Buried toward the end of NYT Public Editor Byron Calame's Sunday article was this little gem:
Since the job of public editor requires me to probe and question the published work and wisdom of Times journalists, thereÂ’s a special responsibility for me to acknowledge my own flawed assessments. My July 2 column strongly supported The TimesÂ’s decision to publish its June 23 article on a once-secret banking-data surveillance program. After pondering for several months, I have decided I was off base. While itÂ’s a close call now, as it was then, I donÂ’t think the article should have been published.
Those two factors are really what bring me to this corrective commentary: the apparent legality of the program in the United States, and the absence of any evidence that anyone’s private data had actually been misused. I had mentioned both as being part of “the most substantial argument against running the story,” but that reference was relegated to the bottom of my column.
In addition, I became embarrassed by the how-secret-is-it issue, although that isnÂ’t a cause of my altered conclusion. My original support for the article rested heavily on the fact that so many people already knew about the program that serious terrorists also must have been aware of it.
But critical, and clever, readers were quick to point to a contradiction: the Times article and headline had both emphasized that a “secret” program was being exposed. (If one sentence down in the article had acknowledged that a number of people were probably aware of the program, both the newsroom and I would have been better able to address that wave of criticism.)
| In essence, this was not an apology for printing the article. This is more like 'I'm embarrassed by the shoddy product the newsroom put out". |
What kept me from seeing these matters more clearly earlier in what admittedly was a close call? I fear I allowed the vicious criticism of The Times by the Bush administration to trigger my instinctive affinity for the underdog and enduring faith in a free press — two traits that I warned readers about in my first column.
| The job of the Public Editor is to objectively consider all criticism of his paper - regardless of source. It did not happen here. |
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