I Was Wrong, but Only Slightly Wrong
Byron Calame tries to sneak in an apology for the treasonous behavior of himself and his co-conspiritors on the NY Times in Can ‘Magazines’ of The Times Subsidize News Coverage? - New York Times. Now, if you look at that title, and at the first two thirds of the article you’d think it was one of those smarmy fluff pieces about the magazines and special sections of the newspaper. I got a little excited when I saw the quotations around "balance near the bottom of the first page… until I read the next sentence:
The other involves Mr. Keller’s call for “balance,” and convinces me he truly values core coverage. If the magazine sections are generating advertising revenue to support “a really high-class culture department, then I’ll feel like things are in balance,” he said.
Nevermind. It wasn’t about balanced presentation of news and opinions (they are supposed to be different things, you know). Then in the last third of the article, on page two, after he’s lost all but the die-hard print reading fanatics, who’ll read anything on newsprint, he gets around to saying he sort of, kinda, just barely missed making a good decision. Now, that decision is one of those unrevokable ones - you know, like deciding not to remain a virgin or something else that’s a one way gate, no turning back sort of decision. Mr. Calame explains:
The reasons not to take this irrevokable step slightly outweighed the reasons not to do so. And what tipped him over the edge? Why, his: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.
He wanted to strike back because that mean old administration had called his paper names. Oh, wait, they didn’t do that? Well, then they criticized the Times for arrogating to themselves the authority to declassify and expose a legal and secret surveillance program that had served the US citizens (not the government, folks!) to protect them from the harmful intent of our enemies.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.
So, with this kind of well balanced, considerate of the consequenses thinking, we should let the Times decide what to do with information they want to publish.
Calame and Keller shouldn’t resign. They should be fired! They should have to go to court to defend themselves against treason - using the same kind of self-serving logic Calame spews out in this post. One comment in particular stands out:
This is said in regard to the fact that the program was secret, yet the Times saw fit to write about it where the enemy could see. It seems that Mr. Calame thinks that if more than three people know something in the federal government, then everyone should have a right to know! Using that logic, shouldn’t we all know who the Times’ sources are for these illegal disclosures?(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.)
(h/t The Anchoress)
