I had to read Byron Calame’s public editor column a few times to get the point, which is: Times Executive Editor Bill Keller had implied that he’d delayed the NSA phone story after the last presidential election, but now it turns out that he’d delayed it before the election. But he never saw fit to tell the public that.
Now I bear the brunt of dismissal or ridicule for my harping on the ethic of transparency and journalism today. ‘What,’ some sneer, ’should I have to reveal my shoe size?’ No, I say, this isn’t about jouranlists’ lives as if on reality shows. This is about a culture of transparency that has yet to sweep newsrooms.
The transparency that counts is telling the public anything they should possibly need or want to know about your coverage. And not telling them that you’d delayed what you keep insisting is a blockbuster story about the presidential incumbent before a presidential election qualifies, I’d say, as the kind of thing the public should know.
Keller tries to dismiss this as “old business” and “inelegant wording” but one can’t help but find that disingenuous and unsatisfying. In a culture of transparency, an editor would feel compelled and eager to level with the public and be as clear and forthcoming as possible. I don’t see that.
: Here’s Eat the Press on the revelation revelation. Here’s CaptainsQuarters.
Unfortunately, it does seem that the NYT should apologize one more time for failing to perform its supposed function, that is, delivery to its readers of all the news that they need to make judgments correctly. It failed to do so in reporting White House statements that were not correct, and did apologize.
Failing to report events that should be known in order for White House actions to be judged correctly is just as much of a failure.
While I agree that the NYT’s should have disclosed early on specific details of how long it delayed reporting the NSA story and why, I’m not sure your’ standard of “telling the public anything they should possibly need or want to know about your coverage” is practical. Simply put, there’s not enough space in a newspaper or even on a web site to meet that standard.
Reporters and editors need to use the same standards they use in evaluating what goes into a story — what information is required to help our readers make decisions about their lives. The challenge is for reporters and editors to do some soul searching on when and how much they are part of the story. We must trust reporters and editors to perform this task because there is no third party that can do it.
Reporters and editors have been trained to stay out of the story. That is why transparency is so hard. Perhaps, when a decision is made within a newsroom that the reporting process itself becomes part of the story, a new reporter and editor needs to be brought in to handle the “self examination” element.
Keller lied, and manipulated the news. It would be news for whom he acted.
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