The Paper That Now Might Wish to be Off-the-Record
It's quite interesting, the ecosystem sometimes labeled the New York Times. Apparently there are not many sharks, piranhas, or other truly nasty predators, at least from the leakage, but there sure are a lot of omnivores or cross-dressers or something. Political shills pretending to report. Editors-in-chief that can't chief (or edit?) but do a great cockroach imitation. Whatever happened to that business about "fit to print"? Reporter Risen has assembled quite a whistleblower story, possibly up there with Watergate, and doesn't seem to fit in too well in my opin with the rest of the compromised NYT crowd. Will he prosper at the "newspaper of record," jump at first chance (LA Times?), or spend the next year or two talking to a grand jury?
This is just the first part of an excellent article - you owe it to yourself to finish it. And possibly buy the book.
the Anti-Woodward
On Tuesday, Jan. 3, New York Times reporter James Risen’s book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, arrived in bookstores.
Usually when a reporter’s book hits the shelves, it’s an occasion to congratulate him for his coverage, and his paper for printing the stories on which the book is based.
This book, which appears to end a multi-week race between The Times and Simon & Schuster’s Free Press to get juicy national-security scoops into print, is different.
It’s the capstone for public criticism of The Times’ decision to sit for more than a year on Mr. Risen’s biggest scoop: the news that the National Security Agency has been conducting warrantless domestic espionage through wiretaps, which the paper finally published in the first of a series of stories on Dec. 16.
What’s more, the book raises the question of how much of Mr. Risen’s material—about W.M.D., for instance—was in The Times’ hands but kept out of print until the arrival of State of War.
The Times’ becalmed post–Judy Miller positioning notwithstanding, it’s hard to imagine the paper’s explanation for its W.M.D. bungle—which was largely attributed to Ms. Miller’s bad sources—holding water if reporting from Mr. Risen was coming in at the same time that tended to contradict her accounts.
Certainly, his reporting on W.M.D. as it appears in State of War does just that.
Call him the Anti-Woodward: Though the Washington Post reporter made famous in the Watergate scandal received information about Plamegate, he kept it from his editors. But Mr. Risen, according to several sources at The Times, couldn’t get his material into the paper fast enough. It’s impossible to tell what material Mr. Risen had on W.M.D. while working the national-security beat in 2002 and 2003. Either way, however, the material he has gathered for this book, while keeping his reporting position at The Times, is some stunning stuff.
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This is just the first part of an excellent article - you owe it to yourself to finish it. And possibly buy the book.
the Anti-Woodward
On Tuesday, Jan. 3, New York Times reporter James Risen’s book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, arrived in bookstores.
Usually when a reporter’s book hits the shelves, it’s an occasion to congratulate him for his coverage, and his paper for printing the stories on which the book is based.
This book, which appears to end a multi-week race between The Times and Simon & Schuster’s Free Press to get juicy national-security scoops into print, is different.
It’s the capstone for public criticism of The Times’ decision to sit for more than a year on Mr. Risen’s biggest scoop: the news that the National Security Agency has been conducting warrantless domestic espionage through wiretaps, which the paper finally published in the first of a series of stories on Dec. 16.
What’s more, the book raises the question of how much of Mr. Risen’s material—about W.M.D., for instance—was in The Times’ hands but kept out of print until the arrival of State of War.
The Times’ becalmed post–Judy Miller positioning notwithstanding, it’s hard to imagine the paper’s explanation for its W.M.D. bungle—which was largely attributed to Ms. Miller’s bad sources—holding water if reporting from Mr. Risen was coming in at the same time that tended to contradict her accounts.
Certainly, his reporting on W.M.D. as it appears in State of War does just that.
Call him the Anti-Woodward: Though the Washington Post reporter made famous in the Watergate scandal received information about Plamegate, he kept it from his editors. But Mr. Risen, according to several sources at The Times, couldn’t get his material into the paper fast enough. It’s impossible to tell what material Mr. Risen had on W.M.D. while working the national-security beat in 2002 and 2003. Either way, however, the material he has gathered for this book, while keeping his reporting position at The Times, is some stunning stuff.
[clip]
posted by Sir Gumbo at 11:09 PM
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