/M's logic is ridiculous. The assumption is that an organization's ideological bias can be determined by the ideological ranking of Congresscritters who cite that organization (the Garbage going in), then base their judgement of media "bias" on the supposed ideological bias of the organizations (the Garbage coming out).
You can do with Groseclose and Milyo, ami, what many recommend, "Watch their pages". Or you can read about it in JOM about a week and a half ago in a post with those names. Now, I'll shuddup about G&M if you like. I came here in response to the bait about which is a bigger story, Bush's actions or the Times' actions. Dubya, "Thank God the Captain's awake." The Gray Lady, "Who elected them to run the country?" Cha cha cha cha chat. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 12:03 PM | Permalink Kim, a hint: The sentence that has you in a twist, " Don't these bloggers realize that without journalists reporting the news there would be nothin to blog about?" is Jay's reflection on what 'professional journalists' think. They are not Jay's words. Reading for comprehension can be a fun thing. Now a question for all: Is the concern expressed here about journalists setting the agenda - assuming they really do set any agenda - is the concern over the agenda-setting or because journalists are perceived to be liberal - whatever that means? If the concern is over setting the agenda, than journalism has done a pretty crappy job. And if it's over the political ideology, then you're saying only conservatives should set the agenda. Right? Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 2, 2006 12:04 PM | Permalink If you have characterized those assumptions correctly, just where is the flaw in them? Somewhat inexact, I admit, but the statistics are supposed to handle that. That's a peer-reviewed article. What's its problem? Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 12:08 PM | Permalink What, Jay writing something he didn't believe. If your interpretation is correct, Dave, it is a cheap rhetorical trick. Oh so sophisti(cal or cated), take your pick. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 12:11 PM | Permalink On second thought, never mind. Please ignore my question on agenda setting. All it will do is throw gasoline on the bias fires. And we know that way leads to madness. Posted by: Dave McLemroe at January 2, 2006 12:13 PM | Permalink Well, I'll try to respond, Dave, though I'm not sure you meant 'agenda' for the last word of your last post. If you did it makes the distinction between ideology and agenda setting immaterial. What I am saying is that it shouldn't only be liberals setting the agenda. Where you get the nonsense about me or anyone wanting only conservatives to do so, I have no idea. I've been years a stubborn independent, suspected of heresy by one and all. I only sound wingnutty post radicalization by the Swifties. What about them, and what about Burkett and what about the Aborted Favorite Son? Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 12:18 PM | Permalink Dave, Groseclose and Milyo is not madness. But sticking your head in the sand is. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 12:21 PM | Permalink Haven't paid much attention to Glenclose and Milyo. What's their take on the indirect quote as a sophisticated literary device? Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 2, 2006 12:30 PM | Permalink Hee hee, Dave, we have a little episode where Jay chastised, sophistically, someone else for that device. Besides, he's only disputing my accuracy at quoting. The real issue he waved aside with his red flag or herring, take your pick, and keep your cotton pickin' hands off my rabbit. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 12:42 PM | Permalink So what's a bigger story? Bush standing watch at his guardpost, or Grandiose Pinch dreaming of ordering the world and the reality around him. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 12:50 PM | Permalink In case you haven't noticed, this is a showdown. The only justification for Pinch to push this under Bush's nose is if there has been illicit domestic abuse of the intelligence. So far, no proof of that. Lacking that, Pinch is toast. So get with the domestic abuse, or get with the Madness of King Pinch the Third. Nearly everyone wants the kind of protection this surveillance has demonstrably given us. Even leftists want this protection, they just don't think it is worth the price. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 1:01 PM | Permalink Even leftists want this protection, they just don't think it is worth the price. On this, Kim, you are absolutely right -- presuming by "leftists", you mean American liberals and not Latin American guerillas. I don't think anyone in America disagrees that the law enforcement and intelligence apparati should be able to listen in to al Qaeda. The hitch is that over 50% of Americans do not trust BushCheney (as Jay said) to have this kind of power -- especially now that it is clear that they have already been dishonest about it at every step. Especially when there was a legal way to do this -- and they chose the potentially illegal way instead. Why? What reason did they have to cut out the FISA court? We don't know. As Patrick Fitzgerald said, you need to determine intent. At this point we don't have it from the Administration or from the leakers. Until you know the intent of the Administration or whether this was, in fact, illegal -- and the intent of the leakers (if it was, in fact, illegal and the Administration knew this and ginned up arguments as to why they considered it legal) -- you don't know if the leak to the NYT was a crime. It may well be that the Administration presented the Times with an ultimatum -- or a threat: cover this and be prosecuted. Hence the wasted year, getting the story ironed out, dotting Is and crossing Ts, and inuring itself to prosecution. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 2, 2006 2:07 PM | Permalink The Mad Hatter examined the NYT and concluded that this tempest in a teapot justifies the conclusion that the paper is acting in a double secret agent role. They publish this material for the care and feeding of the upper east side crowd and their putative minions. They(NYT) really are adding red state votes for the Republicans. Posted by: richard siegel at January 2, 2006 2:17 PM | Permalink FISA was unacceptly unwieldy and a legal choice was the one the Administration chose. I agree 50% of Americans don't trust Bush with this power. 50% wouldn't have trusted Clinton with it. Where was the NYT then? Biased then, as now? Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 2:17 PM | Permalink "I think we can all agree that the story itself and the revelations in it are more important than the transparency and timing questions. " I think that's overreaching, as comments here clearly indicate. I think Bush believed he was taking legal actions, and I think he will probably turn out to be wrong. I don't believe political enemies were targeted but, given the FISA court's unprecedented disagreement with the warrants, it seems more than possible that the goal was not to save time, but to avoid legal challenges and scrutiny. That sort of thinking is exactly why we require warrants in the first place. I doubt the wiretaps were fundamental to national security, and I don't think publication of the story threatened security. I don't want to debate those issues; I just want to forestall the inevitable assumptions about political bias when I say that the Times' behavior disgusts me, and the various media critic responses confuse me. But I keep wondering if I'm unaware of some fundamental distinctions that would make this all clearer. For example, if the New York Times is threatening national security in publishing the story, then I can't see why Simon & Schuster is not guilty of the same crime in publishing a book on the subject. But I haven't seen any mention of this--has Bush called in the publishers to personally ask them not to publish this book? The administration's attack on the Times for publishing the story seems designed purely to rouse up the base and create a controversy. This seems obvious, but I've not seen anyone mention the free pass given to the Simon & Schuster or wonder why. (apologies if I've missed it.) Similarly, I haven't seen much focus on James Risen. He had to have told the publisher about the wiretaps in order to get the book deal, which naturally increased the risk that the story would get out. So clearly, getting scooped *or* getting the story out wasn't quite as important as getting the book deal. Keller makes it clear that the decision was based solely on the upcoming book release (despite occasional mention of "new reporting"). So did he know about the publication months ago, or just a couple weeks ago? If the former, then it's difficult to understand why he would hold onto this story until a couple weeks before the book. Unless, God forbid, it was an attempt to ward off White House criticism ("sorry, Mr. President, but the book's coming out. Our hands are tied.") Keller seems to be asserting that he only recently learned of the contents. Huh? James Risen learns of illegal wiretaps, President Bush personally asks them to withhold the story, Risen was apparently unhappy with the decision, Risen asks for leave when he gets a book deal, but Keller doesn't know what the book's going to be about? So Risen shrugs off his paper's decision to hold his story, and goes off to sell his tale to a publisher, like all good Times reporters do. The NY Times cheerfully withholds an important story at the request of a president, but shrugs and publishes it not because they changed their mind about its importance, but because they were going to be scooped. At every point in this incident, the NY Times and Risen made decisions based not on good journalism, public responsibility, or national security, but rather prestige, money, and maintaining their White House relationship. I can't understand in light of these actions, how anyone can possibly argue that the story itself was important. I see no evidence that the NY Times, Risen, or even the White House thought of it in that light. A commenter on another blog, extraneous, speculates that a lot of the fervor of the last two weeks is not so much that the left is suspicious of domestic abuse of the intelligence, rather because the leaker, now in the net, is a big fish. I agree, intent is part of the equation. Was the intention domestic political damage at the price of national security? We may soon see. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 2:22 PM | Permalink What a lot of thoughts, Cal. Maybe the NYT published to give cover to the book publisher(somehow a part of the Times Empire?). You know if First Amendment patriots like the New York Times break a story the publisher disclosing national security secrets has some leeboard for the legal storm. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 2:29 PM | Permalink Anybody here able to reveal a little transparency about the relationship of Risen's book publisher to the New York Times. My jaundiced eye and rose-colored vision conspire to render that one opaque to me. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 2:34 PM | Permalink Village: As more than one poster here has said, this is about the press, not the issue. So suggesting we need more vets in the administration is off-topic. But Jason's point was if there were more veterans in the newsroom, the NYT wouldn't be embarrassing itself so often. This is not an ideological issue, but one of credibility. Some have said there's a difference between the guys--reporters--who are trying to get today's news today, if not tomorrow's news today, and the blogger who beavers away in the archives, covered with pixel dust and cybermites. True. But it has not, apparently, occurred to enough of the first group that the second group can, with iron-clad, copper-bottomed facts, blow a story clear to Jupiter. By getting it right. Within six hours of the NSA expose' in the NYT, somebody had a copy of Carter's executive order giving himself the same powers, and of Woolsey's explanation of why the Clinton administration was doing it. And they were all over the web. Whatever other relationships there are between the two groups, this, IMHO, is the most important. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 2, 2006 2:37 PM | Permalink Hey wait, what about the ironclad, copper-bottomed facts in the CJR article about the Rather mess and the Burkett forgeries? Surely that blew Rather's crtitics all to hell. Or are there facts, and biased facts? Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 2:43 PM | Permalink Who do I feel like I'm sitting through an episode of BIAS WARS: THE WINGNUTS STRIKE BACK ....a long time ago, in a reality far, far, away... "I think the public has an interest in prosecuting leakers, but no particular interest in prosecuting reporters who report what the leakers tell them." As a non-journalist, and thus a member of this "public" you are talking about, I was hesitant to comment here, until I saw the above. Let me just put it this way... you are breathtakingly wrong. Posted by: drunyan8315 at January 2, 2006 3:26 PM | Permalink Can this blog be configured so that only registered users can post comments, and there is a delay of a few hours before newly registered users can post comments? That way, the OCD-suffering bias warriors can be deleted, and prevented from coming back immediately. It might reduce your overall traffic, but the discussions would be richer, and you probably wouldn't have to delete anybody because the mere threat of losing posting privileges would keep people in line. It induces a sense of futility to have to wade through the garbage posted by a spammer like kim. Sincerely, Ace Sprezzatura Posted by: Ace Sprezzatura at January 2, 2006 3:38 PM | Permalink kim -- You know something about the ownership of Simon & Schuster that we don't ? Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2006 3:41 PM | Permalink I agree with Ace----let's turn PressThink into another lefty echo chamber---like Kos and Atrios! How original. Posted by: steffen at January 2, 2006 3:50 PM | Permalink Village: As more than one poster here has said, this is about the press, not the issue. So suggesting we need more vets in the administration is off-topic. I was merely quoting from another preceding post. I do not have much of an opinion on 'veterans in newsroom' beyond wanting to understand the apparent inconsistency in the poster seeking veterans in the newsroom without seeking the same in the elected executive branch, where, arguably, it might have been more useful for the nation. Posted by: village idiot at January 2, 2006 3:51 PM | Permalink Well, SL, I was hoping someone else could scoop that little morsel. There is some relationship between the NYT and the Risen's publisher, if only timing of publication. Not a chance there is any more. The Thornburgh Commission proved they were forgeries; they just didn't act on the proof. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 4:15 PM | Permalink Oh sure, As, SL, and ami, the last refuge of someone without an argument is name-calling. Thanks for almost having a conversation. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 4:20 PM | Permalink This is madness: Lovelady defending the Burkett forgeries, Rosen ignoring Groseclose and Milyo. What would your students think? Oh, sorry I asked, I know the answer. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 4:31 PM | Permalink Steve: You actually believe that there's a chance that the Burkett documents might be legit? I'm astonished. Well, not really. Posted by: Brian O'Connell at January 2, 2006 4:41 PM | Permalink The clever little trick that you, Steve, and so many others fell for was Thornburgh weaseling out with the words that the papers could not be authenticated. For too many, that left the matter in a limbo the facts prohibit it from. Purported copies can be inauthenticated by a number of methods; only an original can be authenticated. That is what the Thornburgh Commission found and I could have told them that before they investigated. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 4:44 PM | Permalink Kim, Bryan: I'm really not interested in refighting the Thornburgh wars. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2006 5:14 PM | Permalink 1. Bullring provenance, or that which is found in bullrings. 2. Internal anachronisms. 3. Unlikelihood of any sort of type-setting machine in AF Reserve offices at that time. 4. Microsoft Word overlay. I'm not even a document expert. All I'm good at is hiding in the boonies in black pajamas. But why don't we ask Jay about Mapes? Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 5:21 PM | Permalink The only real questions about those forgeries are are they Burkett's lone work, Rove's spectacular deception, or Democratic Party disinformation. But you believe in fairy tales. And I'm the wingnut. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 5:24 PM | Permalink "Damned Report" referring to the Thornburgh Commission's work is the apt phrase. It is a disgrace. And I like the way they refused to discredit the papers by firing 4 people. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 5:28 PM | Permalink Jay, would you prefer that I send flowers, or a contribution to this thread's favorite charity? (on the good side, we know who killed the thread, and Jay (unlike a certain Chief Executive) isn't compelled by law to ensure that the guilty party receives any kind of "due process" before meting out justice.) This is is so far off the real topic of this thread that we might as well be talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2006 5:50 PM | Permalink I've tried frequently to come back to our host's topic; Bush's actions or Times actions, which is the bigger story. And Steve, I'm sorry for the name-calling, but you are in serious la-la land if you still believe those memos aren't forgeries. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 6:06 PM | Permalink Some kind of 'ami' you turned out to be, whining for surcease. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 6:08 PM | Permalink Do you disagree that the law is now settled (Pentagon Papers) that Newspapers are free to legally publish whatever they discover during the course of their duties? Hell, no. The Pentagon Papers case established no such thing. The court specifically excluded a scenario in which a hundred young men would die from disclosure of classified information "whose only offense was that they were 19 years old with low draft numbers." The consensus in that particular case was that the national security damage was largely conjectural. A deductive reasoning process would lead one to conclude that the court left open a recognition of a legitimate interest of the government to impose prior restraint in some circumstances. Justice White, for example, writes such in so many words, in his separate opinion supporting the newspapers in that particular case: “I do not say that in no circumstances would the First Amendment permit an injunction against publishing information about government plans or operations. White recognizes that the government's burden is heavy in such a case, but specifically allows for it with reference to ongoing "plans and operations." It seems pretty clear to me that the NSA monitoring would qualify as an ongoing operation, and even the defendents in the Pentagon Papers case were careful to differentiate their particular case from a situation in which ongoing and specific operations were compromised. So much for the "free to publish whatever they discover" fantasy. But it doesn't stop there. Although Justice White did not want to grant an injunction to the government in this PARTICULAR instance, he did go on to call for the criminal prosecution of the New York Times and Washington Post under specific statutes. White specifically cited section 793(e) of 18 U.S.C., on unauthorized possession of a document relating to the national defense, as well as sections 797 (graphical representations of military installations) and 798 (code and cryptographic information), and wrote: “I would have no difficulty in sustaining convictions under these sections on facts that would not justify…the imposition of a prior restraint.” So while the government's burden to impose a restraint on publication is indeed heavy, the press does not have a blank check, under the first amendment, to compromise national security and endanger the safety of thousands in pursuit of a scoop. Nor are they allowed to violate the law by obtaining classified documents in so doing. In that respect, journalists are under exactly the same law as everyone else. As it should be.
Do you disagree that the 'national security' criteria (as applied to this issue by the Times) are largely a form of self-regulation. I wouldn't trust the New York Times or any other newspaper to "self-regulate" the contents of an employee refrigerator. An unaccountable institution such as the New York Times cannot meaningfully self-regulate. Occasionally, and industry can band together and create an independent self-regulatory body, such as the National Association of Securities Dealers. But in the absence of such a body, with actual enforcement authority, the brand of "self-regulation" to which you refer is meaningless, amounting to quite the same thing as no regulation at all. I think what we see today is more a matter of prosecutorial discretion than self-regulation. As I wrote above, I don't think there is a particular interest in criminally prosecting the NY Times or its employees, based on what I now know. I do believe that a criminal investigation into the leak is in order, and that the reporters could properly be compelled to testify as to the identity of the leakers, or risk being found guilty of either contempt of court or obstruction of justice. I do not believe that a reporter's obligation to protect a source extends to covering up a federal crime and stonewalling an investigation. They should hold out until a court directs them to, and the courts can weigh the issue, but the courts are independent of the Executive branch. If a court directs them to answer the prosecutor's question, like the rest of us, they must answer, completely and truthfully. Reporters, again, should be covered by the same laws that cover everyone else. Do you see a special role for the press in a democracy Yes. A role. Not a "special role." Unless newspaper staffs also qualify for the Special Olympics. Some of their coverage makes me wonder. And the necessity for some form of immunity to make this role effective? No. You're reporters. Not ambassadors. Get off your high horses.
If you do, what is your prescription for resolving the tension between that special role and the for-profit motive? News outlets are bound by the exact same laws that cover the rest of us, with regard to outing covert agents and revealing classified information. Simultaneously, though, there should be certain defenses - with the burden of proof on the news organization - in rebuttal: 1.) The defense could show that the classified plan or op revealed clearly violated the law. Illegal actions cannot be permitted the same classification protections as legal actions. 2.) The defense could show that the information revealed was improperly classified. That is, the government classified the information not to protect National Security, but to save the executive branch from embarrassment. And again, I would be open to strict liability for news organizations who do choose to reveal classified information. If that information results in the failure to detect a terrorist attack, for example, and it can be demonstrated that had the intelligence gathering procedures not been compromised by exposure in the press, such an attack could likely have been prevented, and the plaintiffs can show a reckless disregard for public safety, that the news organization that published the information, along with the leakers, be required to help make the victims whole. Just how much of a contribution the news organization made to allowing a terror attack to become possible would be fact-dependent, and up to a jury. Case in point: There is currently a Spanish Language Radio station in San Antonio that is taking calls and publishing the movements of Border Patrol agents in the area. If an agent is ambushed and injured or killed based upon this information, I would support a strict liability against the radio station, for its reckless disregard of public safety and for its aiding and abetting a crime. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 2, 2006 6:10 PM | Permalink Steve: I don't want to rehash those documents either. Charles Johnson conclusively proved to my satisfaction that they were forgeries- or better, fabrications- within a week or two of their release. The proof is in mathematical probabilities- politics isn't really a factor- or shouldn't be. But with all the complaints about he said, she said journalism it's interesting that all you can do in this case is say that two sides disagree, as did most of the press when they covered it. Few were interested in finding out the truth of the matter for themselves and printing it. So we had this wishy-washy reporting: "Some say they're real, some say they're not, so I guess we'll never know." It was and remains pathetic journalism. kim: I appreciate that we may agree on many things, but the way you're comporting yourself here is not appreciated. Try to consolidate your thoughts into fewer posts. You're dominating the thread. Posted by: Brian O'Connell at January 2, 2006 6:12 PM | Permalink steffen wrote: How original. It's already that! Navasky/Lovelady wrote:
Posted by: Walter Duranty in the House at January 2, 2006 6:14 PM | Permalink You do realize, Steve that your CJR article is a joke. It'll be in the textbooks, someday. Correct it while you can. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 6:15 PM | Permalink Amazing. Steve, you really think the burden falls on Kim to prove the Rathergate docs are forgeries? The rest of civilized society - you know, outside of the Manhattan liberal echo chamber you live in, believes it's up to CBS to show that they're authentic. So where's Gonzalez, anyway? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 2, 2006 6:21 PM | Permalink Sitting on the flooer of the local Borders, reading that CJR article with what I already knew about typography was a little like having the journal turn into a cockroach in my hands. That article, even if corrected, will stand in textbooks side-by-side with the blogs of typographical experts which your author could have found easily. After all, I found them. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 6:29 PM | Permalink They cannot be authenticated, they are copies. But they have been inauthenticated in myriad ways. Read the damn Thornburgh Report. Sorry, P, but I guess you shake a dead tree at your own peril. While impaired with the mote in my eye, I was bombarded with rotten falling beams and I lie bruised, battered, barely breathing. If I comported myself differently, I'd be compost. But you're right, each blog has its ethic, and I'm trespassing. So see ya' beyond the pale. Where truth gets disorderly. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 6:36 PM | Permalink You've got to give Steve and CJR credit, they managed to produce a piece of journalism that was actually worse than the original CBS report. Bravo, maestro!!!!!!!!! Posted by: Walter Duranty in the House at January 2, 2006 6:57 PM | Permalink Do you see a special role for the press in a democracy Yes. A role. Not a "special role." Unless newspaper staffs also qualify for the Special Olympics. Some of their coverage makes me wonder. And the necessity for some form of immunity to make this role effective? No. You're reporters. Not ambassadors. Get off your high horses. I, on the contrary, believe that a free and vibrant press is an essential precondition for democracy to survive. To my mind, the press has an important watchdog role and it is in the public's interest to carve out a limited but well-defined immunity that can serve as an enabler of this special role. Given that fundamental difference, I have trouble accepting some of your arguments, which amount to throwing the baby out along with the bath water. That said, the idea of civil penalties can create an incentive for more responsibility on the part of the press and open up their editorial decision making to outside scrutiny. If what you hold is correct, we can look forward to the spectacle of the Times being prosecuted by the administration. I have not come across anything that suggests that this is on the cards, which should give you some pause. My own view is that this is highly unlikely because the Times is on solid legal ground. In the end, they are a for-profit, shareholder owned corporation, and I would be very surprised if they decided to publish this without doing the required legal analysis. So, we will see how it develops. With respect to the actual leakers, of which there seem to be many, it is very different. Posted by: village idiot at January 2, 2006 7:16 PM | Permalink Here's an excerpt from a NYT article (The Ties Behind the News in Author Interviews on TV) by Bill Carter dated April 11, 2004: "Both CBS News executives and Simon & Schuster executives say there is nothing at work in this relationship besides good marketing and mutual benefits. CBS News and "60 Minutes" want to break the news available in hot political books, and Simon & Schuster wants to promote sales by first exposing books and authors to the biggest and most book-oriented audience the company could find." Although this article specifically was addressing the CBS/60 Minutes interviews with Bob Woodward and Richard Clarke, it has relevance to this discussion if you simply replace NYT and CBS. Any time I hear "mutual benefits," when benefits to either party include fame and fortune, my antennae go up.... Posted by: kristen at January 2, 2006 8:12 PM | Permalink There's a journalist's instinctive response, kristen, as opposed to Steve's who wanted to suppress with snark the idea that there could be any collusion without ownership in common. Now, I'll shut up. It's been real. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 8:24 PM | Permalink I, on the contrary, believe that a free and vibrant press is an essential precondition for democracy to survive. Sure it is. So are a lot of things. So's a free and public education. But we expect teachers to obey Federal laws, too, just like the rest of us. Not incidentally, a sound and effective means of gathering intelligence on our nation's enemies during a time of war is also essential for the survival of the Republic. The problem is that too many journalists are operating as if the First Amendment were the only obligation of the government in the constitution, and so disregard other, coequal passages, such as that bit in the preamble about "provide for the Common Defenfse, and promote the general welfare." As much as it makes journos heads explode to hear, there are limits to the First Amendment. They're already codified into law. Libel laws, for one. Slander and defamation laws for another. Yes, they tend to be civil in remedy, rather than criminal. But how about hate speech regulations? How about laws against assault, which include prohibitions against threatening, verbal assault, and "fighting words." To use a tired analogy, your precious First Amendment does not give you the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, any more than the second amendment allows me to own a nuclear missile - even in theory. There are all kinds of reasonable limitations to constitutional liberties already encoded into law. Among them is the release of state secrets and the outing of covert agents and means. The government's burden of proof is heavy when it comes to the press. But it's there. So stop trying to argue as if those legal restrictions and counterbalances don't exist. If the New York Times published detailed instructions for converting fissile material into a nuclear bomb tomorrow - or publicized the kind of information the Rosenbergs provided to the Russkies for which they were quite reasonably executed, you're darned right there'd be a criminal penalty. The rest is a matter of degree. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 2, 2006 8:34 PM | Permalink "Steve, you really think the burden falls on Kim to prove the Rathergate docs are forgeries?" -- Jason Only if she states matter-of-factly that they are, Jason. Which she has about 12 times now. That burden falls upon anyone who poses a supposition as a fact -- including me, including you. Including even a hit-and-run artist like the charming, but fleeting, kim.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2006 8:52 PM | Permalink Jason, who exactly has argued 'those legal restrictions and counterbalances (on the 1st Amendment.don't exist?' Are you saying that the publication of the NSA's intercept story is the equivalent to publication of nuclear secrets or, as others suggested, troop movements. We don't know just how American citizens were targeted with warrantless searches or just how those citizens were allegedly linked to al-Qaeda operatives. It would seem your assumptions are getting ahead of the facts. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 2, 2006 8:54 PM | Permalink Jason: Now I am all confused; Do you believe, based on what you posted previously, that the Times is culpable, or not? My impression was that you were arguing that they are culpable, no? Posted by: village idiot at January 2, 2006 8:59 PM | Permalink My 5:21 post alone contains enough proof for ordinary mortals that the memos are forgeries. This whole thread is a joke. Pinch and Bill aren't talking because they're lawyered up and Byron should know that. If he doesn't, it seems sort of contemptuous that he's not been told. But Pinch is whack, and I wouldn't put it past him. Oops, fleets slipping out of port without me. Good-bye, I'll send you a postcard. Wish you were here and all that. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 9:02 PM | Permalink Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2006 9:13 PM | Permalink Gee, kim, that's the fifth time you've announced your threatened exit. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2006 9:40 PM | Permalink Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main. I'll bet you'd like to see the last of me, and that CJR Burkett article. It will assure your immortality in the Editor's Hall of Fame. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 9:51 PM | Permalink Jay Rosen: 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.Michael Getler, now at PBS: ... It's very hard to measure the internal impact on the news organization. I mean if you write something critical, the editor or producer is not going to come over and say gee, thanks for that. They are not going to do that. kim, You and Steve Lovelady are welcome to continue the CBS document debate at my blog. I'd suggest either this post, or this one. Please, no more here. ... and 9:51 pm. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2006 10:23 PM | Permalink Sisyphus, I think you're going to have to address a post to Steve to get him to honor your request. I'm certainly happy to leave him the last words. He'll need lots of them for all the unanswered questions above. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 10:28 PM | Permalink And Steve, I do apologize for my naivete about your position. I thought you were responsible for the editing of the article. As is commonly the case when one is overly harsh, I regret it. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 10:31 PM | Permalink .... and everyone lived hapily ever after! Posted by: village idiot at January 2, 2006 10:44 PM | Permalink I'll take back that this thread is a joke. I do think, however, that the most likely explanation for the silence of the bosses is legal advice. I'll not assert it as fact, though. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 10:50 PM | Permalink kim -- I accept the regrets. Steve Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2006 11:14 PM | Permalink Thank you, Steve. Posted by: kim at January 2, 2006 11:17 PM | Permalink Calame got stonewalled. I would suggest there are two separate considerations. One is the reason the stonewalling occurred. Reasonable or not. Understandable or not. Reprehensible or not. And the result in how the public looks at the paper. No connection with the first consideration. Conclusion: Somebody should have thought harder about coming clean, or not getting into this position in the first place. That the NYT didn't have a contingency plan for this leads me to believe they were surprised by the contingency. To paraphrase Dierks Bentley, what were they thinking? Jason's point about tne NYT explaining how to make fissile material out of, say, yellowcake is on point. Yes, if the NYT did it, those currently complaining about freedom of the press would then be complaining about freedom of the press. Wretchard, of Belmont Club, made an interesting analogy. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 2, 2006 11:56 PM | Permalink I want to correct something. The line from Pacino in The Godfather III: "Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in." Not drag, Steve, pull. I thought Cal's question--why hasn't Bush called the head of Simon & Schuster down to Washington?-- was an awfully good one. But I didn't understand Cal's "Keller makes it clear that the decision was based solely on the upcoming book release..." He specifically said it wasn't based on the book release. Are you simply saying you don't believe him? Sisyphus: thanks for the intervention, and your other attempts at restoring sanity. ami: You win some, you lose some. This was a thread where PressThink lost-- big time. It happens. When you get linked by Instapundit you always get drive-by hostility and bias warriors acting out. (I'm not saying most of Glenn's readers are like that.) But it's mild compared to the abusive crowd that follows a link from James Taranto's Best of the Web column. I've never seen anything like that. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 3, 2006 12:58 AM | Permalink Okay, what do you think of Franklin Foer at The Plank arguing that the left side portion of Mainstream Blogosphere (MBS) has weakened the Times? Here, the Times has exposed an important example of Bush's imperial presidency, a potentially pernicious violation of civil liberties. Instead of praising the Times for excellent reportage and bravely bucking presidential pleas to bury the story, the MSB has heaped disdain on the Times. They have trashed the Times for sins ranging from throwing the election to Bush to turning a blind eye to these abuses. (Hey, Atrios: When was the last time that you exposed such a big story?) Atrios replies: "The Left wants to the press to do a better job, the Right wants to undercut their credibility." And Foer has a response to that. Mr. McLemore: Jason, who exactly has argued 'those legal restrictions and counterbalances (on the 1st Amendment.don't exist?' I was referring to this 2 Jan, 10:38 AM passage from Mr. Village Idiot: Do you disagree that the law is now settled (Pentagon Papers) that Newspapers are free to legally publish whatever they discover during the course of their duties? re you saying that the publication of the NSA's intercept story is the equivalent to publication of nuclear secrets or, as others suggested, troop movements. It's a continuum, clearly - and some information will reside on one side of the SCOTUS test for a prior injunction from the Pentagon Papers case and some will reside on the other, and it's a judgement call which is which. The revealing of nuclear secrets would clearly warrant a priori restriction, and trump the first amendment, in that case. In the case of compromising troop movements, that circumstance would be somewhat less clear. What has been compromised here is the US's ability to discern the enemy's movements. It is exactly the inverse of having our own troop movements compromised, except that when we are rendered blind, the cost of that loss cannot be calculated in advance. C.f. Joe Hooker at Chancellorsville, who had dispatched his available cavalry 40 miles from the fight (dumb), and was then deterred from the offensive by underestimating an inferior force in front of him (2 divisions under Jackson), thanks to his lack of cavalry. And then when he dug in in the thick woods to await Lee's attack, Jackson fixed him in place and flanked him. The difference: Intelligence. Jackson had conducted a reconnaisance, and located the flank of Hooker's army and an avenue of approach to it. Hooker, in contrast, was blind. In modern assymetrical warfare, the NSA is our cavalry. SIGINT is our picket line. It is our screen. You can't draw a line on a map to depict it, but it is there, and it is vital. Without it, like a civil war army without its cavalry, we are made blind. The New York Times relevation has made us blind. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 3, 2006 10:24 AM | Permalink I remember from a long time ago when the Times wrote an editorial chastising Ralph Nader for being a third candidate, which in their opinion, muddied the choices available to the electorate. They argued for a clear, up and down vote between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry. From a similar vantage point, the Times last year had an opportunity to provide the voters an up and down choice between a Bush/Cheney ticket offering a GWOT fighting strategy based on an abridged version of civil liberties and constitutional protections, and potentially, a Kerry/Edwards ticket, with an alternative strategy (I recognize that Kerry/Edwards may have also chosen to put forward an identical strategy to that of the other side, but somehow, I think that would have been very unlikely). The voters could have decided which version they prefer, and (if necessary) this would have set the grounds for a constitutional amendment, and we could have gone forward from there with a clear understanding of what we are getting into. As it happened, Mr. Bush now claims that he has the power and the mandate to do what he is doing. On the other hand, there are serious doubts being expressed, including by some members on the conservative side. Now, it looks like the courts will have to resolve some of the questions and Congress will resolve some. But, I am afraid that is going to leave everyone dissatisfied in the end, leaving the judiciary and the legislative branches unnecessarily bruised. The Times had an opportunity to serve democracy, and by many accounts, blew it. I am afraid the more we discover about how the decision to publish this now was arrived at (as we eventually will), the more the credibility of the institution (and the press as a whole) will take a serious hit. For Mr. Foer to argue that the criticism of the Times will weaken the press misses the woods for the trees. Posted by: villageidiot at January 3, 2006 10:53 AM | Permalink Village is right, for the wrong reason, when he says Kedwards would probably have done the same thing. There are two reasons to suspect it would have happened if Kerry had been elected. The other is that this is not domestic spying. From what we now know, the calls monitored come from overseas and so warrants are not required. No reason not to. And, since one end of the calls is a number found on terrorists' Rolodexes, the popular support for requiring a warrant which is not required would be minimal. I sure as hell hope even Kerry wouldn't miss this. Keep in mind that this is not domestic spying, regardless of the headlines. And people know it, regardless of the headlines. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 3, 2006 11:17 AM | Permalink Jay, is Foer Ben Bradlee in this drama ... calling out the vast left-wing "Miserable Carping Retromingent Vigilante Society"? I'm surprised that the villageidiot doesn't know what Kedwards plan was for the war ... wait ... I know why. Jason, I would like you to consider in your analysis that it was NOT the initial NYT NSA story that was the problem. That was the picking of the lock. It was the flood of stories after that from the NYT and others that crossed over into sources and methods and the cumulative effect. "Is the press outside the law?" someone asked about eight hundred snarky comments about Memogate ago... "To live outside the law you must be honest!" -R. Zimmerman Posted by: Rory O'Connor at January 3, 2006 11:25 AM | Permalink Sis. Perhaps you're right. What is the practical result of that on the NYT's culpability or lack? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 3, 2006 11:37 AM | Permalink Foer unwittingly uncovers the unintended consequences of the press loudly beating the drum for the Plame investigation: "...(the administration) launching an investigation into the leak that produced the Times story...is a dangerous case that could seriously threaten the ability of reporters to do their job." Too bad the press was so short sighted to think the Plame investigation would only damage Bush and Novak. I really don't have much sympathy for the press now--they brought this on themselves. Posted by: steffen at January 3, 2006 11:38 AM | Permalink Jason, The Times coverage did not put an end to signal intelligence. And to say it 'comprised the US's ability to discern enemy movements' overreaches by about a mile. As I understand, the secret courts that have provided warrants for such intel operations since 9-11 are still in operation. If there was such a compelling case for the NSA intercepts of U.S. citizens, why did they go through the FISA courts? The problem with Civil War anaolgies is that they can't always be shaped to fit. This isn't the absent cavalry at Chancellorsville or with Lee at Gettyburg. And the media are decidedly not the cavalry. It is a case of the dynamic tension that always exists between government and individual freedoms. And the potential damage to the Constitution has to be weighed against whatever gains may have come (and we don't know what those are) from the NSA intercepts. Esepcially when the NSA had over avenues of gathering the information. As for village idiot's view on the effects of the Pentagon Papers on the power of the media, he can answer that for himself. One person's POV hardly makes an argument for the general. And I'm not convinced it equates to an undoing of the libel laws, which you apparently do. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 3, 2006 11:48 AM | Permalink This is pure partisan crapola: "left wants the press to do a better job, the right wants to undercut their credibility." Yeah, we're smart, they're dumb, we're good, they're bad, we're pretty, they're ugly, etc, etc. Really convincing stuff there, Atrios. The truth is that everyone wants the press to do a better job, but the reason the general public is up in arms against the press, and not just a few right-wingers, as used to be the case, is because, as Jay blogged last year (I think!), the News Is Not Too Negative, It Is Too Narrow. With the press settling on a master narrative early on and discarding any information that does not conform with the narrative, the press will only inform us about a very narrow sliver of any given topic. My guess is that Atrios and his ilk would like the Times to channel The Nation, and I say power to 'em. We need more diversity in press coverage, not less. With the elite press, it's just follow the leader. It's no wonder so many are PO'd about the press, and not just the "altruistic" left. Posted by: dave clark at January 3, 2006 12:03 PM | Permalink One is that previous dem administrations had not been shy about domestic surveillance. Why should Kerry be more scrupulous? because it would have been illegal? ************** I'm among those who are skeptical that this story would have had an impact on the election, and that we should all gang up on the Times because it could have had an impact. However, i do think the Times needs to be taken to the woodshed, especially if one believes what Keller chaims, i.e. that the timing of the release of the story had nothing to do with the re-authorization of the Patriot Act. Simply put, the Patriot Act represented a curtailment of established privacy rights and civil liberties -- and it was passed under the assumption that the additional powers granted to the executive branch would be used judiciously and appropriately. The story the Times withheld for over a year should have been part of the debate in Congress during the hearings and votes on the Patriot Act's reauthorization. Had Keller made some demands of the White House (i.e. insisted that the full membership of the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress were aware of, and approved of, this program) there would be a case to be made on Keller's behalf. Keller's exclusive reliance on the word of the Executive Branch (especially given this President's history of intelligence abuses in the run of to the Iraq war, and the bizarro-world interpretation of the laws concerning torture) represents, IMHO, a fatal lack of judgement here. He apparently never asked the most important question -- "Has this program been approved by those designated by Congress to act on behalf of the American people on questions of sensitive national security issues?" Richard Aubrey: What is the practical result of that on the NYT's culpability or lack? Put me in the column of news consumers that would be very uncomfortable establishing such a legal precedent. I think the problem here first lies with the anonymous leakers. I think that's where the focus and debate should be. I don't consider anonymous leakers to be whistleblowers, simply because they are not blowing the whistle. In the most pure scenarios, they are handing the whistle to the reporter with the promise that the reporter will not divulge where the whistle came from. They avoid calling attention to themselves as the whistleblower. By the same token, I think there are not enough protections for national security/intelligence whistleblowers, which feeds the questionable (from this reader's POV) practice of anonymous leaks. I think media journalists hurt their own credibility when they use anonymous sources. They further hurt their credibility when they argue that anonymous sources are whistleblowers. Anonymous sources continually put the media in the position of not being able to explain the "backstory". But, hey, what do I know? Wouldn't it be nice to know?... The difference: Intelligence. Jackson had conducted a reconnaisance, and located the flank of Hooker's army and an avenue of approach to it. unless Jackson had dedicated a very large portion of his reconnaisance team to going around peeping in random people's keyholes and cupping their ears to random people's doors in an effort to find out if they information on Hooker's troop movements, this is possibly the absolute dumbest analogy I've seen here at PressThink in quite some time.... and that's saying a lot. From interviews with Risen, it now seems that his sources weren't whistleblowers, but just more disgruntled career employees, whose felt that Bush would ignore their wise counsel at his peril. There is a process by which federal employees can become officially recognized whistleblowers. One of the provisos is that for obvious reasons all information is to be internal and NOT leaked to the press. Risen's sources plainly don't see themselves as whistleblowers. My guess is that the moment Bush became aware the NYTimes knew of this, he knew they couldn't be trusted, and immediately developed another program with an even smaller number of people in the loop. Posted by: jayhawker at January 3, 2006 12:51 PM | Permalink Ami unless Jackson had dedicated a very large portion of his reconnaisance team to going around peeping in random people's keyholes and cupping their ears to random people's doors in an effort to find out if they information on Hooker's troop movements, this is possibly the absolute dumbest analogy I've seen here at PressThink in quite some time.... The keyword is random. And there was nothing random about Stuart's and Jackson's reconnaisance, nor about the tapping of Al Qaeda phones. Before you go about calling an analogy dumb, be sure you understand the fact pattern of both incidents. You don't. For example:
Wrong. There is nothing illegal about the surveillance of foreign agents for the purpose of gathering intelligence, with or without a wiretap. You don't understand the law, but the FISA law specifically lays out that foreign agents do not qualify for the protection of a warrant requirement, and further defines a foreign agent as a member of a foreign sect. Clinton did it. It was legal when he did it. It's legal when Bush does it. And it would have been legal if Kerry did it, too. And there's no reason why he would not have. Well, other than foolishness. And I wouldn't put anything past him. Had Keller made some demands of the White House (i.e. insisted that the full membership of the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress were aware of, and approved of, this program) there would be a case to be made on Keller's behalf. Just who the Hell is Keller to be making "demands" of any elected official. The people elected Bush. I don't remember anyone ever electing Keller. Expectations of "immunity." Making "demands" of the President. A "special role." Calls for a shield law. It's pretty clear that the Fourth Estate is getting too big for its britches, and the time is ripe for it to be taken down a peg or two. The investigation into the NSA leak might be a terrific opportunity to do this. Either the information should have been published, or it should not be published because to do so would be too damaging to national security. If the Times were to agree to withhold an otherwise publishable story from its readers while "making demands" of the President or any other elected official, then that is a betrayal of its readers and an affront to the principles of journalism. They would BECOME part of the story, instead of merely covering it. And that has been the New York Times' problem all along. The Times should serve the people, report the news, write the occasional op-ed (even stupid ones!), and remember their place. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 3, 2006 1:23 PM | Permalink Okay, wingnuts, pay attention... There are three stories here 1) The President of the United States has decided that he can ignored the Constitution, Congress, and the Courts, and the entirely panoply of the "checks and balances" system that ensures our freedom, and unilaterally decided that he can wiretap any American citizen he wants to, and do whatever he wants with that information. 2) The New York Times withheld this story from the American public (and, perhaps more significantly, their representatives in Congress) for over a year, and their publicly stated rationale for withholding, then publishing, the story doesn't add up. 3) Someone with access to top secret info blew the whistle on the program, and told the press, and the press published top secret info. Now, #1 is a major story, and is rightfully being discussed in thousands of general interest blogs -- where the discussion is appropriate. #3 is a non-story, except among the wingnut crowd...so if you want to discuss, go where likeminded people care about things. The reality based community, which actually cares about our freedoms, and not just torturing and killing muslims in the name of National Security, really don't want to be bothered banging our heads against the brick-wall of your unreason. This is PressThink, and story #2 is the topic of discussion. Please stay on it. Good grief. ami, who is not a journalist but a citizen-critic, poses a hypothetical on a comment board--"Had Keller made some demands of the White House, then I could see an argument for..."--and Jason turns that into "pretty clear" evidence that the Fourth Estate is getting too big for its britches. This thread has lost its mind. How depressing. Ami. Keep pushing number 1. It makes you look silly. Not only is it false, it is known by all, including those like you who claim differently, to be false. This is why I said that normal people, about two-thirds of whom claim to be following the story closely or somewhat closely, don't mind. They know better than the headlines, as do you and the headline writers. But you and the headline writers and a good piece of old journalism don't know most people know better. Hence, keep on keeping on. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 3, 2006 1:45 PM | Permalink Josef... here is a clue about why this is an important issue. it legal to target foreigners for wiretaps without a warrant. its probably even legal to target American citizens for wiretaps without a warrant when they are outside of the US. its not legal to target American citizens who are on US soil for wiretaps without a warrant. Bush was doing #3. FISA was set up to make it easier to get warrants to tap American citizens for National Security purposes. Bush ignored the FISA courts, and targeted American citizens on American soil for wiretaps without getting the legally required warrants. Clinton never did that. The issue isn't wiretapping Americans with links to Al Qaeda -- if it were, there would be no problem getting FISA warrants. Unless, of course, these "links" were gotten by listening in to every conversation that people have through the phones or internet without warrants -- and then using that information to "target" American citizens for even more intrusive surveillance. Now that I've explained it to you, please stop with your ridiculous distortions of what is at issue. If it doesn't get better, I am shutting this down. Just who the Hell is Keller to be making "demands" of any elected official. The people elected Bush. I don't remember anyone ever electing Keller. Keller is the guy who the President was asking to withhold the story about warrantless wiretaps of American citizens. The President was telling Keller it was legal, and vital to National Security. Given this administration's record at that point, any reasonable person would have demanded evidence for both assertions. and oh yeah... ************** on the 'timing' question....someone (I forget who) reported that Risen had the story 14 months before it was finally released...which would put it just after the whole "Killian memos" fiasco. I think its reasonable to speculate that Keller might have been made a little gun-shy by that controversy.... Good lord, if what ami says is true, the reality-based community should be renamed the surreality based community. Quoth ami: "The reality based-community, which actually cares about our freedoms, and not just torturing and killing muslims..." How is any rational person supposed to process this twaddle? Yeah, ami, that's all the rest of us want to do; suppress freedom and kill muslims. Maybe a better name would be the bubble-based community. Jeez! Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 3, 2006 2:04 PM | Permalink Sorry Jay.... I really tried to hold my tongue (except for the occassional short, snarky comment), and thought that you had pretty much declared the thread officially dead a while ago.... so I thought I'd just vent for a bit. Look, the New York Times published a story about the NSA on Dec. 15 on the Web, Dec. 16 in print. Beyond that there is absolutely no agreement on anything involving the story. None! Every fact is in dispute. Every interpretation held to be ridiculous by those with the opposite interpretation. What's in contention is described as obvious. What's unclear is said to be perfectly clear. What's not known was always known, and always will be known. This is discourse at the zero degree. It is not only non-communication, it is opposite side of the moon from communication. This is watching a ballon float by and saying: look, another plane has landed! No, you clown, that was a cruise ship departing! It's the idiocy of partisanship writing its name across the sky. It could not be more worthless, it can only be uglier. Always uglier. OK, Jay, is it off limits to discuss why the NYT is stonewalling their ombud? If we are to conjecture about Calame's questions and the reason(s) they are not being answered, is it reasonable to assume protecting confidential sources and legal culpability may be involved? Honestly, I'm not sure how to approach this subject (other than I have above) without setting off more non-communication. "Our problem is not so much that we are lost in a mythology of the press. It is that we are threatened with being dislodged from the presumption of Americans that we have a necessary role to play in the life and governance of this country." - Orville Schell, Dean of the School of Journalism, U.C. Berkeley. [emphasis added for clarity] It's sentiments like the foregoing that lead one toward the following conclusion: "...the Fourth Estate is getting too big for its britches, and the time is ripe for it to be taken down a peg or two." - Van Steenwyk, above Hear, Hear with respect to our dominant media's outgrowing their britches... Posted by: Trained Auditor at January 3, 2006 2:19 PM | Permalink If we are to conjecture about Calame's questions and the reason(s) they are not being answered, is it reasonable to assume protecting confidential sources and legal culpability may be involved? Sisyphus... I think it would be wrong to assume those things, but perfectly appropriate to speculate about them (i.e. why would Keller be afraid of "legal culpability unless Bush had directly threatened the Times with legal action should they publish the truth? Or is your reference to source and legal issues one subject? i.e. Is Keller trying to keep Risen out of jail for not revealing his sources by not being "transparent"?). So, don't believe me, since I don't belong to the reality-surreality-bubble-based community. Here's a post by a DC attorney, setting out what is required to be an official whistle-blower, and why that Dogleash lady is totally out to lunch in demanding a federal shield law. Not that this link will in any way sway the reality-surreality-bubble-based community. Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 3, 2006 2:38 PM | Permalink O drama! The NYT revelation has made us blind? I think not. The NYT revelation (which is moreso the revelation of persons inside Spookworld who are apparently alarmed about the way the program is being used) concerns a warrantless eavesdropping program. I haven't heard anyone suggest (until now) that this somehow derailed all our SIGNIT. Some things may be like other things, in the abstract sense. Doesn't make them the same. That way lies madness. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 3, 2006 2:52 PM | Permalink Ami: its not legal to target American citizens who are on US soil for wiretaps without a warrant. False. Ami, O high priestess of the reality-based community, it is time for you to actually take the time to read the law. Any person, in or out of the US, who is an agent of a foreign power, and who is himself a member of a violent foreign sect (such as Al Qaeda) may, with the approval of the President or the Attorney General, be subjected to surveillance and wiretaps for national security purposes. Under the law, his or her citizenship is not material for the purposes of determining his or her status as a foreign agent. Look at the paragraphing. The law doesn't exactly leave much room for argument. Only when you have read and understood the actual language of the relevant statutes can you lay claim to the coveted title of membership in the "reality-based community." The rest of us eagerly await your arrival. We even give out special little decoder rings. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 3, 2006 3:08 PM | Permalink ami, I assume the NYT was aware of the legal issues involved in this story before publishing. Probably before meeting with Bush. I conjecture that after the legal precedents set by the Miller/Plame case, this is round 2. NYT next attempt at making 1st Amendment history. Not talking (even to our own ombud) before the case goes to court? Watch our pages? Why not? The only way we have, at present, to measure the disruption to SIGINT collection efforts in light of the Times story, is to compare the traffic we were able to intercept prior to the story with the amount and quality of the SIGINT collected afterwards. And that information is only going to be known to a few with top secret clearances, and (hopefully) will not become public information. If it does, that could be useful to the enemy, in that it tells him what we actually do know. We will never know what intelligence we will never have the chance to gather because of the Times' irresponsibility. That is an unknowable quantity, except perhaps in hindsight, AFTER a terrorist strike exposes a network. And maybe not even then. My point with the Chancellorsville analogy was to underscore the foolishness of considering the compromise of our own ability to track the movements of the enemy to be any less damaging or deadly than compromising movements of our own troops. Indeed, in this particular fight - I would much rather have good intelligence on the enemy and risk compromising our own movements than the other way around. That being the case, the compromise of SIGINT means and methods is even more damaging than reporting on the movements of an armored column. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 3, 2006 3:17 PM | Permalink Jason... Nice try. Next time, try reading the law in context... (1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that— .... The only other exception is the 72 hour rule. 50 USC 1801 (h)(4) Jay Rosen: Which, for those of you keeping score at home, is exactly why Keller should have adopted a transparency policy from the beginning. The more stuff you keep behind the curtain, the less credible you appear. Why didn't he? As the anonymous kim suggested, lawyers probably had something to do with it. But executive editors don't have to listen to lawyers. The best ones earn their stripes by telling the lawyers to take a hike every now and then. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 3, 2006 3:49 PM | Permalink ami, I assume the NYT was aware of the legal issues involved in this story before publishing. Probably before meeting with Bush. after further consideration, I think I may have been confused by the syntax, and I actually agree with you. To put your original statement another way, it is not unreasonable to discuss the issue using a speculative presumption that there were source protection and legal issues involved. But I would add the caveat that these "legal issues" not include the wingnutty theory that the Times would be criminally or civilly liable for the act of publication. (i.e. that the "legal issues" involved the same kind of issues that put Judith Miller in jail). The thing about the legal issues, is that its certainly possible, if not probable that Bush or some other WH official would have made dark comments to Keller about the legality of publishing the material. I myself wouldn't know what exact nature these talks would have said, but certainly Sullivan v Times is the kind of case these issues are drawn upon. So why *isn't* Keller or Sulzberger being more candid about whatever Bush or other WH officials said to them about TO NOT PUBLISH (whether it was threats or no). How could these "talks" have been off-the-record? Let's say you are the managing editor of a major daily newspaper about to publish a story of an extreme scandal about your city's Police Department. The Town's mayor and Sheriff call up you and your publisher to their office. They say they don't want you to publish because of XYZ. You publish anyway. Why is your conversations with the Mayor and Sheriff "off-the-record?" In what sense did Bush (or whomever) get Keller to promise not to discuss this meeting they had? Why would Keller promise not to quote Bush? What did Keller (or Sulzberger) gain in not quoting Bush or whatever advisors where in the room? Fact in we're only speculating about what Bush & co. actually said to Keller to stop him from publishing. We don't know what they said to him (whether it was a lie or a threat or the god's honest truth) BECAUSE KELLER HASN'T TOLD US. We're barely gotten paraphrases about the conversation. Posted by: catrina at January 3, 2006 4:43 PM | Permalink In other news that's not really "other"... I'll be doing a live chat with washingtonpost.com readers this Friday at noon. Topics: the Dan Froomkin, White House Briefing controversy, the wiretap story and leak investigation, and 2005: the year in review for press watchers. Hint to New York Times: when you can't talk about it, ask others to talk about it and then you host the discussion at your place. At least you're doing something. Unless I missed it, catrina, the fact that Bush called Sulzberger, Keller and Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman down to the White House to receive his warning has never appeared in the New York Times at all. We know about it from Jonathan Alter in Newsweek and Gabe Sherman in the New York Observer. Even Calame didn't mention it. The Washington Post dealt with a similar situation differently. Using unnamed sources who knew about it, Howard Kurtz wrote of Bush meeting with Len Downie on the CIA prison story, even though Downie wouldn't discuss or confirm what happened. Not perfect but better than zippo. See the difference? Both are in the situation of "can't talk about it," but they treat readers in different ways. ami. "Substantial" is open to nuance. It presumes a probability calculation. What's the cutoff? Zero isn't it, or we wouldn't bother with "substantial". As I've heard it said, a U.S. person fails the test if he or she is an agent of a foreign power. If the NYT thought it was on firm legal ground, we wouldn't have this stonewalling. What are they going to do to somebody who hasn't done anything wrong? So either the NYT has had the error of their ways pointed out to them, or there is some other reason. One of them might be the jail-for-source issue. Still, it's hard to see how stonewalling or not would influence the inevitable result, whatever it is. It's possible that the NYT has discovered that, in the view of its readers and others, it has most bodaciously screwed the pooch without actually committing a crime. Perhaps they're waiting for something worse to take our attention. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 3, 2006 6:20 PM | Permalink According to Human Events, The New York Times is to Al Queda as the KGB was to the Soviet State. That's right. I want you all to focus on the word "most" in the following: All our enemies have to do is subscribe to the New York Times and, for as little as $4.65 per week, they can discover most of our secret operations -- at least as long as a Republican is President. I didn't know it was "most," did you? Correct me if I am wrong, but... Wouldn't knowing that most of the secret operations have been exposed by the Times help Al Queda figure out how many there are, and how many they have yet to find out about? What does that word "most" tell you? Is it a joke? Disinformation? Richard says: Village is right, for the wrong reason, when he says Kedwards would probably have done the same thing. Is that what I said, Richard? I reproduce below the operative sentence from my post above. Reading is fundamental, so please read it again carefully and answer (for your convenience, I have bolded the keywords): (I recognize that Kerry/Edwards may have also chosen to put forward an identical strategy to that of the other side, but somehow, I think that would have been very unlikely). Posted by: village idiot at January 3, 2006 7:05 PM | Permalink ami. "Substantial" is open to nuance. It presumes a probability calculation. What's the cutoff? Zero isn't it, or we wouldn't bother with "substantial". As I've heard it said, a U.S. person fails the test if he or she is an agent of a foreign power. Richard, what "you heard" is wrong. Read the law. Its not terribly complicated. In fact, nobody seriously makes the argument you are making. The "legal" arguments are based on bizarro-world interpretations of the Authorization to Use Force in Afghanistan (AUMF), and/or equally bizarro-world interpretations of Article II of the Constitution which depend upon the existence of "plenary" powers of the President acting as "Commander-in-Chief" (i.e. the interpretation that says that when he wears his little "Hi! I'm the Commander-in-Chief" button during office hours, he doesn't have to obey any laws at all.) Or, lets go over this one more time. An agent of a foreign power can be wiretapped without a warrant only if... (B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; Now I hate to break this to you, but being a "foreign agent" does not preclude you from being a "United States person." (see 50 USC 1801 (b)(2). ) And if a target of a wiretap is a United Stztes person, I don't think we have to worry about the "nuance" found in "no substantial likelihood" with regard to the conversation of a "US Person" being surveilled. Indeed, if the target is a "United States person", I'd suggest that we can pretty much guarantee that "communication to which a United States person is a party" will be intercepted. And according to the law, you can't do that unless you seek a warrant within 72 hours of doing so. In practical terms, the law says you can't tap a domestic phone line without a warrant at all, because there is a "substantial likelihood" that "communication to which a United States person is a party" will be intercepted -- like when the "foreign agent" calls out for pizza. What the law says is that unless you are tapping the phone of someone is who not known to communicate with any Americans, you gotta get a warrant. The President has full authority to tap the phone of some 18 year old madrasi in Saudi Arabia that he thinks is involved in terrorism, as long as there is no reason to think that this student is going to be calling Americans. If you think he might call an American, get a warrant. That's the law. Now, you can try and argue AUMF, or "plenary" powers of the C-in-C, but please stop with this nonsense that there is some statutory provision that authorizes or even permits Americans to be surveilled without a warrant. Than You. Village. I stand corrected on my characterization of your statement. What I meant to say was that you were right about "may have....". I say, would sure as hell have, for the reasons I mentioned. And then where would we be? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 3, 2006 7:12 PM | Permalink rock on, mon ami. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 3, 2006 7:18 PM | Permalink Thank you. Posted by: village idiot at January 3, 2006 7:22 PM | Permalink What I still want to know is why both Keller and Sulzberger have hunkered down in their bunkers over this. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 3, 2006 8:07 PM | Permalink You'd think he would learn. what Keller and Pinch learned from the Miller episode is that the less you know, the less legal liability you have. Unfortunately, Risen isn't Judith Miller, and its highly likely that Keller (and Pinch) demanded to know who Risen's sources were. Which means that they can be supoenaed as well if the witch-hunt for the leaker gets serious. *uninformed speculation alert! I know these people only by reputation/the media, but I get the impression that Risen would consider it a badge of honor to spend jail time protecting a source, Keller would be thinking "I'm too old for this shit" but go to jail anyway -- mostly because he knows that Pinch would fold like a cheap Japanese novelty fan were he deprived of his precious cocktail weenies for more than 48 hours -- and once Pinch spilled the beans, Keller would be able to get out of the hoosegow. ....and (more uninformed speculation) Keller and Pinch may be keeping their mouths shut because Bushco has made it clear that if they talk about their conversations with President Plenary, they will be supoenaed... ami
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 3, 2006 9:41 PM | Permalink Calame at his web journal: -- E-mails from many readers have inquired about my thoughts on a possible link between the timing of the article and the recent election in Iraq or the congressional debate on the Patriot Act. To fit the column into the allotted space, I had to cut a paragraph that addressed those two points. For those who are interested, here is that paragraph: "Despite the complaints of administration supporters, I'm prepared to accept Mr. Keller's statement that the timing of the eavesdropping exclusive wasn't a Times effort to detract from upbeat assessments of the Iraqi elections or to stir emotions in advance of the congressional debate on the Patriot Act." Jarvis isn't buying: "What kind of transparency is that? Cough ‘em up, Calame." I think he's slowly learning to use his blog interactively. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 3, 2006 10:02 PM | Permalink ami. You have it backwards. Being an agent of a foreign power doesn't preclude being a U. S. person. But being a U. S. Person who is an agent of a foreign power ends your freedom from wiretapping. If it is wiretapping, in the first place. Certain technologies, if they happen to be what's happening, might not qualify in as wiretapping. Loopholes are what keep lawyers in business. As Jay says, we don't know much about the facts of what's happening. Even the law is in dispute, mostly because we don't know what is happening and so we don't know what law applies and what doesn't. The Volokh Conspiracy has several lengthy expositions of the law, and it's more nuanced than, "it's a horrid crime because Bush did it." Steve. Do you know that Keller hesitated becaise he was presented with national security questions? Or are you being charitable? Got a source? If Jay's interested in media questions, we could look at the question of why Corey Maye doesn't get the ink Tookie Williams did. And Maye is going to be executed. Some urgency there, or at least Maye would probably think so. Or where the NYT is on the Barret Report. Or the rest of the media. This isn't NYTthink, after all. Other outlets can be grist. As Jay says, until we know more, let's say less. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 3, 2006 10:12 PM | Permalink And it's to Keller's credit that he hestitated when presented with national security considerations -- and he took whatever time that it took to painstakingly learn that plenty of folks in government thought that objection was a crock, before he finally published a carefully qualified report. Steve....isn't that a tad revisionist? Isn't the real narrative probably something like Risen gets story I haven't been following the stories that are coming out of Risen's book per se, but so far it doesn't seem to me that the original Times story included anything of significance that Risen wasn't ready to publish.... Richard, even under the Patriot Act, U.S. intel agencies can't spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant. Whether it's wiretaps, email intercepts or black sedans outside the home. The FISA courts have merrily provided those warrants for some time. Ami's right. You're reading of the law is interpretive at best. As for Keller's refusal to offer a more transparent view of the story, it's a mystery. A very sad and scary mystery. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 3, 2006 11:29 PM | Permalink Steve, could it be there's some sort of journalistic occam's razor at work. Look for the lawyers, the bigger the story. Particularly one with national security implications and particularly after the TIMES has come out of hte Howell years, the Blair fiasco and the major blow up over Judith Miller. You're right that a good editor knows when to tell the lawyers the hell with it. But Times management now seems infected with the hestitancy and uncertainty seen in a lot of dailies today. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 4, 2006 12:27 AM | Permalink Ami, BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!!!! Next time, try reading the whole law. The definition of "United States Person" specifically excludes corporations or associations which is an agent of a foreign power. (Section 1801, paragraph i.) If you're an agent of Al Qaeda, you don't qualify as a "United States Person." If the left wants to demonstrate its fundamental unseriousness on the War on Terror and argue that it does, then I can't wait for the 2006 elections. Furthermore, we get warrants on mobsters. It is not, however, necessary to get a warrant on a mobster's telephone AND EVERYONE HE MIGHT CONCEIVEABLY CALL! Only a liberal could argue thus. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 4, 2006 12:38 AM | Permalink Finally, the train is pulling into the station! That's not a train, you moron, it's a popsicle melting. Keep talking about popsicles, loon. Which way is the cafe car? Obviously you have no experience with frozen treats in any category. Wrong-o. I used to take this train every weekend when my boyfriend lived in DC. When did they replace the wooden sticks with the plastic? Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 4, 2006 12:53 AM | Permalink Jay, I was about to paste in the text of the section that Jason cited (obviously without reading it) when I read your comment... after I stopped laughing, I decided against my original plan. Jason's right. We CAN wiretap popsicles -- but only the ones with the plastic sticks when the president says so. When I was thinking about enlisting, my mother suggested I go to grad school, divinity school, med school, something. Jason's last post about US persons and agents of foreign powers brings up a point only a lawyer could love and a journalist find useful. Point is, this is new territory, unanticipated and without any guidelines except that if Bush does it, it's bad. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 4, 2006 8:17 AM | Permalink Jay Thanks for reminding me that the NYTimes has not actually ever said in its paper that Bush called them to the WH to say "Don't publish." (Or whatever he said). But I still don't understand what is Keller, Calame, Sulzberger's reasons for not even mentioning this in their paper. I don't see how such a meeting can be "off-the-record" and what threats would Sulzberger and Keller believe that Bush could make that not-talking about the meeting once they've already published about the wiretapping? To be sure, Bush was far more concerned about stopping the wiretapping story than a story about meeting with the editors. But once the Times published the wiretapping story they already crossed some line with Bush. Its not like the NYTimes was Bush's favorite source and now is out of favor. Subpoena is what they are afraid of you say? Well that would have been tied to the wiretapping story, not the Bush-meeting story. Unless the idea is that they've already enraged Bush let's hope he's not vindictive by doing this is half-measures (ie not talking about the meeting). But that doesn't make a lot of sense because this WH has been shown to be nothing but vindictive. They like to crush their enemies and salt the earth. I guess what I'm saying is that while I can imagine some kind of motivation for not discussing the reason for the delayed publication, or even the timing of the publication, I can't for the life of me figure out a reason why not to discuss the Bush meeting side of the story. Even if Bush threatened them with some kind of legal action the action would be tied to the publication of the wiretapping story, not the meeting story. And if Bush tried to make threat conditional "you talk about this meeting and I'll supeona your asses!" well...how much of a pussy would that make Sulzberger to publish ONE story but not the other? It just doesn't make sense to me. Posted by: catrina at January 4, 2006 9:18 AM | Permalink I agree. Inexplicable. Meanwhile: If you compare the Post's account of how the wrong information got out about the deaths of the the West Virginia miners to the account in the Times, it really makes you wonder what's going on in New York. The printed edition delivered to my apartment has "twelve miners found alive" across the top left of the page, so you would think that some energy would go to correcting the record. But the Times account barely explains how such a thing could happen; the Post's has much more information. Lying in bed this morning listening to an astonished NPR host ask a reporter, "how could it take three hours to correct the record?" I said to myself: "I bet they realized they were wrong right away, and in big trouble, but then they didn't want to miscommunicate a second time, so they didn't say anything until they were absolutely, positively sure of who was alive and who was dead." The Post confirms this happened. The Times account: zip. If I can think of that in a half-groggy state, the Times editors must be asleep at the wheel. Read 'em for yourself. Worst public relation debacle by a U.S. company that I can remember, that. Absolutely stunning. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 4, 2006 9:56 AM | Permalink re: Post v. Times. Granted, the Post story gives you that, but both are updated breaking news stories, one of the most imperfect forms of communication on earth. That suggest neither organization has finished its anatomy-of-a-communications-disaster piece yet. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 4, 2006 10:06 AM | Permalink Jason's last post about US persons and agents of foreign powers brings up a point only a lawyer could love and a journalist find useful. actually, the opposite is true, Richard. The only people who would find Jason's point "loveable" or "useful" are wingnuts, because the "point" Jason made is based on a deliberate and obvious misreading of the text of the statute in question. One commentator said that the issue of "foreign powers" did not anticipate non-state actors and that al Q MAY NOT QUALIFY. if you would bother to read the statute in question, you would realize that this "one commentor" did not know what he was talking about. Point is, this is new territory, unanticipated and without any guidelines no, the point is that you drawing conclusions based on false assumptions, after every effort has been made to provide you with access to the relevant facts. For instance definition of a "foreign power" includes: (4) a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor; and the definition of an "agent of a foreign power" is described broadly as any person who acts on behalf of a foreign power. So, if someone is collecting intelligence for al Qaeda, they are an "agent of a foreign power" despite the fact that al Qaeda is a "non-state actor." So, when Jason says stuff like If you're an agent of Al Qaeda, you don't qualify as a "United States Person" and follows it up with If the left wants to demonstrate its fundamental unseriousness on the War on Terror and argue that it does, then I can't wait for the 2006 elections he reveals himself for what he is -- a right-wing propagandist who is completely divorced from the facts. Jason represents the right-wing noise machine at its most insidious and dangerous, because he spread lies solely for ideological purposes. No serious person -- and by "serious" I mean intellectually honest -- can read the relevant laws and do anything but conclude that you can be both a "United States person" and an "agent of Al Qaeda." Jason represents the worst aspects of the lynch-mob mentality --- driven by fear and hate, they are not merely willing, but eager, to deny anyone thought to be a terrorist the basic rights afforded to Americans under the Constitution. And in an environment where the President says "you are either with us, or with the terrorists" this kind of mentality is especially dangerous, because when someone says "no, Mr. President, you cannot do that" the mob mentality sees the critic as no longer "with us" but "with the terrorists." That's why simple facts are so important, and why ignorance of simple facts (like the actual provisions of the FISA act) can be so dangerous. Its why good journalism is so important -- and the lack of good journalism is so dangerous. Its why the media has the responsibility to not merely present the facts, but to ensure that falsehoods are not accepted as facts because the media doesn't discriminate between "spin" and "facts." Ami: I am surprised you took the bait:). Look carefully at the various posts and you can discern a pattern. Richard and Jason are a tag team, sort of a good cop / bad cop routine. I suspected this yesterday, but did not want to rouse up things any more than they were. Am I the only one that saw this, or are there others that suspected what was happening? Posted by: village idiot at January 4, 2006 11:02 AM | Permalink I'm stunned. But lest we forget, the compounding of this tragedy for the families through misreporting that 12 miners were found alive was not a "media" issue per se. Neither the Post nor the Times addresses the question of when/whether the media was aware that there was only one survivor---And quite frankly, if they were, I don't blame "the media" for failing to correct the record until the families had been notified. ami. We have to go deeper. What's a foreign power? If it requires to be a nation state--which is what the commenter I mentioned thought was the case--then what is al Q? Your observation that Jason is a lyncher is beyond rational discussion. You may disagree, but considering a disagreement over the fine points of a law in a case where we don't know what happened does not merit such a libel. On the other hand, you're a liberal, so it's allowed. Hell, expected. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 4, 2006 11:02 AM | Permalink Am I the only one that saw this, or are there others that suspected what was happening? village, Richard is a regular commenter here on Pressthink, and there is no reason to suspect that he is "tag teaming" with "Jason" in the manner you suggest. People (including Richard and myself) tend to believe information that is consistent with their believes, so when a propagandist like Jason speak "authoritatively" about the provisions of FISA, and includes (out of context) quotes from the law, its perfectly "natural" that Richard would tend to take them at face value. Richard is wrong, but I see no reason to tar him with the same brush of deliberate bad faith that Jason should be painted with. All future posts from Richard, Jason and ami regarding arriving train/melting popsicle interpretations of US persons and agents of foreign powers will be deleted from here forward. Got that? Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 4, 2006 11:11 AM | Permalink Well; I will ask my doctor to adjust the meds, then! :) Posted by: village idiot at January 4, 2006 11:12 AM | Permalink richard (& jason): When you can't devise another way out of the box canyon you have wandered into -- as, in this case, you obviously cannot -- you can always resort to labeling. Hey, it works for a Rush Limbaugh and a Bill O'Reilly, so maybe it'll work for you. On the other hand, at a forum where nuances are discussed (that would be here), probably it won't. The question isn't whether ami is "a liberal." The question is whether her argument tracks. And in this case, it does. The search for truth does not begin from partisan premises. It begins from an open mind taking in information. Try it out. It will make your life both more uncertain and more fulfilling. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 11:31 AM | Permalink Back to the Keller-Sulzburger duo: There seem to be three reasons for the silence and stonewalling: 1. they have been advised by lawyers not to say anything - well contested in some foregoing posts Any other possibilities? Posted by: village idiot at January 4, 2006 11:54 AM | Permalink The news of the 'miracle' broke only minutes before midnight. Family members jubiliantly shouted that 12 had survived. And the news spread like wildfire. W. Va. Gov. Joe Machin was on TV, thumbs up, saying that miracles happen. Except, of course, they didn't. The Times and the Post weren't the only media to go with the miracle story. AP did too, and 400 frontpages at the newseum.org suggest a lot of newspapers did too. CNN treated it as great-news story for three hours until a miner's wife notified Anderson Cooper that only one miner had survived. This is the nightmare of every reporter: to be on deadline as major news breaks and it turns out, later, to be 180-degrees wrong. What went wrong? Later reporting suggests that the mining company was less than open with families about the deaths below ground. The mining company now says they never gave confirmation that 12 had survived, that the news passed on to the families from someone who overheard a cell phone conversation. The information flow was confusing at best. Gov. Machin told reporters later, ""All of a sudden we heard the families in a euphoric state, and all the shouting and screaming and joyfulness, and I asked my detachments, I said, 'Do you know what's happening?' Because we were wired in and we didn't know." It's the hardest lesson in journalism that you only can report what you know. And sometimes you have to wait until you know for sure. But I keep thinking what would I have done that night in West Virginia. And I'm afraid I might just have done exactly as the Times, the Post and dozens of others did: Report what I thought I knew. The governor later indicated he was uncertain about the news at first. When word of survivors began circulating through the church, he hadn't heard it, he said. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 4, 2006 12:07 PM | Permalink VI In my mind there's sort of three separate "stonewalling" issues. One is why hold the story, two is why publish now, and the third is why not talk about the Bush meeting. In my head the first two are related as to why they won't elborate and its a combination of your choices 1# and 2#. They probably were advised by lawyers about the Times legal liabilities. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to talk to a lawyer about something like this. I'm sure everyone wanted to know what was "safe" and what wasn't. But lawyers' answers can sometimes sound like that advice about abstinance, "the only way to protect yourself is not to do it." Maybe they weren't "sure" of the story (or maybe they were just being cowardly). But whatever...it does seem like fear was a big part of the decision making process in 2004. So back in 2004 Keller, Sulzberger and Co. have their meeting with Bush, they walk away thinking "maybe he's right, maybe this is *dangerous*" their lawyers don't give them a lot of confidence about liabilities. So yes, they make kind of a gutless move to hold the story. And they hold it, and hold it and hold it (while admittedly doing more research). The "Why publish now" I think does lean more towards Risen's book being published than the Patriot Act renewal. Considering how non-strategic the Times really is, I honestly can't see them publishing a story like this that they've held for YEAR just because of the Patriot Act renewal. It might have been discussed by some of staffers as a reason to go forward sure, but I think Risen is the bigger bell that rang. But I can't see a newspaper in the WORLD coming out and saying "yeah we held back the first time because we basically scared off by things the WH said and things our lawyers said, but once one of our own reporters was going to publish a book first we realized we had to get to it first or look even worse." This is what I was talking about when I said I could see "embarrassment" as a reason for the lack of transperacy. Because maybe they believed Bush or maybe they were just worried by their lawyers, but the NYTimes comes out looking kind of gutless if they held a story on the President's say-so. By the way...the one thing I'm confused about it how many meetings with Bush did Keller and Co. have? Was there one in 2004 and then one in December 2005 just before they published? Or did they only have one meeting with Bush when he said "Don't publish" and they followed his instruction. Or did the Times honchos have a second meeting in 2005 where all the same reasons were trotted out but this time they didn't believe him? As for why not to talk about the Bush meetings...I do kind of wonder if this is some kind of weasly "half-measure" that's meant to appease the White House. Like maybe a lawyer said "well this is clearly going to make the WH angry, but if we don't talk about what he said to us maybe they'll back off in our good faith effort?" That's the only logical explaination I can think of for why to withold that information. Because the Bush meetings, and whatever was said during them, are not "embarrassing" to the NYTimes the way their reasons for holding the story *may* be. Posted by: catrina at January 4, 2006 12:38 PM | Permalink cat: Some further light is shed by the New York Observer's story today about Risen's book, which is out yesterday: It’s the capstone for public criticism of The Times’ decision to sit for more than a year on Mr. Risen’s biggest scoop: the news that the National Security Agency has been conducting warrantless domestic espionage through wiretaps, which the paper finally published in the first of a series of stories on Dec. 16. What’s more, the book raises the question of how much of Mr. Risen’s material—about W.M.D., for instance—was in The Times’ hands but kept out of print until the arrival of State of War. The Times’ becalmed post–Judy Miller positioning notwithstanding, it’s hard to imagine the paper’s explanation for its W.M.D. bungle—which was largely attributed to Ms. Miller’s bad sources—holding water if reporting from Mr. Risen was coming in at the same time that tended to contradict her accounts. Getting a clearer picture yet? Or: Questions about whether Mr. Risen had conducted all of the reporting for this chapter while on the national-security beat at The Times in 2002 and 2003 (while stories outlining evidence of Iraq’s W.M.D. program appeared in the paper) have not yet been asked or answered. But according to current and former Times sources familiar with the Washington bureau, Mr. Risen was gathering reporting from sources in the prewar period that cast a skeptical light on Saddam Hussein’s alleged W.M.D. stockpiles, but either couldn’t get his stories in the paper or else found them buried on the inside pages. Jill Abramson, then The Times’ Washington bureau chief, didn’t return a call and an e-mail seeking comment. A Times spokesperson declined to provide comment beyond executive editor Bill Keller’s earlier statements on the wiretapping story. Another chapter in State of War that refers to efforts by the C.I.A. to establish secret prisons causes one to wonder whether Mr. Risen was pursuing this line of reporting at his day job—one that didn’t make it into the paper as well. There are hints that Risen is going to quit in disgust and go work for the LA Times. I was told a while ago that he couldn't get his reporting into the paper while Miller's WMD stuff was being greenlighted. The plot thickens... Dave: My comments were not about printing an incorrect story, which can happen, but about the differences in the morning accounts that corrected the story. But on the first problem, if you were there, would you have sourced information that miners were alive to "family members said...?" The print edition of the Times had that headline: "12 Miners Are Found Alive, Family Members Say." The families are in a church above ground, waiting. The men are 12,000 feet into the mine. Is it a reporter's or editor's job to ask: how would the families know? They weren't the only sources the Times had, but my question is: how do they qualify as "sources" at all? Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 4, 2006 12:56 PM | Permalink How about we give Downie and Keller a pass on the two visits with Bush that we know about? That is...as long as they tell us whether or not this has happened before...and if there are other stories that they have killed because of presidential intervention. As to Foer. Poor Franklin should learn that in the blog/msm nexus criticism is only allowed to travel one way. That he's right doesn't matter. No one will listen...(and the reason why I say "Poor Franklin" is because I don't have to imagine what's waiting for him in his email inbox). Posted by: Ron Brynaert at January 4, 2006 1:04 PM | Permalink ami, Jason, Richard: I said it's over. That means no more. Well, ok. But this passage from ami is still on the board:
Hardly the rhetoric of those of us in the "reality-based community." And still, I'm the one the estimable editor of the Columbia Journalism Review's webzine accuses of "labeling." Like I said, you guys are hilarious. Jay, if you don't want to give me the space to rebut ami's hysterical assault, then I'd request you to delete ami's diatribe as well. Your blog is your castle. But I don't delete comments on mine, and would afford you the same courtesy if someone used similar language to attack you. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 4, 2006 1:58 PM | Permalink ami, Jason, Richard: I said it's over. That means no more. jay, my apologies. My final post (which you deleted -- and I respect your decision to do so) was written as you were posting your warning, and had I seen your warning prior to hitting "Post", I would not have posted it. The families are in a church above ground, waiting. The men are 12,000 feet into the mine. Is it a reporter's or editor's job to ask: how would the families know? They weren't the only sources the Times had, but my question is: how do they qualify as "sources" at all? Jay, I think it would be fair for any reporter to assume that family members would be the first to be notified regarding the status of their loved ones, and lacking contrary evidence, "family members" would naturally be considered "reliable" sources. And I think the phrase "lacking contrary evidence" is the key here. The company's position appears to be "don't blame us, we didn't confirm the story." But they were apparently aware that the false information was being disseminated, and had an obligation to at least signal to the media that it was "not confirmed." (Consider the opposite scenario -- what if the families had been told that all the miners were found dead, but the company knew that wasn't true? How long would it have taken the company to correct the misinformation?) My god doesn't the wiretapping story seem like Las Vegas real estate planning? Its just expanding in all directions. Its now part of the Judith Miller Story. Soon it will be part of the Valerie Plame story. Then it will be part of the Jack Abramhoff story. Maybe soon the PA miner story as well for all I know. I'm not being scarscatic I'm genuiely amazed how this story keeps growing and growing. Also let's not forget, the description of the illegal wiretapping is also still in flux. The story from the NY Times today says that the NSA basically moved first after 9/11 to wiretap and the WH basically followed later. And I think for all the talk of this being the President's perogative I thought I read in one story that the decision to wiretap was being made at the NSA's shift supervisor level. Ie...it wasn't going to the WH decision-approval process at all...this was all happening at the NSA employee staffer level first with the WH basically playing catch-up. Posted by: catrina at January 4, 2006 2:22 PM | Permalink We know we're hilarious, and hysterical and we never give any space to opposing views. Go back to your blog, Jason, and write about what a censor I am. No more means no more. In a disaster like this, the families are always a source. Normally, however, not the only source. I assume the Times and Post (and AP) had a similar experience to CNN's Jay. That is, a man associated the family tells the reporter that 12 are alive, that the families in the church have just learned that from a 'company official.' Church bells start ringing and the governor reacts. And your editor is on the phone, screaming for copy. What do you do? On the print side, I'm sure things might have been different had this particular news broke at, say, 9 p.m. You'd have time to track down company officials and get something official. But at midnight, with deadline minutes away, the apparent family reaction and the governor's apparent confirmation, and an editor on the cellphone screaming out that the network and cable news blasting out the 'miracle' story, it would be a hard time to recommend waiting. I like to think I'd hang tough and get official confirmation. But you never know. The physical deadlines in daily print news has always been its Achilles heel. The major papers did update their websites. But that didn't come until the company officials finally spoke out three hours later. I'm with Ami, that the company didn't notify the families - and then the press - almost immediately after the miracle story broke is unconscienceable. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 4, 2006 2:38 PM | Permalink Dave is right. Newspapers have static deadlines. If the presses roll at 12:01 am -- as many of them do -- they roll at 12:01 am, not at 12:16 am or 1:37 am or 2:02 am. If the news changes at 2:54 am, you, the editor, get a phone call, you get out of bed and you remake the paper -- but you are still stuck with 150,000 papers, or 250,000, or 350,000, already in the trucks and on the road. So far, I haven't seen anyone make the argument that it's also an example of news outlets just a little too eager to trumpet "good news" before they know for sure if the news is good or not. But that suggestion would go against the prevailing trope that journalists only seek out and exaggerate "bad news" ... so don't expect to see it explored much at length among the commentariat. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 3:29 PM | Permalink Lovelady, quoting Bob Steele: Frankly, when the Governor said they were alive and when the church bells started ringing and the families started celebrating, it would have been extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- to 'hold the story' pending more verification. Gee. Whattaya mean "impossible?" Why would it even be "extremely difficult?" What's "extremely difficult" about saying "hold your water, boss, I gotta go check this out." First reports are almost always wrong. Especially when they come from exhausted people who've been up for days. If journalism were a healthy profession, it wouldn't be difficult at all do what in this case amounted to the bare minimum - go over to the site, or to the spokespeople, and get the official word. At least get it from an eyewitness. Bill Kovach and Tim Rostenstiel, in "The Elements of Journalism," write extensively on the importance of a "culture of verification." This "culture of verification" was noteably absent in the professional news media yesterday. Indeed, it was an abject failure of media professionalism. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 4, 2006 3:56 PM | Permalink Editor & Publisher has an account that supports Jason's view. Go back to your blog, Jason, and write about what a censor I am. I might do that. If I thought you were such a censor. I don't. I think you requently fall into an intellectual trap which is common among journos - a tendency to confuse snark with reason, and snarkiness with intelligence. You're by no means alone. It's an epidemic among media types. It's endemic to the media culture. Which is why you have a hard time dealing with an alien being. Case in point: The "lollipop" inanity. But you were similarly dismissive of opposing points of view over at Maguire's place, as well - and reduced yourself to unwarranted snark, while failing to engage the argument on its merits. Not all media bias complaints have merit. But a lot of them do. Indeed, when it comes to assessing the core assumptions held by the newsmedia culture, you seem to take perverse pride in reducing yourself to snark rather than addressing the arguments on their merits. As a whole, I think journalism would be well-served if editors would be as ruthless about eliminating snark for snark's sake as they are about eliminating jargon. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 4, 2006 4:14 PM | Permalink Go to the site? Do you think, Jason, they were all just hanging around the station, watching CNN? They were at the site. They did talk to people, who told them 12 were alive. The governor's response was that, apparently, 12 were alive. And it's happening two minutes to deadline. Yes, of course, you should always verify, always reconfirm the comfirmation. But in breaking news, which this was, you don't always have the luxury of waiting. And it's not as if the company officials corrected the erroneous report minutes after the news broke. They weren't writing a book or finishing a six-month investigation. In breaking news, you have to go with the best information you have at deadline. To turn this into an indictment of journalism, "an abject failure," is strange indeed and demonstrates a total lack of understanding of how breaking news works. The tragedy in this is not journalism's, but the deaths of the miners and the heartache their families went through. Posted by: Dave Mclemore at January 4, 2006 4:14 PM | Permalink And I don't agree with the E&P's interpretation either, Jay. It certainly doesn't extend the terrible events in West Virginia as a total breakdown in journalism, as Jason does. It's a journalistic nightmare. And I'm sure there are hundreds of editors and reporters today wishing it had never happened while second-guessing their actions. But it happened. And in this time of constant deadlines and 24-hour news, it will happen again and again. Posted by: Dave Mclemore at January 4, 2006 4:27 PM | Permalink So far, I haven't seen anyone make the argument that it's also an example of news outlets just a little too eager to trumpet "good news" before they know for sure if the news is good or not. No, but I think that the "failure" of the print media in this instance can be attributed, in part, to both technological advances, as well as the blurring of the distinctions between "producing journalism" and "producing a product for consumption." I found a quote from Dave especially striking... But at midnight, with deadline minutes away, the apparent family reaction and the governor's apparent confirmation, and an editor on the cellphone screaming out that the network and cable news blasting out the 'miracle' story, it would be a hard time to recommend waiting. Back in the "good old days", a reporter who might have wanted to verify the story first wouldn't have had an "editor on the cell phone" screaming at him five minutes before deadline. The reporter would have been in control of the "news flow" as the deadline approached -- and if the reporter didn't alert his editor, the paper didn't have "the scoop". Perhaps more disturbing is the evidence of a tendency of print journalism to allow what passes for "journalism" on cable to set the news agenda. Would the print editions of the Times and the Post have "blared" this news were it not for cable? My guess is that without cable, this story that the miners had been found would have been lucky to get on the front page. Indeed, consider how this story would have been reported by the Times 30 years ago. The explosion occurred on 6:30 Monday morning ... too late for Monday's Times. Tuesday's edition would have been the first to report the story -- that of a mine explosion in West Virginia with the fate of 13 minors undermined -- and unless it was a slow news day, it wouldn't have made the front page. Even if the false story that the miners had been found made it into Wednesday's paper, the story would probably have been buried deep inside -- the fact that they were alive would not have been considered significant news, because the readers of the Times never got caught up in the "drama" of the story. Thirty years ago, there would not have been an editor screaming, with or without a cell phone, because the Times would not have considered the story that the miners were found alive to be significant. I don't know, Dave. CJR Daily is closer to Jason's view than to yours. I still say, "families say" is strange sourcing. But I agree there's no comparing the screw-ups in journalism to the screw-ups by the mining company and officialdom. I was watching, hoping for the good news. In fact, we should blame the news consumer, or at least MSM's view of the consumer. They give the customer what they think the customer wants. Are they right? I don't ask if they think the customer wants screw-ups. I ask if they think the customer wants it fast. Or that fast. I would personally rather go to bed hearing the journos say they're trying to confirm, even if I know that means it's some hours before I hear the news. The reporters confirmed it with all the people who were not in a position to know. I know, I know, the governor is THE GOVERNOR. The governor was wrong, too. Because the governor was not in touch. Find the people who are in touch. As somebody said, that's what reporters are supposed to do. Another commenter observed that the locals were hostile to the media. Probably a reason there, someplace, but that larger municipalities have PR people who get paid to let bygones be bygones and arrange to talk to reporters as if they're competent. This might have allowed the reporters to have access to a credible source, one truly plugged in. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 4, 2006 4:44 PM | Permalink They did talk to people, who told them 12 were alive. Well, yeah. "People" talk, don't they? But that doesn't mean "people" know what the hell they're talking about. You should hear the rumor mill in a war zone!
I don't see any reason why any reporter would have to trust the governor's report when it was perfecty possible to go observe 12 ambulances go in and only one come out. That is, the governor wasn't at the scene. The governor doesn't neccessarily know what he's talking about. I mean, didn't the press learn ANYTHING from interviewing Mayor Nagin, after his "10,000 bodies" claim? The press sourced to him and he was off by a factor of more than ten. The moral of the story: Bureaucracies are slow to process information in a crisis, in real time. There are several layers of reportage between a paramedic and a governor. Governors get things wrong. And first reports are almost ALWAYS wrong. The press, for whatever reason, wanted it NOW rather than RIGHT. And that is to their shame. Kudos to the paper mentioned in Editor and Publisher, for putting paid to the notion that it's impossible to get things correct, to hold on to a story until it's been checked out. What surprises and depresses me is how easily people buy into Greene's absurdity - that holding a story until you can check it is "difficult or even impossible." That's nonsense. It's quite simple, and only requires a set of stones. The fact that so many J's couldn't be bothered with 'a story too good to check' is depressing, but unsuprising to those of us who believe the public is not well served by the media class. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 4, 2006 4:54 PM | Permalink Here's how transparency should be done in the newspaper biz: http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/13548484.htm Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 4, 2006 5:03 PM | Permalink Don't get me wrong. This was a horribly bungled story. My point is that the bungling resulted more from the mitigating factors than bad reporters. All the things mentioned here - the rush to file, the miscommunication to and from family members, the communication failure of the mine executives, the deadines, all played a role. I don't see this as another sign of the incipient failure of old-style journalism. It was more the collision of events and certain journalistic realities that formed a perfect storm that swamped the boat. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 4, 2006 5:12 PM | Permalink I'm not being scarscatic I'm genuiely amazed how this story keeps growing and growing. Very true; Sometimes events conspire against you in such a manner that whatever you do, it seems you are digging yourself deeper and deeper. I would be very surprised if the Times were to be able to extricate itself from this situation without serious damage to its reputation. That said, it is hard to sympathize with the Times, because the first step to sympathy is understanding, and the first step to understanding is transparency. If the Times cannot level with its readers and enlist their full support for its cause, I am afraid it will ultimately be 'death by a thousand cuts' from the incessant nibbling that the conservatives will subject it to. The right has no place for the Times in its worldview. Ironically, as I look back, the current troubles at the Times can be traced back to Mr. Raines' attempt to remake the paper in a way that makes it more palatable to the right, which probably was behind his decision to give pride of place to Judy Miller 's flawed articles, while relegating Mr. Risen's to the mothball room. Posted by: village idiot at January 4, 2006 5:19 PM | Permalink In fact, we should blame the news consumer, or at least MSM's view of the consumer. They give the customer what they think the customer wants. Are they right? I don't ask if they think the customer wants screw-ups. I ask if they think the customer wants it fast. Or that fast. Richard, this isn't an issue of the MSM giving people what they think they want. Its an issue of the cable news networks exploiting a "life or death" drama to attract an audience -- and the rest of the MSM following like sheep regarding the "importance" of the story. Like I wrote above, 30 years ago the fact that the miners had been found alive after 41 hours would have not been considered terribly newsworthy by the Times. What we saw on cable wasn't journalism, it was reality TV. It wasn't news, it was infotainment. The problem isn't the carelessness of the media in reporting the story -- the problem lies in setting a "news" agenda where carelessness doesn't matter because the stories aren't really relevant to our understanding of th world. May I kindly suggest, Jason, that when it comes to journalism, you frequently talk through your hat. 'The press, for whatever reason, wanted it NOW rather than RIGHT.' No. The press wants it NOW and they want it RIGHT. That's why they call it NEWS. Sadly, there are times you don't get it both ways. Breaking news is, by definition, unfinished and uncertain news. And sometimes, as the CJR piece said, you get unlucky. Despite Jason's assertions we witnessed Journalism Gone Wild in W. Va., for the most part, the reporting didn't stop after the miracle-story report. When the information changed and the mine execs finally reported the facts and CNN went with the information live, I can assure you phones began ringing and website reports lit up like crazy. And on the old-school side, truck-loads of papers were junked and front pages were remade as fast as possible. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 4, 2006 5:27 PM | Permalink I'm not so sure I agree, Ami, that the mining disaster in W. Va. wouldn't have made the NYTimes pre-cable. Newspapers have long held a fascination with underground disasters. I can almost see the main news piece, with sidebars on mine safety and the gritty human-interest features on the waiting family. The difference would be the reporting would be flatter, less sensational and, absent the 24-hour presence of TV, more attention to detail and to more thorough confirmations. Three decades ago, what you didn't get by the final deadline became the day-two lede. But the survival of 13 miners after 41 hours in the ground would still be Page 1 news. So would their deaths. Even if it occurred in West Virginia. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 4, 2006 5:47 PM | Permalink I do think reporters overstepped here, but I don't include the New York Times's James Dao among them. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 5:47 PM | Permalink Tell me this, Jason. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 6:02 PM | Permalink I'm just wondering, how many of these excuses coming from Dave McLemore and Steve Lovelady would be acceptable if offered on behalf of a different enterprise? Wouldn't watchdog journalism of this journalistic blunder call for a much more skeptical and less sympathetic approach? Shouldn't there be accusations and innuendo of incompetence and corruption? Where's the voice for the voiceless news consumer that was provided a defective product? Steve. How about adding something like, "Previous disastrous floods in this country have never produced anything remotely like the predicted toll."? Or, you could take the position that if the mayor says X, that's all the news you need. I suppose somebody could tell a reporter you were seen sober once. If that's all there is in a report.... It's true. What's your complaint? There's a lot of which foot the shoe is on in this discussion, seems to me. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 4, 2006 6:14 PM | Permalink I'm not so sure I agree, Ami, that the mining disaster in W. Va. wouldn't have made the NYTimes pre-cable. Newspapers have long held a fascination with underground disasters. I can almost see the main news piece, with sidebars on mine safety and the gritty human-interest features on the waiting family. Dave...yeah, I've seen these stories too....but on the day after the mine explosion? I can still remember reading about mine disaster stories when I was young --- but they were stories that took days to "develop". And perhaps my memory is faulty, but the "human interest" feature didn't show up until at least 3 or 4 days of "fruitless rescue effort...but there is still hope" reporting. (In other words, the Times reporter spends the first day or two gathering facts about the disaster...and that point, when there isn't a whole lot of "news" being generated, his focus changed to a more "human interest" angle, that featured the "concerned families", and how bad life in the mines was, and other near-boilerplate. And the photo always looked like a cross between Diane Arbus and a Rembrandt chiaroscuro portrait. That's how I remember things at least...but memory does play tricks sometimes...) And here I thought I was offering insights, Tim, not excuses. It's folly to judge journalism by the standards of other enterprises. We don't make widgets, trade stock, fix engines, build houses, work with dangerous chemicals or anything else that can be readily fit to template. We simply report the news. And news is always unfinished business, the first draft of history and all that. We report breaking news as it happens, then correct on the fly. For the one thing Jason got right is that the original story is always wrong. Actually, he got that wrong. The original story always changes. And we report both the first story and the changes. And when the reports are wrong, horribly, inexplicably wrong, we correct that too. But if that's too defective for your tastes, I guess you can wait for someone to write a book. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 4, 2006 6:21 PM | Permalink Let's play along: The mayor says there will be 10k dead. The news is he said it. Is that all the news you want to have in that piece? I can remember when another tragedy was being reported with estimates of 10K dead. I don't remember a lot of criticism of the press getting that number wrong. Of course, 9-11 changed everything. Dave McLemore, And here I thought I was offering insights, Tim, not excuses. You probably are. But then, to paraphrase IF Stone, "Journalists lie." Insights must be met with skepticism and verified. Truth can only be trusted if we can find anonymous sources in the news business that make statements against the business of journalism's interest. Certainly, no other enterprise in involved in the day-to-day business of life where facts and ground truth changes but decisions must be made anyway. Yes, journalists are unique. So unique in what they do that they can be "nowhere" observers, messengers not responsible for the message, uninvolved influencers of events. "I suppose somebody could tell a reporter you were seen sober once." Actually, Richard, I was seen sober once. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 6:54 PM | Permalink My, but there's a whiff of anti-press bias in the room this afternoon. Breaking news. Fog of war. Write-throughs. Incomplete information. Competition. Pressure. Unreliable sources, official and otherwise. That's just the reality of reporting. Reporters and editors can couch it, hedge it, but it's still incomplete information. I don't fault journalism for that. As a consumer, if I have to choose between incomplete information and a blackout, I'll often choose the incomplete version. Where I think we should improve is in communicating the level of confidence we have in our information. American newswriting style tends to confer the illusion of godlike authority even when we're hedging our bets. Same with some broadcast media (but not all). The language of breaking news is a code (passive voice, "in connection with," "including," etc.), and journalists recognize that those vauge terms signal the lack of comprehensive information. Readers/viewers/listeners may not speak that code. So either we have to teach it to them, or -- gasp! -- we could try being more blunt about how we evaluate the information we're passing along. What happened in West Virginia was a double tragedy: First, all those workers were killed; and second, the misunderstanding spread from the rescue effort to the company men to the families so fast that nobody ever got any control over it. It took on a life of its own, and thanks to instant global media, it was everywhere all at once. A nightmare, but a reality. If you think ANYONE has the power to cap such things with just the right combination of tough policies and brains, I suggest you re-examine your concept of modern media. It's bigger than the people in it. It's ultimately beyond the control of its controllers. That's why it's such a fascinating subject. It's so big, nobody can even see all of it in real time. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 4, 2006 7:00 PM | Permalink Dan, Breaking news. Fog of war. Write-throughs. Incomplete information. Competition. Pressure. Unreliable sources, official and otherwise. That's just the reality of ...Let's play fill in the blank. How many occupations can you end that sentence with? "I can remember when another tragedy was being reported with estimates of 10K dead. I don't remember a lot of criticism of the press getting that number wrong. Of course, 9-11 changed everything." -- ami Bingo ! You don't understand, ami. Dutiful reporting of the estimates of public officials -- however wildly off they are --is okay, as long as those estimates serve the correct political need. It's only when they serve the incorrect political need that they must be excoriated. Try to pay attention, okay ? Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 7:10 PM | Permalink Here's the alternate history: Reporters from The New York Times hear about this mineshaft miracle and call the home office. Editor says "Yes, but how do you know?" Reporters say "we've got family, we've got the company, we've got the governor, for crying out loud, but so far only the families are talking about it directly and on the record." The cable news guys are all going with the story live. The genie is out of the bottle. But the ever-watchful NYT editor knows that breaking news is not reliable, so he says "We're not going to run anything until we get it from an official source speaking on the record with more reliable details. And I don't care what the competition is doing." So the next morning, the 12 happy but exhausted miners are on all the news shows, waving as they're loaded onto ambulances. The TV people have got coal mining families talking about how prayer is what changed the outcome. Some bright guy does a short sidebar about prayer and miracles and faith. Meanwhile, every morning paper east of the Rockies has the story the AP ran just before midnight -- the first word that the miners were safe. All of them except the NYT. So, in that case, are we gathering at PressThink to praise that hard-nosed editor who turned out to be wrong but took a stand against slipshod reporting? Or are we talking about how the NYT is a dinosaur, getting scooped like that? Gee, they're always ready to believe anything that makes Bush look bad, but give them a story about the power of prayer and they don't believe it. Stupid, biased, out-of-it NYT. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 4, 2006 7:17 PM | Permalink Dan, Me, me, I want to play ! I can think of two right off the bat -- my stockbroker today and my platoon leader of 38 years ago. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 7:24 PM | Permalink
Plenty! Any occupation that deals in information. And I think this is the heart of the matter: Some journalists treat imperfection by honest people in other professions as if it were evidence of dishonesty or incompetence. That makes lots of readers/viewers/users sick, and it makes them want to stick it to journalism whenever something doesn't come out just right. Some journalists play gotcha. Not all do. And some viewers/readers equate tough questions to somebody on their team as a form of gotcha. But tough questions aren't gotcha. They're one of the ways you get solid information in a hurry. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 4, 2006 7:26 PM | Permalink Dan, Me, me, I want to play ! Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 7:29 PM | Permalink
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 7:32 PM | Permalink Sometimes there is no way around humiliation, either for newsmakers or newswriters. Sometimes you just have to take it, and it sucks, and your enemies will use it against you in unfair ways. What we can do as journalists, though, is to try to distinguish between incompetence and dishonesty and honest mistakes. The problem is, how do you know which answer explains the goof? That can take a while to really figure out ... and by then, the media circus has moved on. So honest mistakes seldom get recognized. It's a problem without a simple solution. If you do the job honestly, you're going to have to struggle with getting this aspect of it right. And I haven't heard a magic-bullet solution to this problem that I trust. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 4, 2006 7:33 PM | Permalink and i think this is really a scale issue. i can correct my mistakes. i can come back and write with the benefit of hindsight and make clear what was not back when the story was making headlines. if i'm doing this on my blog, which gets very few readers, then this is fine. but if the stage is the national media, then whatever i do to even things out later is never enough, because it simply won't get the exposure or interest that the original story did. It's not that the truth doesn't get told, it's that the truth is often a whisper compared to the original mistaken shouting. i don't see a simple solution to this, and i think it's why so many journalists retreat behind bullshit dogma when challenged on the point. it's protection, and sometimes you need protection. but the practioners and the critics would all be more honest if they'd acknowledge that there is no perfect and realistic solution to this problem. Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 4, 2006 7:38 PM | Permalink "I can remember when another tragedy was being reported with estimates of 10K dead. I don't remember a lot of criticism of the press getting that number wrong. Of course, 9-11 changed everything." -- ami Bingo ! You don't understand, ami. Dutiful reporting of the estimates of public officials -- however wildly off they are --is okay, as long as those estimates serve the correct political need. - Steve Lovelady No, it's not OK. It wasn't OK when the media was reporting up to 50,000 might be dead - without any official estimates. It wasn't OK for Rep. Moran (D-Va) to estimate 10,000 dead. It wasn't OK for the media to repeat it. It wasn't OK for the media to turn Moran's estimate into anonymous officials. None of it was OK. Moran was wrong. The media was wrong. No, it's not OK. It wasn't OK when the media was reporting up to 50,000 might be dead - without any official estimates. .... What constitues official in your opinion? Does this qualify? "Joe Thornton, the deputy secretary for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety." How would you report about the deaths in Iraq from the war, in the absence of official estimates? Posted by: village idiot at January 4, 2006 8:11 PM | Permalink The Anchoress on these matters: Emotionalism: bad fuel for the press. Not my view, but powerfully stated, with links. vi, here's what I'm googling on the media screw up. I thought this was interesting: Correct bulletin misses deadline by minutes, misinformation reported What did you find particularly interesting about the piece in the Arizona paper? It outlined in more detail the 'excuses' journalists here already expressed: The cite of families as a source, followed by a confirmation by a state official and the governor, with the final, correct account not coming for three hours. As for New Orleans, the death toll you wanted to see was unknowable in the hours and days after Katrina hit and the flooding started. Hard details just weren't available. So: How would the critics have handled the mine disaster. Without the benefit of hindsight, would you have gone with the miracle story? Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 4, 2006 9:15 PM | Permalink Dave: what the reporter for the local daily did is stay put. Instead of running to the church, where the "human" story misled, she remained in the briefing hall where all previous updates had been received: (From E & P.) "We heard that they were found alive through CNN, then it snowballed to ABC, then FOX and it was like a house afire," recalled Wagoner, who said she was at the media information center set up by the mine's operators, International Coal Group Inc., when the reports spread. Since she never got anything official, she didn't report the bad information. I would suggest that reporters and camera crews fled to the church because that's where the story was, they felt. Without benefit of hindsight, Wagoner stayed put in the place where the information was being given out. Maybe there's a difference there worth reflecting on. After all, what was Anderson Cooper doing in West Vrigina? Memeorandum has a lot more. Daniel. We have an official giving out wrong information. Did anybody ask him how do you know?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 4, 2006 9:24 PM | Permalink Village: WRT reporting deaths from Iraq in the absence of official estimates: "In the absence of official estimates, we can report that several organizations have varying estimates of deaths in Iraq." Then list them, making sure to characterize the source. Give the reader enough information that he can judge the source. Seems your question practically answers itself. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 4, 2006 9:27 PM | Permalink Jay, all power to the West Virginia paper. It was their home turf and they knew the people. They deserve all the credit they get. They also had a later deadline, which gave them a little luxury in waiting. I suspect the out-of-town print folks were operating on another journalism reality: When there's only one of you in town, you have to make a decision where to follow the story. Sometimes you get it right; sometimes not. Imagine the discussion with the editors had the 12 survived and you were the only one without the family story? As for why Anderson Cooper was there, I have no idea. Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 4, 2006 9:41 PM | Permalink Sisyphus: Thanks for the link. They (AZ Daily Star) certainly looked for the official confirmation, which, when it did come, proved to be inaccurate. To my mind, it seems to be one of those days when fate conspired against the miners (and the newspaperfolk). Be sure to let us know your verdict after you complete your research. Posted by: village idiot at January 4, 2006 9:41 PM | Permalink vi: Here's another link about the AP wire updates. Dave: I find these reports interesting because they pull back the curtain on how the same (wrong) news shows up all over the nation. For example, Gov. Manchin's quote is variously reported as some version of, "The rescue people have been talking to us. They told us they have 12 alive. We have some people that are going to need some medical attention." As far as I can tell, the only reporter that heard that, or he said it to, was an AP reporter. Not sure where he said it, when, or who else he said it to. I also googled "Joe Thornton" "West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety". Sparse results. Again, only the NYT's James Dao seems to have moved that quote on their wire. This is interesting as well: Inquirer Investigates Itself The whole thing was a cliche. The cable news personalities (who are NOT journalists) flog the emotional story to squeeze out every tenth of a ratings point. They are not interested in truth. They are interested in a sensational story (and not in the good sense.) So they run over to the church, so they can capture every last hug and tear, live on television, regardless of whether the actual miners were alive or dead. Either way, it's a ratings bonanza. Print journalists irresponsibly follow the news cameras like the pack of dogs they really are. So when the rumors start getting out of control, the only news person acts who responsibily is the one who has a stake in the story, the local reporter. Completely missing, of course, is the story about WHY the explosion happened. There is a lot of corruption in that story, which I imagine no one will report. There no hugs and tears in the corruption story, and it's too hard for the blow-dries to actually work for a story. Now it's all, oops! sorry! Give us a break. We were on deadline and all the other excuses. Of course we hear the same excuses over and over. Do they improve? No. Will they improve? No. Everyone will gaze at the navel awhile and then business as usual. The customer gets screwed (or, a defective product, I like that.) Posted by: Phredd at January 4, 2006 10:00 PM | Permalink Anderson Cooper was there because one way or another a TV movie-of-the-week reality-based tearjerker was going to emerge from that mine, and he's CNN's presenter of it. Anyway, here's a post about him. "With Cooper constantly talking on camera, he was prevented, of course, from doing any actual reporting." Here's the video of Cooper learning for the first time that what he had been reporting for three hours was wrong. Jarvis: "It’s not the news that’s live; it’s the process of figuring out what to believe that’s live." Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 4, 2006 10:02 PM | Permalink Completely missing, of course, is the story about WHY the explosion happened. There is a lot of corruption in that story, which I imagine no one will report. .... I actually saw a (separate) report on Bloomberg wires this morning that talked about how many times the mine was cited for various violations. I will post a link if I can find it .... Posted by: village idiot at January 4, 2006 10:12 PM | Permalink Huh, 2005 and the newspaper biz is just as susceptible to huge headline front page errors due to print press deadlines as they were 100 years ago? Nothin' wrong with that, I tell ya'. I'm of course giving them the benefit that 4 days into 2006 doesn't count, but ... Try this: Mine Where Explosion Occurred Was Cited for Hazards Posted by: village idiot at January 4, 2006 10:21 PM | Permalink Jay wrote: I would suggest that reporters and camera crews fled to the church because that's where the story was, they felt. Without benefit of hindsight, Wagoner stayed put in the place where the information was being given out. Maybe there's a difference there worth reflecting on. I'm just reproducing it here because I think its a brilliant observation that has been lost in this discussion.... There was A story at the church. But THE story was at the shaft head. Or, if that was not accessible, the command center. Question, which answers itself, is what story did the journos want? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 4, 2006 11:07 PM | Permalink Jay -- The reporter for the local paper lucked out. Working for an afternoon paper, she had a 3 pm deadline -- not a 12 am deadline, as morning papers had. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 4, 2006 11:09 PM | Permalink Anyone want to discuss the coverage of that story ? damn Steve...and I just sent my Bias Wars armor to the smithie's for repair and polishing, and gave my munitions providers a few days off to visit his family... I don't agree, Steve. First of all, this story isn't "eclipsing" the corruption scandal. I don't know where you got that. It just happens to be more interesting for the moment. Later deadline? That helped, sure. But they had the opportunity to go with twelve miners found alive on their web site and they didn't. The point is not "wait for official word before you print anything." I wouldn't suggest that. It's that no one has explained to me--including you, Steve--why it was reasonable to think the families could have good information. Did they get a cell phone call from 12,000 feet inside the mine? If you watch the clip of Anderson Cooper learning the truth you hear him saying to the woman who told him, "from whose lips did you hear that?" She said the president of the mining company. Did Cooper "get lucky?" I'd say he asked a question that could have been asked during the first wave. You think that adding "families say" was good practice. I say it's an indication of weak practice, next-to non-existent sourcing, thin justification. As one observer put it: A close reading of the articles themselves tells the tale of how journalists bungled the story: In most, there are no sources at all for the information; in some, the sources are the rumors spread by frantic family members. Those sorts of sources are hardly a solid basis for headlines screaming, "They're Alive!" Sound familiar? Its Gail Beckerman in CJR Daily. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 4, 2006 11:36 PM | Permalink Jay, it wasn't a matter of reporters quoting family members who thought the miners were alive. They were quoting people by name who said 'officials' came to the church and told them the miners were alive. You can see them telling that to CNN reporters. That, plus the hurried comments from state officials and the governor appeared to be enough. Then the bells tolled and celebrations broke out. Only later did they realize how wrong it all had been. You could see that in Anderson Cooper's stunned look when the woman told him on air that 12 were dead. But the question arises, should he have waited to report that, or get official confirmation later? Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 5, 2006 12:07 AM | Permalink New (short) post: "Today, we fell short." vs. "I'm not seeing any obvious missteps." See you there. |
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