NY Times Preens Over Publishing Stolen Cables, But Was Snooty Over Swiped Climate-Gate Email
Some document leaks are more equal than others.
The New York Times, along
with other media outlets, on Monday published excerpts from the latest
stolen document dump from WikiLeaks - sensitive American diplomatic
cables, mostly from the last three years, discussing nuclear and terror threats. "Leaked Cables Offer a Raw Look Inside U.S. Diplomacy" was the headline over Scott Shane and Andrew Lehren's story, which dominated Monday's front page.
Why did the Times publish confidential security information, and not for the first time? (Don't forget the paper's irresponsible scuttling of an anti-terrorism bank surveillance program in June 2006). A related "Note to Readers" from Executive Editor Bill Keller explained:
Of course, most of these documents will be made public regardless of what The Times decides. WikiLeaks has shared the entire archive of secret cables with at least four European publications, has promised country-specific documents to many other news outlets, and has said it plans to ultimately post its trove online. For The Times to ignore this material would be to deny its own readers the careful reporting and thoughtful analysis they expect when this kind of information becomes public.
But the more important reason to publish these articles is that the cables tell the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money...As daunting as it is to publish such material over official objections, it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.
Keller invited readers to weigh in at askthetimes@nytimes.com.
While
the Times managed to overcome whatever qualms it had against running
pieces of the diplomatic correspondence, bloggers like Scott Hinderaker
at Powerline
remembered the paper's quite different reaction to another trove of
sensitive and damning emails - the controversy that came to be known as
Climategate.
In November 2009, former Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin
snootily informed readers of his nytimes.com blog that he would not be
publishing the raw emails: "The documents appear to have been acquired
illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements
that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted
here. But a quick sift of skeptics' Web sites will point anyone to
plenty of sources."
While Revkin provided a link to skeptics on his blog,
his front-page story on Climate-gate only relayed excerpts from the
emails. By contrast, the Times ran raw data from 14 leaked cables in the
print version of its massive story on Monday.
Max Boot at Commentary accused the Times of a double standard, and challenged the newspaper to publish its own internal correspondence just as it did that of the government:
I wondered why, if the Times believes that openness is so important to the operations of the U.S. government, that same logic doesn't apply to the newspaper itself. The Times, after all, is still, despite its loss of influence in the Internet age, the leading newspaper in the U.S. and indeed the world. It still shakes governments, shapes opinions, and moves markets, even if it doesn't do so as often or as much as it used to.
- Clay Waters is director of Times Watch. You can follow him on Twitter.
