October 22, 2006
OOPS, NEVERMIND:
Banking Data: A Mea Culpa (BYRON CALAME, 10/22/06, NY Times)
Since the job of public editor requires me to probe and question the published work and wisdom of Times journalists, there’s a special responsibility for me to acknowledge my own flawed assessments.My July 2 column strongly supported The Times’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. There were reasons to publish the controversial article, but they were slightly outweighed by two factors to which I gave too little emphasis. While it’s a close call now, as it was then, I don’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.
What makes this an especially amusing example of unbiased media bias is that, while the original story was front page news, this belated recognition comes only after a tidbit about the Times hiring a perfume critic. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 22, 2006 11:04 AM
Yeah, with revenues down 37%, it's time to fess up.
Posted by: ic at October 22, 2006 2:17 PMWell, somebody had to say somthing, and now in hindsight, the Times can say its allowed criticism of its actions to be aired within its own pages, as if a few below-the-fold graphs are equivalent to a front page story plus a series of Page 1 follow-ups on the aftermath of the original reporting.
Posted by: John at October 22, 2006 3:37 PM
My favorite is when these guys say: I know I'm doing a good job when I hear it from both sides.
What?
Pepys:
My favorite was when this chowderhead justified his mistaken defense of the story as a knee-jerk reaction to the vicious[!] criticism from the administration.
"After all, nothing demonstrates your independent cast of mind quite like advertising the fact that you have the exact same political beliefs as all your friends."
Posted by: jd watson at October 22, 2006 7:03 PMMy first thoughts upon reading that article was the Justice Dept may be closing in. A time to start becoming a poor victim of the Vicious critism.
Posted by: Tom Wall at October 22, 2006 7:51 PMI think that 151 page Al Queda manual, probably was the last straw;
Posted by: narciso at October 23, 2006 12:16 AM