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December 24, 2005
"I’m Not Going to Talk About the Back Story."Bill Keller is a "watch our pages" man. That is how he would prefer to answer your question about the Times, whether you are a reader in Chelsea, a reporter for Salon, or Charlie Rose. With him the stoic conceit continues, but under conditions of greater transparency it makes a lot less sense.(New post alert, Jan. 1. Times Public Editor: Bill Keller Stonewalled Me.) You can find the latest on the transparency gap at the New York Times by reading Editor & Publisher, and Salon (where I am quoted.) The facts so far: On Dec. 15, the Times published an important story that hit official Washington hard: Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. It said that the National Security Agency has since 2002 had the authority to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States without a warrant because President Bush decreed it. The story was based on confidential sources. “Without a warrant” prompted Senator Arlen Specter to promise hearings in the Senate, and outraged others in Congress. “There is no doubt that this is inappropriate,” Specter said. Questions immediately arose about how the story came to be, and especially why it appeared now. (Days before a vote on the USA Patriot Act, the same day as the elections for parliament in Iraq.) But also: should any newspaper be revealing secret programs intended to stop another terror strike? The Times did not take the lead in addressing those questions. In fact it said very little, so others began to fill in the picture. On Dec. 17 Paul Farhi of the Washington Post reported that the revelations about the NSA are in a forthcoming book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” by James Risen, the lead reporter on the wiretapping story. The Times account hadn’t mentioned that. On Dec. 20, James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times reported that “editors at the paper were actively considering running the story about the wiretaps before Bush’s November showdown with Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.” The Times and Keller had said the key facts became known “a year ago.” Writers at the Times who talked to Risen—alas, no names—said that was inaccurate. NPR also had the same information. On Dec. 20, it was reported by Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter that “the president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office.” A significant fact, adding drama and raising the political stakes. The original had said only, “The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article.” Then Gabriel Sherman of the New York Observer reported on Dec. 21 that “according to multiple Times sources, the decision to move forward with the story was accelerated by the forthcoming publication of Mr. Risen’s book.” Sherman added the date of Bush’s meeting with Times bosses—Dec. 6—and said Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman was there too. In each case it appears the New York Times knows the news, but withholds it. Sherman wrote that discussion of the wiretap story “has been off-limits since it was published.” A source in the Washington bureau was quoted: “Someone on high told reporters not to talk about it.” Why? We don’t know. Heavyweights in journalism can’t figure it out. I certainly can’t. And the newspaper won’t say much. The Times did issue a statement from Keller on Dec. 16, the day after the story was published on the Web. It told part of the history. The paper was initally persuaded not to publish on national security grounds. The Administration said: if you run this story, it will harm intelligence collection; also, nobody who knows the facts doubts that we’re legal. Keller said further reporting convinced the Times that it could publish without harm to national security, and that reservations about warrantless espionage by the NSA were felt in many parts of the government. In this statement Keller began to make a case for the soundness of Times judgment (which includes the slowness of Times judgment) but it was brief, nothing but a down payment on a full defense of the article and the reasoning behind it. And Keller’s statement had none of the facts later uncovered by Farhi, Rainey, Alter, and Sherman. “The publication was not timed to the Iraqi election, the Patriot Act debate, Jim’s forthcoming book or any other event,” Keller told the L.A. Times in second statement. “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 Observer’s account contains this: After The Times decided not to publish it at that time, Mr. Risen went away on book leave, and his piece was shelved and regarded as dead, according to a Times source. The back story? I know what he means, but it’s hard to call it a “back story” when the president of the United States confronts the publisher of the New York Times over freedom of the press, national security, and possibly another leak investigation. (Bush later said the disclosures were “shameful.”) Obviously there are things the Times learned that it cannot tell us about the NSA, and about its conflicts with the Administration. This may account for some of the silences and gaps. But what Keller, and his crew, and Sulzberger with his ally Catherine Mathis (Times spokeswoman) don’t seem to get is that the Times could signal to readers when it knows it’s not leveling with us. “When you think of the New York Times, transparency is not the first quality that leaps to mind, but they have to explain themselves,” said Tom Kunkel, dean of the J-school at University of Maryland and a former newspaper editor. “Even if you can’t tell them something, in my experience news consumers always appreciate it when you make an effort to explain why you can’t.” I’m sure there’s a story to this chronic lack of transparency at the Times. At least part of it is a matter of public record. In May, 2005, deputy managing editor Al Siegal led a committee of Times people—heavily weighted toward the Washington bureau—who examined ways of “preserving our readers’ trust.” It was an attempt to come to grips with credibility problems the Times itself had identified after going over the crash sites: Wen Ho Lee, Jayson Blair, the Howell Raines regime, the WMD story— but not yet the fall of Judy Miller. The report (available as a pdf file) was called Preserving Our Readers’ Trust: A Report to the Executive Editor. (That would be Keller.) News accounts about it focused on confidential sources, and the rules governing their use, but an equally powerful theme was transparency— and how to create a “dialogue with our publics.” Listen to these recommendations from twenty of Keller’s best people— the Credibility Group:
That really hasn’t happened. And so the “consolidation of trust” isn’t happening, either.
Actively and earnestly means you don’t treat the demand for explanation as a threat, an option, or something to do only in a generous mood. It means you explain willingly so people know how you operate. If they know how you operate they can more easily decide to trust you. The Times is hardly clueless about this, as Farhad Manjoo pointed out in Salon. Just last week, Kurt Eichenwald wrote a “Reporter’s Essay,” a companion to his investigation of Webcam porn and kids. It’s an explainer for his complicated interactions with Justin, the exploited teen he wrote about and helped. Anyone who pays attention to American politics could predict that a story based on leaks about a classified program the president wanted would get intense scrutiny and probably come under attack. And on Dec. 17, Texas Republican John Cornyn denounced the Times on the floor of the Senate: “It’s perhaps not a coincidence that just before the vote for the cloture on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the New York Times released this story.” Cornyn also said the Times was trying to push Risen’s book. (See David Folkenflik’s report for NPR.) But with “Bush Secretly Lifted” there was no Eichenwald-style explainer, just one paragraph: The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted. Alex Jones, a former reporter for the Times, and a biographer of the ruling family, noticed it. “It’s as though there are two Times minds at work here,” he told Salon. The first is stoic, and hostile to “meta” communication, which in this view detracts from the primary work. Traditionally (that is to say up until the ground shifted beneath them a few years ago) the editors of the New York Times tried not to talk about the New York Times, or indeed to “notice” it, and you saw little in the way of self-examination. It just came out with more journalism. In that era, the ideal answer to any question about faulty reporting or editorial priorities was: watch the paper. Don’t ask us to talk about it; we’ll just give you non-replies. In Ken Auletta’s recent New Yorker profile of Sulzberger, he quotes Keller at a November staff meeting saying he was concerned about “orgies of self-absorption that distract us from our more important work.” That being open about decision-making counts as newsroom narcissism is also part of the stoic view. Bill Keller is a “watch our pages” man. That is how he would prefer to answer your question about the Times, whether you are a reader in Chelsea, a reporter for Salon, or Charlie Rose calling. With him the stoic conceit continues, but under conditions of greater transparency it makes a lot less sense. This is what the leaks from his own newsroom are telling him. The Times of the 21st century does talk about itself… sometimes. (A famous example.) This is what Jones meant by two minds. It knows how to run an explainer laying out Kurt Eichenwald’s dealings with sources, and opening up for examination—and criticism—the ethical calls he made. But then on other occasions, with higher stakes, it “forgets” it knows how to be self-scrutinizing and goes back to the era of “the Times doesn’t talk about itself.” In fact, the golden age of self-examination at the New York Times began in 2000 and is still going on. But something is wrong in the execution. Which is why PressThink ran Ron Brynaert’s guest post: Does the New York Times Have a Learning Disability? (Oct. 31)
This column by the top of the masthead never happened. And as a result Keller’s preferred method of addressing Times readers about matters of public controversy is the leaked memo to staff that finds it way to Romenesko within ten minutes of his pushing send, and then becomes news. Why he has chosen this method is not clear to me. Twenty of his best people told him in May 2005 that he and his team should be alternating with the public editor, in a column that spoke directly to the issues of trust, openness and authority that so vex the Times today. Such a forum would have been very useful in the summer and fall of 2005.
This was political realism by the Credibility Group. They wanted to do away with the pretense that “the work speaks for itself.” (Therefore you shouldn’t talk about it.) The Group said it straight out: “We strongly believe it is no longer sufficient to argue reflexively that our work speaks for itself. In today’s media environment, such a minimal response damages our credibility. Critics, competitors and partisans can too easily caricature who we are and what we do. And loyal readers gain no solid understanding of what the truth really is.” But this strong belief—backed by a sharp analysis—was not enough to move Keller, Sulzberger and Mathis.
Didn’t happen. The Washington Post does 30-35 live discussions a week: Q & A with editors who oversee coverage, reporters who cover the news, and columnists like Dan Froomkin and Dana Milbank. This innovation hasn’t come to the Times.
Didn’t happen. The post.blog was able to air the controversy involving Dan Froomkin and John Harris, and it gave readers a place to talk back to the Post with a vengeance. A Times blog would be equally valuable on occasions when there is controversy about the Times— although it has to be done carefully. Instead there’s this.
That means Keller does “Newshour” on PBS the day after the wiretapping story is released, and brings the reporters with him on “Charlie Rose” the same night, while others well briefed—investigations editor David Barstow, Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman—head to “Nightline” and “Larry King.” The works speaks, and then you speak for it. It has authority because you respond with authority when asked tough questions about judgment calls.
Don’t heal yourself, just hear yourself, New York Times. “With regularity.” “Variety of forums.” “More assertive about explaining.”
If you don’t have online Q and A’s, and you don’t go on the air to explain, and you don’t answer reporters questions, and you don’t have a blog where you can discuss it, and you don’t want to go into the back story because that wouldn’t be stoic… then how is engagement with open-minded critics going to ever take place? In soundbites and one-paragraph faxes and Eric Lichtblau telling Salon, “I’m afraid we’re referring all calls to Catherine Mathis in corporate PR…”? Not likely. It’s tempting for Times people to say: no matter what we say, we are going to get slammed by the left and the right. But that’s an excuse for devaluing all criticsm. The Credibility Group grasped how lame that was.
Hear, hear. The modern era of transparency at the Times began with a curiosity, an editor’s note (called an “assessment”) about the coverage of Wen Ho Lee that took note of certain problems and regrets. (See PressThink, From Wen Ho Lee to Judy Miller.) It was a strained performance for those accustomed to the luxury of “we don’t talk about ourselves.” Among those who had to talk about the editor’s note—an unprecedented revision in a pattern of coverage—was Bill Keller, then the managing editor. Here’s what he told a New York Observer reporter who had asked about after-effects: If you mean, are we going to back away from aggressive investigative reporting, the answer is an emphatic, categorical ‘No.’ If you mean are we going to select a scapegoat to hang for shortcomings in a generally excellent body of reporting, the answer is an equally emphatic ‘No.’ Beyond that, your answer will be in the paper. Watch our journalism. Watch our journalism worked in its day. But for capturing what was wrong with “we don’t talk about the Times,” the better source is reporter Jeff Gerth, who wrote a lot of the Wen Ho Lee stories that were assessed. Gerth said to Howard Kurtz, who wanted to know what he thought about the editor’s note: “I don’t talk about the Times’ business, but as a reporter I’m glad that other people talk about theirs.” I don’t think there’s any future for an attitude like that. People don’t trust its one-wayness. If the Times can’t learn to converse its troubles are going to get worse. After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… New PressThink, Jan 1. Times Public Editor: Bill Keller Stonewalled Me. “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…” Late breaking link! Editors weblog: The difficulties of increasing newspaper transparency. How does transparency work? Let’s take Bush Secretly Lifted… Here’s my quick sketch.
Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times says transparency is a crock and the nation is full of paranoids making like press critics. The New York Times deserves thanks and admiration for the service it has done the nation. Instead, it’s getting bipartisan abuse and another round of endless demands for explanations and “transparency.” (In case you haven’t noticed, “transparency” is this year’s “closure.”) For a different view see Editor & Publisher. CJR Daily weighs in: “Bush’s intervention to try to stop newspaper stories in the works is not just a ‘back story.’ To the contrary, a case can be made that it is the real story. In both instances, it is clear, even just from the surface evidence, that the White House had a part in dissuading the editors from, in the Post’s case, running a crucial piece of the story, and in the Times’ case, from running the story at all for more than a year.” Howard Kurtz talks about the back story with Keller (Dec. 26 column): “The decision to hold the story last year was mine,” Keller says. “The decision to run the story last week was mine. I’m comfortable with both decisions. Beyond that, there’s just no way to have a full discussion of the internal procedural twists that media writers find so fascinating without talking about what we knew, when, and how — and that I can’t do.” Kurtz also reveals a meeting between Bush and Leonard Downie that Downie won’t confirm. Don’t miss Digby on Deborah Howell. A brilliant rant about a frustrating, play-it-safe ombudsman-ee column on military recruiting stats. Related PressThink… Guest Writer Steve Smith: Fortress Journalism Failed. The Transparent Newsroom Works. (Nov. 23, 2005) Tom Maguire, They’re Not Going To Stop: Look - my inner geek is finding this to be very interesting. But is there any way in the world that the Times can be persuaded that this just might not be in America’s best interest, even if it has some slight potential to embarrass Bush? Maguire says the Times is engaged in a “war on America.” Dean Esmay goes further: “Exposing such a secret program is not whistle-blowing—it is high treason.” Here are the questions and answers I sent to Salon for this article by Farhad Manjoo: When is it OK to bow to the government in such matters? I don’t think we know enough about what the Bush Administration told the Times to know if it “bowed” to pressure or behaved responsibly. James Bowman, writing in the New Criterion: What “Objectivity”? According to Katharine Q. Seelye, writing the paper’s own account of the [May 2005] report, it had “recommended taking a variety of steps, including having senior editors write more regularly about the workings of the paper, tracking errors in a systematic way and responding more assertively to the paper’s critics.” Apparently there was no sense of contradiction on the part either of Miss Seelye or the Times between the objective of “preserving our readers’ trust” and “responding more assertively to the paper’s critics,” though surely on the face of it trust would seem to be more likely to be preserved if the paper adopted a stance of humility rather than assertiveness towards its critics. Media Bistro asked media observers for predictions on what might happen in ‘06. One of mine was: “The paths of The New York Times and The Washington Post will continue to diverge. (65 percent probability)…” Finally, the Daily Peg has essentially gone dead but Texas Gigs is more alive.
Posted by Jay Rosen at December 24, 2005 11:36 AM
Comments
"Transparency" is easy to accomplish when one is proud of one's accomplishments, but transparency is a whole different kettle of fish when you've screwed up. There is an implied message of "guilt" in the opacity of people like Keller and Downie --- a sense that they know that their coverage (and failures of coverage) have had an impact on the political fate of this nation. Nothing speaks so loudly to this guilt than the Times' equivocation about the date on which it found out about the warrantless domestic spying -- they knew about it before the last Presidential election, yet held the story back....and when it was finally reported, tried to give the impression that it wasn't discovered until after the election. What is shocking is that Keller actually bought the "national security" argument in the first place -- as if there were thousands of American citizens conspiring with foreign terrorist organizations who assumed that they could make calls to their collaborators overseas without worrying about being surveilled because of their detailed knowledge of US policies concerning domestic spying. Keller screwed up -- and he isn't being "transparent" about that screw-up because there is no one to blame for it but Keller. What is shocking is that Keller actually bought the "national security" argument in the first place -ami If this were FDR asking the New York Times to not publish a story in 1944 for national security reasons, I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. This story does shed interesting light on the relationship between the Times and the Administration that vilifies it occasionally in public addresses. Also interesting that the precedent of jailing reporters over the Plame leak may well lead to the same thing here. Back to the meta-story ... your suggestions for the Times, Jay, would allow it to catch up to the Post, as far as interactivity is concerned -- and fight that sense that the Post has surpassed the Times as the top paper. The Times feels awfully static at the end of 2005. Really, the biggest change (the only change) to the Times' web presence in the past few years has been the Op-Ed firewall. And that clever orange stripe. "Grey Lady," indeed. I would guess that "watch our coverage" is a way of projecting professionalism -- not stooping to street to slug it out with the writhing masses, and not allowing amateurs to post inside the palace. But that is an outmoded, outdated way of thinking. These are problems with perception of interactivity -- seeing it as something that degrades the paper rather than strengthening it. Call it the "Times Bubble" ... ? Posted by: Richard B. Simon at December 24, 2005 3:27 PM | Permalink If this were FDR asking the New York Times to not publish a story in 1944 for national security reasons, I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. well, its not 1944, the President isn't FDR, al Qaeda isn't the Axis powers, 9-11 wasn't Pearl Harbor, and tapping the phones of American citizens isn't the D-Day invasion. But except for those things, I see your point. One point you shouldn't overlook is that this is one hell of a story. Posted by: Matt Stoller at December 24, 2005 4:59 PM | Permalink Thanks for another excellent essay, Jay. Happy Chanukah and Merry Christmas! Posted by: Sisyphus at December 24, 2005 10:15 PM | Permalink Depending on who you hear it from, the Times screwed up by sitting on the story, or for revealing it at all. The whole thing is so ham-handed that the first thing I thought of was: How many mistakes can these guys make in a single calendar year? Here in Massachusetts, you get three tickets in a calendar year, you have to go to traffic school. (Journalism Traffic School would make a great comedy sketch). Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, and a bigger and better new year for everybody (let's include the Times and the nation in that wish, too). Posted by: Lisa Williams at December 24, 2005 10:35 PM | Permalink Jay, That's a terrific essay, one that raises many good points. You lay out a users-guide for the MSM: How To Become Smartly Transparent in Three Easy Lessons* * Without relinquishing control entirely. I fear we're still some miles down the road from being able to hear this criticism clearly, but the map is there. As for the Times, I am uneasy that they held such a great story so long. I'm not clear how revealng the broad architecture of a spying program without reference to any particular case would jeopardize anything. I assume that an Al Qaeda operative assumes that the Great Satan is trying to listen in at all times... Perhaps there is a perfectly reasonable explanation. But that circles back to your point... Michael Posted by: Michael Powell at December 25, 2005 1:01 PM | Permalink There are many questions that bother me about the NYT story ... and the successive feeding frenzy. I'm amazed that the NYT could keep this story an exclusive secret for a year, or more. How does that work? How did the NYT find out about this: "according to government officials", "some officials familiar with the continuing operation", "[n]early a dozen current and former officials", "[a]ccording to those officials and others", ... None of these "officials and others" leaked or talked to other journalists - over a year or more? How many in the NYT organization knew? None leaked? Is this an interesting aspect of the culture? Is it part of the reason that the "behind the curtain" culture is not being discussed? Posted by: Sisyphus at December 25, 2005 2:19 PM | Permalink Tim (Sisyphus): I don't know how it remained secret for a year +. I do know that when the Times chooses to say almost nothing about it, the suspicion builds that it doesn't explain because it can't-- meaning there is no explanation that can stand the light of day. That's more or less what ami means by: "Keller screwed up -- and he isn't being 'transparent' about that screw-up because there is no one to blame for it but Keller." If that's the case--and I'm not saying it is, only if--then there's no difference between the "stoic" approach and the "stonewall" option. Michael: Thanks for that assessment. Re: "some miles down the road from being able to hear this criticism clearly," Jeff Jarvis pointed me to this downcast post by Scott Anderson of the Tribune company. It's about the ride share board at Craigslist during the NYC transit strike, which was full of activity, and the same service offered by Tribune's Newsday.com, which was like a ghost town. Money quote: Yet another crisis and Craigslist commands the community. Newspaper.coms command... Well, not the community. That's not a few miles down the road from... that's Scott watching Craig's tail lights disappear. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 25, 2005 4:57 PM | Permalink Jay Our (that is, large newspapers) response to the web age is a glass half-filled/half empty puzzle. Sometimes I see real progress, with the blogs and myriad chats and the photo libraries and news bites. Other times, on questions of transparency and on some business matters, we're doing considerably less well. That this isn't for lack of urgency. Our internal chat boards, and discussion within the newspaper, reflect a near obsession with trying to respond to this new age. What the Froomkin brouhaha obscured is that political staff aside many reporters and editors at the WP are fine with the blogs, and indeed with all sorts of steps needed to respond to the web age. On transparency, work remains. The ride board stuff and Newsday is more curious: Why do you think it works for craigslist and not for Newsday? And can newspapers transform themselves into a similar sort of mercantile town-meeting place? Michael Posted by: Michael Powell at December 25, 2005 6:45 PM | Permalink On transparency, work remains. I don't think that the work that remains is really about transparency qua transparency. The problem is what "transparency" would reveal about the way that journalism works -- "opacity" persists because there is something to hide, not because "transparency" is so difficult to achieve. The ride board stuff and Newsday is more curious: Why do you think it works for craigslist and not for Newsday? And can newspapers transform themselves into a similar sort of mercantile town-meeting place? This is curious -- my first theory was that if you looked up "ride sharing" or "ride boards" on google, craigslist would pop up at that top --- it doesn't --- not even close. How heavily did Newsday promote its rideshare boards? Was it up and running well before the strike actually occurred? Was it prominently displayed on Newsday's homepage the week before the strike? Newsday's bloggy ride board was for Long Islanders. The Craigslist link was to all of New York City. The proper comparison should have been drawn to the Craigslist Long Island rideshare board: link. Looks like a ghost town draw to me. Posted by: Ron Brynaert at December 25, 2005 9:38 PM | Permalink Kurtz shows that WaPo owes 'backstory' too: Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest's Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders. But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment. Posted by: Ron Brynaert at December 25, 2005 10:43 PM | Permalink It's clear from that Kurtz piece that Keller thinks media writers like me and Kurtz and Sherman are the ones who care about the "back story." Ron says the proper comparison should have been drawn to the Craigslist Long Island rideshare board. I don't think so. People go where the critical mass of users is. Long Island people probably use the New York City Craigslist. Michael: I believe you about the sense of urgency. I think a great many people in newspaper newsrooms have that feeling now. They aren't clueless at all and they want to move forward: But as Jarvis says: Craig created a tool and stood back and, as I now quote him in every PowerPoint to which I subject people, followed one simple rule: “Get out of the way.” He handed over control. The Post is way better than most, though. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 12:09 AM | Permalink Among the things that most bug me about this situation is Keller's statement that Risen's book had no impact on the paper's decision to publish the story. If true, that means Keller was willing to get scooped by his own reporter, a la the Post and Woodward, and indeed might have chosen not to publish even after the book hit the shelves if his national security concerns weren't assuaged. If it isn't true, Keller's lying. Either way, it's not a real confidence builder. Another troubling item is his acceptance of the administration's assurance that nobody familiar with the program thought it was illegal. Well, so what? It isn't really the administration's opinion that counts, it isn't as though the paper hasn't been burned, Times and Times again, by similarly weighty assurances, it isn't as though one would expect the administration to say anything else no matter what they thought about the legalities of it, and it isn't as though the administration haven't demonstrated that they think anything the president does is legal purely by virtue of him doing it. The first response to those assurances should have been, "Really? Prove it." Maybe that was the first response, but we'll never know. The additional reporting from Risen and Eric Lichtblau on Saturday suggests either that the reporters had a very incomplete picture of the program when the story was published or that they're doling the details out in portions. If I were Bill Keller, I wouldn't want to be going online and answering questions from readers and critics either. Tim, one possible explanation for the story remaining in the Times' bailiwick is that once the paper approached the White House for a response, the administration will have known about the leaks and done whatever they could to discourage further ones. Even if wrathful word didn't come down from the White House, Risen will probably have tipped his sources that the story was killed in response to the White House. That would have been enough to get people to pull their necks in. Posted by: weldon berger at December 26, 2005 1:28 AM | Permalink Its little wonder that the Kellers and Downies of the world think they can get away with "opacity" --- the people they hire as "watchdogs" seem to function more like lapdogs. At the Times, Byron Calame apparently has a job that requires him to do little more than fax in a column every two weeks that avoids the current concerns of readers --- the Judith Miller debacle was all but over before Calame finally got around to addressing it -- and his comments were simply warmed over conventional wisdom by that time. Calame remains AWOL on the latest controversy concerning Keller and his news judgement. Over at the Post, things are even worse. After starting the whole Froomkin debacle, Deborah Howell has gone into complete stonewall mode, and refuses to address reader concerns about her own role in the debacle, or Downie's and John Harris's willingness to channel the concerns of the RNC and the White House directly onto the pages of the Post. And, instead of addressing the whole controversy over the Post's refusal to ask about impeachment in its polls -- and the fact that the question isn't being asked because it would anger the White House, this week Howell addresses the concerns of the Heritage Foundation regarding a story on military recruitment -- and does so in an incomprehensible fashion. With "ombudsmen" and "public editors" like these two, its "clear" that these positions that was once supposed to enhance transparency have become just "another brick in the wall" behind which people like Downie and Keller can hide. Howell so far is a major disappointment. washingtonpst.com should hire its own ombudsman. Calame, well, I still have some hopes for him. Media Bistro asked media observers for some predictions on what might happen in '06. Here are mine: * The paths of The New York Times and The Washington Post will continue to diverge. (65 percent probability) Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 10:00 AM | Permalink With all due respect to craig's list, I;m not sure I see a model for the news business there. It's one thing to loosen control on an ad for a 2-bedroom apartment in Clinton; it's another to loosen control on a story on CIA prisons. There's a tendency to shake the head at every success in the commercial world and say: Ahhh a really smart news organization would have done THAT. Well, sometimes What makes sense to my mind is to try and co-op the successes, whether through partnerships or mimmickry or ... . Toyota started as a low rent knockoff of the brilliant GM and Ford. And, in fairness to GM and Ford, those companies have gone through several reinventions--the death knell for that industry has been sounded several times a decade since the late 1960s. Maybe this time it's different, maybe not. Newspapers are still vastly profitable, which is not an argument for sitting back and doing nothing. It is an argument aganst the notion that obsolescence looms (Jay, I know this isn't your argument). And, as Jay notes, it's an argument AGAINST the cannibilization that Knight Ridder is now practicing. I'm intrigued, Jay, by your prediction that the Post and Times will continue to diverge. How so? As for your point about web literacy, most of my friends at the Post and Times read a fair number of blogs. As annoying as Delong can be on occasion, I don't know many economics writers who don't read him (Oy, a double negative ... ). The NYTimes food section editors regularly read the food blogs and so it goes. Whether this is true of the political reporters, I can't say. I know that in 2000 I ended up pushing for and then reporting out a long look at the Ohio election results after reading the alarms raised on the blogs. These bloggers' concerns did not all pan out. But so be it ... there's a lot to be said for ringing the bell loudly. Also, and I know that I risk sounding like a broken record (ahhh, a true dinosaur reference ... ) but one value added that newspapers should be loathe to surrender is the reliance on old fashioned street reporting, which takes troops and perhaps more skill than one would imagine. I was struck during the recent transit strike by how often I heard bloggers -- Jarvis among them -- AND newspaper columnists and TV types, assert that the strike was a disaster for the TWU, that no one supported the strikers etc etc Hello? I pedaled over to the Brooklyn Bridge, and then to Bay Ridge and Crown Heights every single day, and I heard a very different story. There was a good deal of sympathy for the strikers, particularly from blacks and Latinos (who are not big blog readers ... ), and from many working class whites. There is a vast gulf in this city between Manhattan and the Manhattanized sections of the outer boros and the rest -- which is to say the majority -- of the city. And I'd argue that very little of this is picked up by the "new" media. which can be a pretty insulated place. (NOW, there IS a good argument that the unions need to get hip to the web as well--a couple of good bloggers and a union ride board for the general public might have helped the TWU's cause as well ... Anyway, enough. As always, this site raises criticial questions and it's clearly provoked me to go on at too great length ... So thanks again Michael Posted by: Michael Powell at December 26, 2005 12:15 PM | Permalink weldon: ... the administration will have known about the leaks and done whatever they could to discourage further ones. How would they do this without attracting even more attention? Why wouldn't we have heard about such previous efforts even now? Wouldn't "whatever they could" also include an investigation into the leak? Even if wrathful word didn't come down from the White House, Risen will probably have tipped his sources that the story was killed in response to the White House. That would have been enough to get people to pull their necks in. And yet the NYT was able "to conduct additional reporting" on the issue? How much of that additional reporting went back to the original anonymous sources? How many additional anonymous sources were obtained in that year? And how was the NYT able to conduct this additional reporting without attracting attention to the story? And how, within - what hours?, were other newspapers able to have their own columns with more information? Posted by: Sisyphus at December 26, 2005 12:57 PM | Permalink And how, within - what hours?, were other newspapers able to have their own columns with more information? good questions, sisyphus! Here's another theory --- other news orgs got the story, and were asked to keep in under wraps -- and were told that the Times had the story first, and that THE New York Times was withholding it for national security reasons. The fact that THE New York Times wasn't spilling the beans would have influenced other publications to do likewise... (if for no other reason than they wouldn't want to be in the position of having the Times criticize them for ignoring national security concerns.) ************* special to M Powell -- please continue to 'go on at length'. Your comments are consistently informative and incisive. ami: other news orgs got the story, and were asked to keep in under wraps Like D.C.'s local newspaper, WaPo? Which is more disconcerting for WaPo: scooped by the NYT or criticized by it? Posted by: Sisyphus at December 26, 2005 1:54 PM | Permalink "Also, and I know that I risk sounding like a broken record (ahhh, a true dinosaur reference ... ) but one value added that newspapers should be loathe to surrender is the reliance on old fashioned street reporting, which takes troops and perhaps more skill than one would imagine. I was struck during the recent transit strike by how often I heard bloggers -- Jarvis among them -- AND newspaper columnists and TV types, assert that the strike was a disaster for the TWU, that no one supported the strikers etc etc Hello? I pedaled over to the Brooklyn Bridge, and then to Bay Ridge and Crown Heights every single day, and I heard a very different story. There was a good deal of sympathy for the strikers, particularly from blacks and Latinos (who are not big blog readers ... ), and from many working class whites." As an insider, I am sure you know the reasons behind the media's gleeful mischaracterization of public support for unions. It is not very much different from the breathless reporting about the less-than-robust season retailers are having. Big corporations have an inherent interest in marginalizing union power just as business models that depend on advertising for their revenues have an embedded self-interest in advancing the interests of the advertisers in their news reporting. There is no surprise here. There is a more interesting dynamic that Jay failed to notice (or has not found it to be sufficiently evident to mention) in his predictions; Blog readers, fed up with the MSM's conflicts-of-interest and mutual back-scratching, have exhibited a surprising amount of willingness to financially support news-analysis and in a few cases news gathering (Digby, TPM are two recent examples). If you go through the comments of the readers on these sites, it is hard to miss the intense yearning for a media that is more objective and sceptical of officialdom. While some of this may be a result of passions currently running high, it is not difficult to spot the birth of a new subscriber-based model of journalism. Posted by: villageidiot at December 26, 2005 2:08 PM | Permalink Is it possible that the Times was trying to avoid being DanRathered for publishing a story so strongly unfavorable to the Administration, so close to the election? The Rather thing has always smelled to me like a setup -- forged versions of the actual documents ... fed to a reporter with a feud with the Bushes. After all, 60 Minutes canned its look at the runup to war for the very same reasons: 60 Minutes Scraps War Report Sept. 25, 2004 (AP) CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes" report on the rationale for war in Iraq because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close to the presidential election, the network said on Saturday.
And the Administration knew it. Is it insane to think Rather was tarred as an example to other news outlets? Posted by: Richard B. SImon at December 26, 2005 2:19 PM | Permalink It's a misnomer to refer to newspaper.coms and to blame newspaper newsrooms for failing to build communities. Although I'm not sure about Newsday's setup, most of these sites are not run by the newspaper, but by a separate online division, as discussed in the previous topic about The Washington Post. There's some resistance on any staff, but often it's the newspaper newsroom that's saying, "Tear down this wall." Posted by: Brian Cubbison at December 26, 2005 2:26 PM | Permalink ami... special to M Powell -- please continue to 'go on at length'. Your comments are consistently informative and incisive. Yeah, the low-flab long ball is fair territory, as I'm sure Michael knows. From my point of view, as blog publisher, it's what sort of comments create value for PressThink on the Web? The most developed often do. Blogging is welcoming to obsessives--hounds--of all kinds, and this includes ranters and re-cyclers but also factual sticklers, people who accumulate a great deal of knowledge about a few big, important things and notice any flicker of the new, which they then blog about. Also why journalists who are good writers and natural reporters could, will and do make great bloggers: in many ways, its an activity made for them. On why I think the Post and the Times will diverge, a real answer takes a post. One reason is Sulzberger does not seem to have mastery of his surroundings. Gay Talese, certainly no enemy of the Times, certainly familiar with its culture, told Auletta: “You get a bad king every once in a while.” His point was not that a bad king leads to revolution. The king stays king because the people believe in the monarchy, and so the kingdom weathers through. I don't think the Washington Post is in that situation. Graham is far more aware of his surroundings, from what I can tell. You get the sense he has a strategy, but he's also taking lessons from reality. Maybe I shouldn't have been, but I was kind of shocked by how unaware Sulzberger seemed to be on Charlie Rose. I don't think he understood the challenge before him, "where" he was. Or at least it didn't come through in his answers, reactions, and presentation of self. Auletta's portrait only deepened my view on that. Another reason is actually a series of observations bound into one over-simplified and hazardous one: Both newspapers are highly regarded among journalists with the experience to judge. The Post is known among your peers as more of a writer's paper, with strong editors, while the Times is more run more by the editors, and of course it employs strong writers too but keeps them more hemmed in-- at least in news coverage. So the Post is looser. That jives with what I observe, even though it's not that simple. This has a lot of implications, but one is that it seems harder for orthodoxy to rule at the Post, and there aren't the same hang-ups about univocalism. The difference may be slight, the exceptions real, but as you know a small variance can lead to a big change in direction when plotted over time. Those things all feed into the freer and more inventive use of the Web, although I would say the Times has made equally brilliant use of the Web. It's major innovations are not in openness, interactivity, or establishing a "writer's paper." But I would add that I don't believe there is "one" known way to succeed on the Web, or that all good ways are known. That's why I am for pluralism in the press think of the modern, with-it news organization. (I don't use the term dinosaur, by the way. Nor do I say MSM. I think both are insulting to people in your line of work.) Put them all together--Sulzberger vs. Graham, editors vs writers, orthodoxy vs. pluralism, freer use of the Web and you get... divergent paths. That's my free hand sketch. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 2:28 PM | Permalink The NYTimes knew about the 9-11 threat before it happened, and haven't published anything to date about that fact. See this link: http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/5/judycode.asp In July of 2001, Steve Engelberg, then an editor at The New York Times, looked up to see Judy Miller standing at his desk. As Engelberg recalls, Miller had just learned from a source about an intercepted communication between two Al Qaeda members who were discussing how disappointed they were that the United States had never attempted to retaliate for the bombing of the USS Cole. Not to worry, one of them said, soon they were going to do something so big that the U.S. would have to retaliate. Posted by: ArtShu at December 26, 2005 3:27 PM | Permalink Looseness is a good way to describe it, Jay. And it may begin to describe why Craigslist is more used, more trusted even, for speedy, reliable info on the transit strike. We're seeing this preference for looseness everywhere; Jon Stewart's success is as much about loosening up news presentation, as much as it is a critique of media. Let me add to the Post/Times comments. As the papers diverged post-Watergate, the Post made some key business decisions to make sure it could maintain high penetration in the D.C. metro area. Though it has been seen print decreases in the last several years, like most dailies, it still has one of the highest penetrations in its market. Likewise, online, it has enjoyed one of the highest local user penetrations, staving off the local efforts of Yahoo, for instance, better than others. Key to its relative (to other newspaper sites) success has been an ability to start to become a local site, not a local newspaper site. Its City Guide site really helps locals and visitors enjoy the city, unlike so many other news sites hampered by mid-'90s entertainment platforms. What I've seen lately is willingness to raise the Post flag by lowered the drawbridges to the castle. Its Discussions page is a good effort, jumpstarting conversations by its own journalists and then enabling community comment. It is trying to provide some contextual blogging additions to Post content with its Technorati-supplied service. Posted by: Ken Doctor at December 26, 2005 3:40 PM | Permalink Point of information: Is it insane to think Rather was tarred as an example to other news outlets? in a word, yes. although its not insane to think that the Killian memos were a "set up", if that is what happened the target was Bill Burkett. There would have been no way that forgers could have predicted where these documents would appear first, so anyone who suggests that Rather/Mapes/CBS was the target is going off the deep end. Jay Rosen: On why I think the Post and the Times will diverge, a real answer takes a post. ... The Post is known among your peers as more of a writer's paper, with strong editors, while the Times is more run more by the editors, and of course it employs strong writers too but keeps them more hemmed in-- at least in news coverage. So the Post is looser. When you write that post, I would be interested in the difference between "looser", asymmetric, and symmetric; the role of writers and editors in symmetric and asymmetric (discoursive?) journalism; trust and the "triangular relationship among journalists, the Administration and the public." Feel free to take your time. Tomorrow would be fine ;-) Posted by: Sisyphus at December 26, 2005 4:48 PM | Permalink I'm wondering about 4 things: 1.) Did Risen and/or Simon & Schuster have any part in holding the story? 2.) I don't believe Keller for a second was hoodwinked by the admin about there being national security implications. He's drunk the Kool-aid for 5 years on Bush, from his assignments during the 2000 campaign as managing to his unctuous profile of Bush as "Reagon's son" to this -- he may not be openly partisan but he does love to see the Bush admin as a sort of re-run of Camelot: can-do neo-cons with a VERY IMPORTANT mission to defend liberty ....and bien-pensant editors should show their patriotism and keep a secret. 3.) Upthread someone asked how only one reporter could have this story -- and I think this gets us back to the insidious use of anonymous sources for reasons other than protecting whiste-blowers. Journalists like to use anonymous sources because if they report, "according to White House lackey so-and-so," then every 2-bit journalist or worse, blogger, can get right on the story. But if its "anonymous administration sources," then it sounds like the writer is deep, deep inside ... and no one could possibly catch him or her. 4. Hate to ask but -- if it turns out these taps were not only wrong but demonstrably illegal (as more than lawyer has suggested already), then at what point were Risen and his editors complicit in a conspiracy or cover-up? If I, as a private citizen, knew of a crime and didn't report it to the appropriate law-enforcement authorities, I could be charged as an accomplice after the fact -- is there any reason, especially post Judy Miller, to think that this part of the law doesn't apply to those who may claim to be journalists but seem to get paid not to report information of great national importance. Posted by: desmoulins at December 26, 2005 5:14 PM | Permalink Tim, there appear to have been a limited number of primary sources because not very many people knew about the program. I'm taking Keller's "additional reporting" comments with a large grain of salt, since the newsroom gossip suggests reporters were firmly discouraged from pursuing the story and because the Saturday story broke significant new ground. It doesn't seem at all unlikely to me that people who leaked and were then told that the leaks were 1) known to the White House and 2) weren't going to result in a story, would decide that further leaks to other reporters just weren't a good idea. Once the story was out there, the risks dimished considerably. The Post in particular has good intelligence community sources, as does Knight Ridder's Washington bureau, and they knew who to call and what to ask. They may even have had some of the story, but not enough of it to print until after the story broke. It seems unlikely to me that there wasn't at least an informal investigation, but the White House would have known that referring it to the justice department/FBI would, as you note, probably result in yet more leaks; the Times knew who the leakers were and would know if they were retaliated against. "I know that you know that I know ..." It doesn't seem all that mysterious to me. Posted by: weldon berger at December 26, 2005 5:57 PM | Permalink Ken: "What I've seen lately is willingness to raise the Post flag by lowered the drawbridges to the castle." I agree. Many of your observations add to what I meant by looser. Thanks. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 6:21 PM | Permalink Somalia. Khobar Towers. Afghan and Sudanese missile strikes. Budget and healthcare hassles with a Republican majority. Bosnia and Serbia. Mounting terrorist threats at home in Oklahoma City and abroad, like the USS Cole. Can you imagine the furor if, like Bush, Clinton had gone to NYT or WaPo and pointedly asked them not to cover the Lewinsky story because it might undermine all the other problems on his plate, including military action abroad? It doesn't matter whether we're discussing journalism or any other profession that serves the public, is compensated by the public. When the professional involved acts against the interests of the public, it should be disclosed, backstory, too, , from every angle, so that the public can make its own fully-informed decisions. And in the case of journalism, it is their raison d'etre -- otherwise, why have journalists at all? We might as well hire writers from the entertainment industry if journalists can't and won't report the entire story. ami -- I think your observations are unfair to Calame. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 26, 2005 6:53 PM | Permalink I know this will be a stretch for some of you, but I don't believe Monica Lewinsky (unless she belonged to some terrorist organization)had national security implications. At least there's a case to be made that the wiretaps were legal and were in the interest of national security. At least that's what bipartisan and nonpartisan lawyers say. But more interesting to me is the rush of power the leakee and leakor must feel. Both know the chances of them being held accountable in the event of another terrorist attack are slim to none. Nor is it likely they will be held accountable for clearly illegal acts (BTW, why isn't NYTimes demanding a special prosecutor investigate the Risen leak as they did Plame?). Knowing they have changed/altered policy, acting outside the checks and balances of our system, knowing they'll never have to pay a price, must be akin to intellectual (and possibly physical) orgasm. Posted by: Seymour Glass at December 26, 2005 7:12 PM | Permalink Rayne, how do you know that Clinton didn't ask the press to suppress the Lewinsky story? You don't. Remember, it was Drudge, operating outside the elite press who broke that story. Do you really believe that the MSM would admit they sat on the Lewinsky story after Drudge scooped them? Not likely. Posted by: Abigail Beecher at December 26, 2005 8:19 PM | Permalink I agree with ami that Calame is a disappointment. I wasn't all that impressed with Okrent, but he is head and shoulders above Calame. My theory is that Calame, a man who has spent his entire life with newspapers, doesn't have the intellectual distance required to be a real "public" representative. He instinctively sides with the press rather than the public. Okrent, on the other hand, was not of journalism, though he had publishing experience. Hence he was able to more easily identify with the public rather than the press. Posted by: Dave Clark at December 26, 2005 8:43 PM | Permalink "Okrent, on the other hand, was not of journalism ..." Are you kidding? Okrent is a talented and multi-faceted guy, but he was, and is, entirely a creature of journalism. -- Stringer for the New York Times.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 26, 2005 9:25 PM | Permalink Both Okrent and Calme are in no-win situations. In many cases they do can also be co-opted by legal situations. I believe the Thornburgh investigation of CBS labored under the same problem. I am not convinced that either Okrent or Calme have been given the freedom we would like to see. They cannot because they work for the newspaper. Posted by: Tim at December 26, 2005 9:27 PM | Permalink > "Calame backed Keller into a corner..." Did Calame ever get answers to his questions about Judith Miller's security clearance? Posted by: Anna Haynes at December 26, 2005 9:38 PM | Permalink Lovelady: Being lazy, I said "journalism" when I should have said "newspapers". No dispute here about Okrent's talent and credentials though. Posted by: Dave Clark at December 26, 2005 9:59 PM | Permalink Steve, first off, I don't consider the fact that Judy Miller lost her job an "accomplishment" that Calame should be given "credit" for. She'd been playing fast and loose with the Times standards and practices for years -- and should have been reigned in (or fired) long ago. Secondly, my criticism of Calame re: the Miller affair was directed at its "timeliness"; the fact that there were serious problems with Miller was evident for a very long time; Calame remained silent on the issue until even Keller and Pinch realized that the situation was untenable. We don't need a Byron Calame to point out that the Emperor has no clothes when everyone is already aware of his nakedness. The ombudsman's job shouldn't be do to post-mortems, but to ask questions and get answers when a diagnosis can still help the patient. Many interesting points by different authors. Responding to a few... I think there is a thrill factor for both the leaker and the leakee-- or publisher of the leak. It has to do with throwing a wrench in, causing a shift in the arena with your revelations, and making people react to what you've done by "exposing" the truth. There's some pleasure just in seeing the scrurry after the story. But if those are factors they stand aside other motivations equally real. Okrent is a journalist, yes, and "formed" by the profession, but to me he was one of Keller's more interesting choices because he primarily saw himself as a writer, and the public editor's job as a writing opportunity. This is not Calame's approach. His strengths are as an editor. So they are going to take different paths in the job. As far as I know, Calame has never published any results of his inquiries into Miller's clearances. If he did learn anything definitive we do not know about it. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 11:50 PM | Permalink Betsy Newmark of Betsy's Page--pro-Bush, civics teacher in NC, blogger, on my "recommended" list on the left column--has written a rather interesting post on the Eichenwald story and the kinds of ethics questions journalists tend to raise. Some excerpts: As I think more about this question, it makes me ponder the motivations of those who adopt journalism for a career. Time and again, I have heard reporters say that they first decided to go into journalism because they wanted to make the world a better place. I've always thought that this explains their adversarial attitude towards the government in specific, but their more general reliance on the government to solve the problems that they hope to expose. ...if you got into the business to make the world a better place, how do you match that attitude up with noninterference when it comes to being in a situation where your personal intervention may help an individual? And if noninvolvement in a story is essential, what about when the journalist's reporting on a story will entail changing the course of the story? When Dana Priest reported on how we were holding terrorists in secret prisons abroad, her article changed the story and served as a catalyst for a series of events that probably would never have happened without her story. Lovelady (whose newspaper won a lot of Pulitzers when he was managing editor) can correct me if I am wrong, but serving as a catalyst for a series of events can be the kind of evidence--showing the story's "impact"--that gets submitted to the Pulitzer jury along with the big investigative article. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 27, 2005 12:54 AM | Permalink Betsy's right. I think Jack Shafer raised interesting points about Eichenwald's journalistic "sins" but that he's a little too hard on him. He asks a lot of questions but a question I would ask Shafer is would he still write the same column if the boy from the story had been a minor when Eichenwald intervened (but when you're talking about a kid who lost his innocence then how can you even assign a number to his age). But regardless of how you weigh Eichenwald's actions he deserves tremendous credit for not just ignoring the criticism and helping provide "back story." Anyway...I'm biased cause Eichenwald's article tore me to pieces and in my opinon at least in this case the end justified the means. Posted by: Ron Brynaert at December 27, 2005 5:21 AM | Permalink Ron Brynaert sticks up for Howard Kurtz against the left. I agree with Ron: I have never understood why some on the left treat Kurtz as right-leaning or a neocon. I just re-read Deborah Howell's latest ombud column, after scanning it the first time. Man, it is weak. She manages to do |
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