National Review: Pull NY Times Press Credentials

Updated 1.07 pm Pacific
In the wake of the latest report (monitoring international funds transfers) about NSA privacy invasions made in the name of fighting terrorism, the National Review is calling on the White House to revoke press credentials for the New York Times.

The National Review diatribe against the NYT also completely ignores an inconvenient fact: this story broke "almost simultaneously on the Web sites of New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal." (emphasis added)

And nevermind that the NYT held the first NSA wiretapping story -- at the request of the White House -- long enough for the President to be re-elected without public scrutiny of the program. (And has not been prosecuted, merely tongue-lashed.) Or that the latest report on domestic NSA wiretapping was broken by USA Today. The only evil paper is the NYT.

The NR editorial attacks "disgruntled leftists in the intelligence community" as well as "antiwar crusaders in the mainstream media" and specifically calls the NY Times "arrogant." Hmmm. The WSJ is now an "antiwar crusader"? I think not. Makes for good "stir up anger in the base" rhetoric, though.

However, the National Review joins in only one part of the chorus; it's not the lead singer. On Sunday (on FOX), Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called for criminal charges to be brought against the NYT, the LAT and the WSJ.

International Impact
At least one European head of state -- in Belgium -- was unaware of the program and has called for an investigation to determine if state laws were broken. Belgium's central bank is "head of SWIFT's oversight body... SWIFT is owned and controlled by nearly 8,000 commercial banks in 20 countries. The U.S. Treasury subpoenaed data from it to get information on wire transfers and cash movements into and out of the United States."

For its part, SWIFT contends it was properly responding to subpeonas: "SWIFT responded to compulsory subpoenas for limited sets of data from the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury... SWIFT received significant protections and assurances as to the purpose, confidentiality, oversight and control of the limited sets of data produced under the subpoenas. Independent audit controls provide additional assurance that these protections are fully complied with."

President Bush, at the close of a press conference Monday, calls the reporting "disgraceful." Recall that the last time, during "war," that a Republican president got huffy about the NYT reporting ... the subject of the anger was the Pentagon Papers, which "detailed government deceptions about United States policy in Vietnam dating back to the administration of President Harry Truman."

Editorial and Blogosphere Reaction
Like the NR, Captian's Quarters takes the NYT to task ... but fails to note WSJ complicity in undermining Administration anti-terror tactics.

Editor and Publisher reports that Press Secretary Tony Snow was unable to explain why the Administration had NOT asked the WSJ not to publish, as it had asked the NYT and the LAT. "Journal spokesman Robert Christie said he knew of no effort by the administration to halt his paper's story prior to publication."

Interestingly, by asking the NYT to wait to publish, the White House got three major media outlets developing their own versions of a story critical of the White House. The triple blow should have resulted in more credibility than if the NYT had been out front, all alone, as it was with the original NSA wiretapping story.

Dan Froomkim writes: "President Bush and his allies have escalated their ongoing battle with the media to nuclear proportions.... not once has the White House definitively answered this question: How are any of these disclosures actually impairing the pursuit of terrorists? ... Terrorists already knew the government was trying to track them down through their finances, their phone calls and their e-mails. Within days of the Sept. 11 attacks, for instance, Bush publicly declared open season on terrorist financing."

Accusing the press of being unpatriotic is S.O.P. for contemporary Republicans. Research data from Pew suggest that Republicans believe that traditional media lean left. (Lots of academic research suggest the opposite.) From the Houston Chronicle,

While other newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, printed details of the program, Bush singled out the New York Times for censure, arguing that the newspaper's disclosure makes it harder for the administration to fight terrorism.

"It's a nice political opportunity, and the Times is a target among their base," said Dennis Simon, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. "The ardent conservatives in the Republican Party believe in biased mainstream media, and at the top of that list is the New York Times. So this is good politics for them."

And a reporter writes at Blogcritics:

[T]he reader is left with a news story, broken by a newspaper, unpopular with the Bush administration, which exposes a secret government program, for which no one will be prosecuted.

Bravo.

This reporter will not state any agreement or disagreement in principle with the publication of secret information. However, it is the job of the free press to hold a democratically elected government accountable to its people, with the best and most vigilant efforts, self-guided by ethics. I do believe that the publication of this story about surveillance of international banking records is good for the public relations efforts of the mainstream media.

Two Editors Reply
Both the LAT and the NYT have publicly stated why they published the story. The WSJ has not. The editor of the Los Angeles Times explains:

We sometimes withhold information when we believe that reporting it would threaten a life. In this case, we believed, based on our talks with many people in the government and on our own reporting, that the information on the Treasury Department's program did not pose that threat. Nor did the government give us any strong evidence that the information would thwart true terrorism inquiries. In fact, a close read of the article shows that some in the government believe that the program is ineffective in fighting terrorism.

In the end, we felt that the legitimate public interest in this program outweighed the potential cost to counterterrorism efforts...

This newspaper has done much hard-hitting reporting on terrorism, from around the world, often at substantial risk to our reporters. We have exposed terrorist cells and led the way in exposing the work of terrorists. We devoted a reporter to covering Al Qaeda's role in world terrorism in the months before 9/11. I know, because I made the assignment.

But we also have an obligation to cover the government, with its tremendous power, and to offer information about its activities so citizens can make their own decisions. That's the role of the press in our democracy.

The founders of the nation actually gave us that role, and instructed us to follow it, no matter the cost or how much we are criticized. Thomas Jefferson said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." That's the edict we followed.

And Bill Keller writes for the NY Times (formatting changed):

The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy.

Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough.

After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration's claims about the Iraqi threat.

The question we start with as journalists is not "why publish?" but "why would we withhold information of significance?" We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so....

Our decision to publish the story of the Administration's penetration of the international banking system followed weeks of discussion between Administration officials and The Times, not only the reporters who wrote the story but senior editors, including me. We listened patiently and attentively. We discussed the matter extensively within the paper. We spoke to others — national security experts not serving in the Administration — for their counsel...

It's not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don't know about it.

Note: The New York Times owns About.com. However, the NYT has no editorial oversight over the contents of this site, US Politics.

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