“It is not our place to pass judgment on the legal or civil liberties questions involved in such a program . . .” – Bill Keller, Executive Editor, New York Times
The program referred to by the Times editor, of course, is a presidential order signed in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to spy on hundreds of people inside the U.S. The New York Times knew about the program but, at the request of the White House, delayed reporting on it for a year. So once again the New York Times, like the Washington Post, helped the sneaks instead of helping the public.
Now we know why. Taking Mr. Keller’s statement to its logical conclusion would render it almost impossible for a newspaper to report a case of serial arson. After all, to publish newspaper articles about arson would imply that arson is somehow non-normative or out of the ordinary or, you know, that there might be something wrong about it.
To report links between the Bush team and the Saudi royal family, or assassinations of Iraqi professors under the Coalition Provisional Authority, or financial links between Bush personnel and cronies and relatives and the “war on terror,” or the special arrangements made to fly well-placed Saudis out of the U.S. on and after 9/11, implies a judgment that these phenomena are newsworthy. (As we now know, that is why the big media outlets underreport them.) To report that the Washington Post Company has gained hundreds of millions of dollars in operating revenue through an administration it has been protecting implies a judgment on the newsworthiness of the connection. To report on the anthrax investigation implies a judgment on those anthrax mailings; I still wonder whose handwriting samples have been compared to the writing on the anthrax envelopes. To report that a corrupt branch of one administration sneaks around spying on Americans implies a judgment on the newsworthiness of the sneaking around.
In short, every news judgment is also a values judgment. And every such values judgment is one that could be made, probably with a high degree of consensus, by most members of the public.
Like other Americans, Mr. Keller has a right to be wrong. And it is understandable that Times management is a bit defensive. Like the Post, the Times has aided and abetted policies that have gotten thousands of people killed in this country, in
But our nation is founded on a concept of polity to which the concept of individual judgment is fundamental. It is every citizen’s place to pass judgment on matters like these; anyone can, and everyone should.
Or at least, anyone who has the information in the first place can try to form an informed judgment. Unfortunately, some individuals in government, academia and the media show a propensity to exaggerate the distance between themselves and the simple folk (this phrase comes from the old musical Camelot, which probably influenced our more regressive commentators).
One tactic used in this distortion is withholding information from the simple folk, especially information that the simple folk have shown a disposition to make good use of. (It will be interesting to see how ABC’s defenders of torture, appearing on Sunday programs sponsored partly by First Brother companies, defend this surveillance.) Judgment is as important as information, and people lacking information are not necessarily lacking in judgment. If they were, in other words if the Andy Cards and Dick Cheneys of the world could count on the public to go along with everything they are doing, they would be less secretive.
Current distrust of the press indicates that many people are partly aware of these points. Ironically, Mr. Bush himself has taken advantage of this awareness. In the interests of dominance, he has consistently played down to the oversimplification that someone ignorant, quasi-illiterate and blinkered must be good.
Meanwhile: is anyone surprised, either at the sneaking action by George W. Bush or at the non-disclosure by our biggest newspapers?
Stumble It!