PressEthic

The New York Times public editor now says the NYT was wrong to publish information about a secret Bush Administration program to track bank data to prevent terrorists from getting funds.

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. I had mentioned both as being part of “the most substantial argument against running the story,” but that reference was relegated to the bottom of my column.

What explanation does the public editor give for his earlier mistaken judgment?

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.

Eugene Volokh asks:

It is a little odd to see the New York Times as the underdog, even with respect to the Administration (especially the mid-2006 Bush Administration, which was hardly at the peak of its power). But independently of that, could readers please point me to the Administration statements that the editor seems to be referring to as "vicious criticism[s]"? I would genuinely like to be informed about this, since it might provide a better referent for what "vicious" means in political discourse (for instance, for deciding whether particular New York Times columns critical of the Administration are themselves "vicious criticism[s]").

Ed Morrisey writes:

Reading his effort here, Calame makes it clear that the publication of this story amounted to either incompetence or malice; no other explanation works. The Times knew that no laws had been broken, nor did they ever find any evidence that program officials abused the information gathered. The Times used mutually exclusive arguments to answer their critics after its publication; on one hand, they trumpeted the program as a secret that could lead to abuse (which they never found), and on the other they argued that everyone knew about it, including the terrorists. It took Calame almost four months to discover this rather transparent contradiction.

Says Glenn Reynolds:

So the New York Times damaged national security by tipping terrorists off to the existence and nature of a legal program that was not being abused. Remember that the next time they declare their own fitness to be trusted with national security decisions.

I think Calame deserves credit for reversing himself after becoming convinced that he'd made a mistake. It isn't an easy thing for someone under as much public scrutiny as he is to do.