|
To the Editors:
I’ve been a reader of the Sunday New York Times for many years. I feel tremendous admiration and gratitude toward the vast majority of the folks who help create and support it.
Nonetheless, I'm moved to write you for the first time because I've become deeply concerned that the Times is losing its place for me as a premier source of important, reliable news. I'm one of those who have discovered that I find more, better news on the internet.
This discovery began on November 3, 2004. I’d watched the exit polls the night before and was surprised upon waking to find that the substantial lead John Kerry had enjoyed throughout the previous evening had, by morning, transformed into a lead in favor of George Bush by the same substantial margin. I went to your website looking for an explanation and found the following (verbatim, as quoted in an e-mail to a friend):
Per the New York Times, “surveys of voters leaving the polls .. . . showed Mr. Kerry leading Mr. Bush by as much as 3 percentage points nationally.” Nonetheless, “ith 98 percent of the national vote reported as of 8 a.m. Eastern time , Mr. Bush was leading Mr. Kerry by a margin of 51 percent to 48 percent . . .” (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/politics/campaign/04electcnd.html?hp&ex=1099544400&en=ba992171a995deaf&ei=5094&partner=homepage) <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/politics/campaign/04electcnd.html?hp&ex=1099544400&en=ba992171a995deaf&ei=5094&partner=homepage)> <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/politics/campaign/04electcnd.html?hp&ex=1099544400&en=ba992171a995deaf&ei=5094&partner=homepage)> ).
--so those exit polls were off by as much as 6 percent. Is that an unusually large discrepancy?
Meanwhile, in this same election, the VNS Exit Poll System broke down — the main system that could have provided data to either discount or point toward any tampering. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/05/politics/main528252.shtml) The system that was extensively overhauled after the 2000 election in order to make it more accurate.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/generaltech/article/0,20967,714491,00.html
"Adding to the chaos, one network news reporter has received a tip that mercenary hackers were hired to alter the code of a particular brand of machine so that every 10th vote for Candidate A was recorded as a vote for Candidate B. Meanwhile, in Colorado, another group of hackers is boasting that they stole a box of electronic smartcards used to activate e-voting machines and reprogrammed them to allow multiple votes . . . .”
As my friend replied, “The NYTimes must have deleted the line referred to in the text below that you sent yesterday. You can still access the article, but the line is gone. Did you actually go to the story and see the line? The rug is being vacuumed at the Times I’m afraid.”
From this alone, I did not reach any judgment about the Times.
However, since then, we’ve had two further, very important revelations. One is that Scooter Libby leaked Valerie Plame’s identity to a Times reporter, Judith Miller, well before the election. The other is that well before the election, the Times knew that President Bush ordered the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens in a violation of existing law.
Regarding the leak of Plame’s identity, let me say that I strongly support freedom of the press and everything necessary to ensure that freedom. I regard the fourth estate as the indispensable “watchdog of democracy,” a quasi- fourth branch of government, another “check and balance” essential to ensuring that the government serves the people. Knowledge is power, as they say; without a free press, the people can have no real power. I have no quarrel with journalistic privilege to protect whistle-blowers or other sources within government who seek to hold the government accountable to the people.
But few if any privileges are or should be upheld absolutely and without regard for intentions or consequences. For example, if a patient informs his psychiatrist that the patient intends to cause serious physical harm or death to someone, the psychiatrist is generally considered to have a duty to take action to prevent the harm, even at the risk of violating her patient’s confidence and subjecting her patient to legal consequences.
In the case of Judith Miller, it is clear that the effect of her silence was not to protect a whistle-blower or even to protect a source who was disclosing information that the public has a reasonable right to know. It is, rather, painfully clear that Judith Miller was protecting a source who was violating the law in the hope that she would help destroy a U.S. security asset for purposes that, regrettably, remain to be determined. (The BEST interpretation one can put on it, given the determined dissemination of Plame’s identity to SIX different reporters, is that the disclosure was made for the purpose of wrongly punishing Joe Wilson, a critic of Bush administration foreign policy — a critic whose assessment of the “facts” adduced in support of that policy turned out to be TRUE.)
I’m not sure how subtle this distinction is for the general public — the distinction between protecting a source of information the public has a legitimate right to know and protecting a source who is leaking information in violation of the law and that can only benefit our enemies -- but the distinction should not have been too subtle for the management of the Times.
If Judith Miller had disclosed her source before the election, the reported outcome of the election might have been different, even despite any “hackers . . . hired to alter the code of a particular brand of machine so that every 10th vote for Candidate A was recorded as a vote for Candidate B” or “hackers stole a box of electronic smartcards used to activate e-voting machines and reprogrammed them to allow multiple votes.”
Or perhaps not. But add to that the fact that the Times held back the story about the President’s order that the NSA spy on U.S. citizens in violation of a criminal statute?
The Times appears to have committed credibility seppuku in defense of — what? An administration that deserves it less than any other in my lifetime, including Nixon’s.
The tragedy of this loss — the death of the Times as the beacon of information and enlightenment that I thought I knew it to be — is unfortunately eclipsed by the other tragedies that have resulted at least in part from the Times’ withholding from the people the information they should have had in order to effectively exercise their rights as citizens.
I believe the vast majority of the people who work for or who otherwise support the Times mourn with me. I and many others will stand by and applaud all efforts to bring back the institution we badly need the Times to be.
Sincerely,
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
