The Public Editor Has a Go

For his first substantive column, the new Public Editor takes on the controversy over the Times article about CIA air operations used to move al Queda suspects.

He frames the piece around one letter complaining about the article, which we are to presume is typical, and the reporter's response. On the one hand that's a positive: it means, as he described the way his approach would work before he began, that responses sent out by reporters to individual readers would now become public. On the other hand, as I see it play out here, it's also a negative.

The letter chosen leans to the strident side. Is it really "typical?" If it is, why choose a typical or average letter rather than the most thoughtful letter available? The reason I mention this is that the letter chosen seems to complain that the article was written at all. It would have been far smarter, I think, to concede the need to write the article, but challenge the justification for putting into the article as many details as the reporters did: that's the debate.

(By the way, notice how both the Public Editor and the reporter justify their actions throughout by virtue of the fact that some of the information had appeared elsewhere. In other words they argue that the Times' role as newspaper of record and most important media outlet is less than we assume it to be. The information has dribbled out in hard to find locations here and there, which is hardly the same thing as putting it on the front page of the Times, yet both men stubbornly pretend that "out is out" so to speak, a position I cannot imagine they actually believe taken to its logical conclusion. As it turns out in the end, in this case the CIA itself agreed. But going on the record with this position seems to be something that they may ultimately regret.)

The reporter's response to the reader defines smarm:

"Perhaps it's the result of my having worked as a correspondent in the Soviet Union for a few years, but I think there's a strong case that excessive government secrecy leads to waste and abuse, and that an aggressive press improves the effectiveness of intelligence agencies in the long run. In this case, if reporters using public information can penetrate these air operations, I suspect foreign intelligence services, or Al Qaeda operatives, would have little difficulty doing so. Our story was based on information from public F.A.A. and corporate records and F.A.A. flight plan data available to all from commercial vendors. Before our story was published, the tail numbers, and photographs, of several of the rendition planes could be found easily via a Google search on the Web.

The gratuitous crack about the former Soviet Union is priceless. It's also no answer, since it assumes there's no middle ground: you either publish the story in the form it appeared, or no story at all.

And, of course, there's the assumption, first that al Queda operatives share the same research skills as American reporters and, second, that whether they do or not, that there's nothing wrong with pulling the information together for them despite the fact that the story could have worked with less detail -- because there's no consideration of the possibility that the story might have worked with less detail.

The letter continues:

"In addition, a summary of the planned story was provided to the C.I.A. several days prior to publication, and no request was made to withhold any of its contents.

"Thank you for taking the time to write."

That's the real answer. As the Public Editor continues:

SENDING a detailed written summary of an article is a slightly unusual step. Usually, the subject of a major investigative effort is provided a list of final questions and a chance to answer them. Did providing the summary go too far? I don't think so, given the possibility that two details that appear unrelated could endanger the life of some intelligence agent. And it didn't give the C.I.A. any veto power over the story.

Since the article was not published until five days after the summary was sent to the agency, the C.I.A. had ample time to protest to the reporting team or to top editors at The Times. But Jill Abramson, a managing editor who was among the top editors who approved of pursuing the project and who later cleared it for publication, said the C.I.A. never made even a "request to discuss" the article before it was published. Nor have there been complaints from the agency since the article was published, she said.

He concludes:

Most of all, though, I think the worst fears of the Times readers who complained about the Aero Contractors article should be eased by the assurance that the C.I.A. had ample opportunity to challenge the publication and didn't do so. The Times had solid reasons to believe it could give readers a broad picture of the growing C.I.A. air operation supporting the rendition program - without hampering the war against terrorism. More broadly, I hope the glimpse into how reporters and editors go about trying to balance the public's right to know and the country's national security needs can offer all Times readers a better basis on which to evaluate future stories of this kind.

Fair enough, but not knowing those specifics, the reaction to the article was neither unreasonable nor irrational.

In other words, the defense of publishing the article (because having an aggressive press is a good thing) is not only a red herring, it's condescending as well. The real debate is over how much detail the article should have had. The "strident" letter is selected not so much because it's "typical" but because it's a useful strawman. And the real defense is a process argument -- that the Times understood the material was potentially damaging enough that they played it conservative, took the unusual step of providing the CIA a prepublication list of the material about to be published.

Everything else in here is boilerplate and fairy dust.

Comments

[The Kid]

In the duel of public editors, the NYT beats the WaPo today, where the focuswas on wing-nuts in general, or the response of wing-nuts to a Dana Milbank column.

That’s all fine, I guess, but the ombudsman gets careless when he writes the following:

I have a different view. The July 23 memo is important because it is an official document produced at the highest level of government of the most important U.S. ally. Its authenticity has not been disputed. Whatever some people said or wrote three years ago, there has never been -- except for this memo -- any official, authoritative claim or confirmation that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Blair denied that at the news conference. But could the secret minutes of such a meeting be wrong? Maybe there's a different interpretation, or maybe "fixed" means something different in British-speak.

Cap’n Ed has found that the provenance of these memos is suspect, the “original” purloined copies were destroyed by the reporter after he retyped them to protect the source.

I write this not to make a political point -- I found the memos to be a fascinating insight into Brit decision-making -- but rather to lament that now the background material of this story is on ground as firm as that of the Rathergate correspondence. Sheesh! What were these journalists thinking?

[The Kid]

Er, I am even more confused.

In the reporter’s defense for the re-typing, via USS Neverdock is a Raw Story analysis which contains the following excerpt from the reporter:

“The situation in Britain is very difficult but with regard to leaked documents the police Special Branch are obliged to investigate such leaks and would have come to the newspaper's office and or my home to confiscate them,” he explained. “We did destroy them because the Police Special Branch were ordered to investigate.”

Now Raw Story does have a decidedly left-of-center orientation; it’s summary of the memos ignores the Brit governments belief at the time that Hussein had WMD was prepared to use them. One can achieve a balance of sorts by reading Kagan column in today’s WaPo.