"Pinch," In A Pinch, Plays Sandbox Games
Editor And Publisher has a story today about Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, Jr.'s response to the Wall Street Journal for their column slamming the New York Times. The column came on the heels of the revelation of the United States's participation with SWIFT in tracking terrorist's international financial transactions.
After remaining mum for the past week, even as controversy swirled around newspapers' revealing the banking records surveillance program, the Wall Street Journal editoral page weighed in today. Although the Journal published its own story just hours after The New York Times -- which has taken the most heat -- its editorial defended its own action while blasting the Times.
It even included a personal slam at Times' publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. and said the Times did not want to win, but rather obstruct, the war on terror.
Sulzberger responded this afternoon: "I know many of the reporters and editors at The Wall Street Journal and have greater faith in their journalistic excellence than does the Editorial Page of their own paper. I, for one, do not believe they were unaware of the importance of what they were publishing nor oblivious to the impact such a story would have."
Among other things, the editorial criticized the Times for using the Journal as "its ideological wingman" to deflect criticism from the right. And it pointed out that the news and editorial departments are quite separate at the paper and if given the option the editorial side would not have printed the Times' story. Finally, it explained how it got its own story, then slammed the Times for a wide range of sins, claiming that the "current political clamor" is "warning to the press about the path the Times is walking."
Here are a few excerpts.
We recount all this because more than a few commentators have tried to link the Journal and Times at the hip. On the left, the motive is to help shield the Times from political criticism. On the right, the goal is to tar everyone in the "mainstream media." But anyone who understands how publishing decisions are made knows that different newspapers make up their minds differently.
Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn't mind seeing in print. If this was a "leak," it was entirely authorized....
The problem with the Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't. On issue after issue, it has become clear that the Times believes the U.S. is not really at war, and in any case the Bush Administration lacks the legitimacy to wage it.
So, for example, it promulgates a double standard on "leaks," deploring them in the case of Valerie Plame and demanding a special counsel when the leaker was presumably someone in the White House and the journalist a conservative columnist. But then it hails as heroic and public-spirited the leak to the Times itself that revealed the National Security Agency's al Qaeda wiretaps.
Mr. Keller's open letter explaining his decision to expose the Treasury program all but admits that he did so because he doesn't agree with, or believe, the Bush Administration. "Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress," he writes, and "some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight."
Since the Treasury story broke, as it happens, no one but Congressman Ed Markey and a few cranks have even objected to the program, much less claimed illegality.Perhaps Mr. Keller has been listening to his boss, Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who in a recent commencement address apologized to the graduates because his generation "had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government.
"Our children, we vowed, would never know that. So, well, sorry. It wasn't supposed to be this way," the publisher continued. "You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights," and so on. Forgive us if we conclude that a newspaper led by someone who speaks this way to college seniors has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it.
In all of this, Mr. Sulzberger and the Times are reminiscent of a publisher from an earlier era, Colonel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. In the 1930s and into World War II, the Tribune was implacable in its opposition to FDR and his conduct of the war. During the war itself, his newspaper also exposed secrets, including one story after the victory at Midway in 1942 that essentially disclosed that the U.S. had broken Japanese codes. The government considered, but decided against, prosecuting McCormick's paper under the Espionage Act of 1917.
That was a wise decision, and not only because it would have drawn more attention to the Tribune "scoop." Once a government starts indicting reporters for publishing stories, there will be no drawing any lines against such prosecutions, and we will be well down the road to an Official Secrets Act that will let government dictate coverage.
The current political clamor is nonetheless a warning to the press about the path the Times is walking. Already, its partisan demand for a special counsel in the Plame case has led to a reporter going to jail and to defeats in court over protecting sources. Now the politicians are talking about Espionage Act prosecutions. All of which is cause for the rest of us in the media to recognize, heeding Alexander Bickel, that sometimes all the news is not fit to print.
Mr. Sulzberger does a nice attempt to spin out of any crime his paper committed by bringing up the infamous Chicago Tribune stories of the early 1940s. The difference between those stories, and what the New York Times did is simple, yet obviously veiled in too much simplicity for Mr. Sulzberger to comprehend.
The Tribune ran with those stories because of news tips, and solid investigative reporting. The government decided, then, that the release did not severely harm the war effort then, and that their release was accidental, not intentional.
The same cannot be said of the New York Times. In both the NSA program and the SWIFT program, the Times was specifically asked by the administration to not run the story. This was not a case like the Pentagon Papers where the government tried to prevent them from running with the story, but rather they were asked not to run it.
The E & P staff is right to note that there are some stories that should not be printed. The freedom of the press that is explicit under the First Amendment has been twisted by years of wrangling through the courts, and their decisions have emboldened the press to act in a way that the Framers did not envision. The press, now, feels as though it sits above the law, and can, with impunity, print or post whatever it desires without any fear of recriminations. However, as with all freedoms, there comes a responsibility for your actions. The New York Times, in reckless abandonment, has undertaken the idea that they alone serve as the purveyors of what should and should not be classified.
This, in and of itself, is not only wrong, but it is dangerous. As they have exhibited now--twice in six month's time--they do not understand the gravity of certain stories. They lack the understanding of the programs we are using to undermine our enemies' efforts to hurt this nation. And it is no wonder why a fair majority of the nation looks at the New York Times as a treasonous rag. If "Pinch" is lost on that idea--of why his paper is so reviled by mainstream America--then maybe he ought to come down from that high tower of his, and listen to the gripes of average New Yorkers who seem to remember a bright, sunny day five years ago on a Tuesday morning; a morning shattered by death, destruction, and terror of a magnitude not seen in this nation since 1941. And that morning was the beginning of a crucible this nation has to endure to ensure our freedom, our security, and our way of life.
Marcie
Editor And Publisher has a story today about Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, Jr.'s response to the Wall Street Journal for their column slamming the New York Times. The column came on the heels of the revelation of the United States's participation with SWIFT in tracking terrorist's international financial transactions.
After remaining mum for the past week, even as controversy swirled around newspapers' revealing the banking records surveillance program, the Wall Street Journal editoral page weighed in today. Although the Journal published its own story just hours after The New York Times -- which has taken the most heat -- its editorial defended its own action while blasting the Times.
It even included a personal slam at Times' publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. and said the Times did not want to win, but rather obstruct, the war on terror.
Sulzberger responded this afternoon: "I know many of the reporters and editors at The Wall Street Journal and have greater faith in their journalistic excellence than does the Editorial Page of their own paper. I, for one, do not believe they were unaware of the importance of what they were publishing nor oblivious to the impact such a story would have."
Among other things, the editorial criticized the Times for using the Journal as "its ideological wingman" to deflect criticism from the right. And it pointed out that the news and editorial departments are quite separate at the paper and if given the option the editorial side would not have printed the Times' story. Finally, it explained how it got its own story, then slammed the Times for a wide range of sins, claiming that the "current political clamor" is "warning to the press about the path the Times is walking."
Here are a few excerpts.
We recount all this because more than a few commentators have tried to link the Journal and Times at the hip. On the left, the motive is to help shield the Times from political criticism. On the right, the goal is to tar everyone in the "mainstream media." But anyone who understands how publishing decisions are made knows that different newspapers make up their minds differently.
Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn't mind seeing in print. If this was a "leak," it was entirely authorized....
The problem with the Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't. On issue after issue, it has become clear that the Times believes the U.S. is not really at war, and in any case the Bush Administration lacks the legitimacy to wage it.
So, for example, it promulgates a double standard on "leaks," deploring them in the case of Valerie Plame and demanding a special counsel when the leaker was presumably someone in the White House and the journalist a conservative columnist. But then it hails as heroic and public-spirited the leak to the Times itself that revealed the National Security Agency's al Qaeda wiretaps.
Mr. Keller's open letter explaining his decision to expose the Treasury program all but admits that he did so because he doesn't agree with, or believe, the Bush Administration. "Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress," he writes, and "some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight."
Since the Treasury story broke, as it happens, no one but Congressman Ed Markey and a few cranks have even objected to the program, much less claimed illegality.Perhaps Mr. Keller has been listening to his boss, Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who in a recent commencement address apologized to the graduates because his generation "had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government.
"Our children, we vowed, would never know that. So, well, sorry. It wasn't supposed to be this way," the publisher continued. "You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights," and so on. Forgive us if we conclude that a newspaper led by someone who speaks this way to college seniors has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it.
In all of this, Mr. Sulzberger and the Times are reminiscent of a publisher from an earlier era, Colonel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. In the 1930s and into World War II, the Tribune was implacable in its opposition to FDR and his conduct of the war. During the war itself, his newspaper also exposed secrets, including one story after the victory at Midway in 1942 that essentially disclosed that the U.S. had broken Japanese codes. The government considered, but decided against, prosecuting McCormick's paper under the Espionage Act of 1917.
That was a wise decision, and not only because it would have drawn more attention to the Tribune "scoop." Once a government starts indicting reporters for publishing stories, there will be no drawing any lines against such prosecutions, and we will be well down the road to an Official Secrets Act that will let government dictate coverage.
The current political clamor is nonetheless a warning to the press about the path the Times is walking. Already, its partisan demand for a special counsel in the Plame case has led to a reporter going to jail and to defeats in court over protecting sources. Now the politicians are talking about Espionage Act prosecutions. All of which is cause for the rest of us in the media to recognize, heeding Alexander Bickel, that sometimes all the news is not fit to print.
Mr. Sulzberger does a nice attempt to spin out of any crime his paper committed by bringing up the infamous Chicago Tribune stories of the early 1940s. The difference between those stories, and what the New York Times did is simple, yet obviously veiled in too much simplicity for Mr. Sulzberger to comprehend.
The Tribune ran with those stories because of news tips, and solid investigative reporting. The government decided, then, that the release did not severely harm the war effort then, and that their release was accidental, not intentional.
The same cannot be said of the New York Times. In both the NSA program and the SWIFT program, the Times was specifically asked by the administration to not run the story. This was not a case like the Pentagon Papers where the government tried to prevent them from running with the story, but rather they were asked not to run it.
The E & P staff is right to note that there are some stories that should not be printed. The freedom of the press that is explicit under the First Amendment has been twisted by years of wrangling through the courts, and their decisions have emboldened the press to act in a way that the Framers did not envision. The press, now, feels as though it sits above the law, and can, with impunity, print or post whatever it desires without any fear of recriminations. However, as with all freedoms, there comes a responsibility for your actions. The New York Times, in reckless abandonment, has undertaken the idea that they alone serve as the purveyors of what should and should not be classified.
This, in and of itself, is not only wrong, but it is dangerous. As they have exhibited now--twice in six month's time--they do not understand the gravity of certain stories. They lack the understanding of the programs we are using to undermine our enemies' efforts to hurt this nation. And it is no wonder why a fair majority of the nation looks at the New York Times as a treasonous rag. If "Pinch" is lost on that idea--of why his paper is so reviled by mainstream America--then maybe he ought to come down from that high tower of his, and listen to the gripes of average New Yorkers who seem to remember a bright, sunny day five years ago on a Tuesday morning; a morning shattered by death, destruction, and terror of a magnitude not seen in this nation since 1941. And that morning was the beginning of a crucible this nation has to endure to ensure our freedom, our security, and our way of life.
Marcie
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 10:11 AM
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