Chutzpah Redefined at the Times
 

     The Times evidently sensed a need to respond to last week’s announcement of a Justice Department investigation into who leaked to Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for their scoop on the surveillance of terror suspects.

     Wednesday’s editorial, “On the Subject of Leaks,” attempts to explain how one set of leaks (Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA employee) was very bad, possibly criminal, and certainly worthy of investigation, while another set of leaks (revealing the Bush administration’s surveillance of terror suspects without warrants) was a noble and patriotic deed and should not be questioned. It’s rough going for the paper, and basic logic doesn’t fare well either.

     The pretentious harrumphing is audacious: “A democratic society cannot long survive if whistle-blowers are criminally punished for revealing what those in power don't want the public to know -- especially if it's unethical, illegal or unconstitutional behavior by top officials. Reporters need to be able to protect these sources, regardless of whether the sources are motivated by policy disputes or nagging consciences. This is doubly important with an administration as dedicated as this one is to extreme secrecy.

     “The longest-running of the leak cases involves Valerie Wilson, a covert C.I.A. operative whose identity was leaked to the columnist Robert Novak. The question there was whether the White House was using this information in an attempt to silence Mrs. Wilson's husband, a critic of the Iraq invasion, and in doing so violated a federal law against unmasking a covert operative.”

     The Times claims: “There is a world of difference between that case and a current one in which the administration is trying to find the sources of a New York Times report that President Bush secretly authorized spying on American citizens without warrants. The spying report was a classic attempt to give the public information it deserves to have. The Valerie Wilson case began with a cynical effort by the administration to deflect public attention from hyped prewar intelligence on Iraq.”

     That’s a brutally unconvincing argument, reliant wholly on the reader agreeing with the highly dubious premise that the world (and Al Qaeda) are on a need-to-know basis regarding America’s anti-terrorism surveillance program.
     And as long as the Times is pounding on about “information [the public] deserves to have,” why doesn’t it spare a few sentences to discuss the many whoppers told by Valerie Plame’s spouse Joseph Wilson, the former diplomat whose misstatements falsely attempted to tarnish Bush’s case for the Iraq war? The paper’s coverage has been highly favorable and the paper has yet to dig into Wilson’s long record of  misstatements.

     The editorial’s next sentence: “The leak inquiry in that case ended up targeting the press, and led to the jailing of a Times reporter.”

     An inquiry, of course, that the Times supported fully, right up to the point that it began pointing toward Times reporter Judith Miller.

     The paper ludicrously dares the White House to reveal confidential information to prove that its NSA spy scoop actually hurt national security:
“The White House has yet to show that national security was harmed by the report on electronic spying, which did not reveal the existence of such surveillance -- only how it was being done in a way that seems outside the law.”
The editorial concludes: “Illegal spying and torture need to be investigated, not whistle-blowers and newspapers.” How convenient.

For the full editorial, click here

“Greed Was On Display…” in the Times Executive Suite?
 

     Business reporter/columnist Gretchen Morgenson loves corporate scandals, and she rounds up the year’s greatest hits for an illustrated, above-the-fold story, “The Big Winner, Again, Is ‘Scandalot,’” for Sunday’s Business section year-end wrap-up.

     “Same stuff, different year. That’s one way to look at 2005, the fourth consecutive year in which corporate chicanery loomed large….Greed was on display throughout 2005 as throngs of executives pocketed pay that was even greater than the previous year’s. To hear them talk, they deserved the amounts because -- are you sitting down? -- they enhanced shareholder value. Never mind that many of their companies’ stocks ended the year lower than where they began it.”

     Speaking of corporations that had disappointing stock performances in 2005...

     The New York Observer reports this week: “A year ago -- on Jan. 3, 2005 -- Times stock closed at 47.2. On Jan. 3, 2006, the stock was trading at a day’s low of 26.16.”
 
     Does that mean that Times bigwigs like Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. didn’t pocket any additional pay? Not exactly, says the Observer:

     “According to Times sources, the yearly bonuses -- given to section editors and selected senior staff -- can be equivalent to 20 percent of their salary or even more. Mr. Keller’s memo informed the senior staff that the 2005 bonuses, which will be issued in February, will be lower than the potential maximum. So the real surprise to staffers was, instead, the generous holiday handouts on the paper’s 14th floor. In addition to [Times chief executive Janet] Robinson’s 74,000 shares of free Class A stock, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. received 30,000 shares, worth a bit less than $800,000, plus stock options worth about $4.1 million….The news of executive stock gifts rankled some Times newsroom staffers, who are still smarting from the paper’s layoffs, hiring freeze, reduced expense policy and -- most galling -- the cancellation in December of The Times’ 15 percent discount for employees on stock purchases.”

     So, corporate executives got rich while the (relatively) poor employees lost ground or were laid off?

     It’s a safe bet that this is one expose of a seemingly heartless corporation that won’t be appearing in the New York Times anytime soon.

To read the rest of Morgenson’s wrap-up (TimesSelect $ required), click here

The “Republican Lobbyist” Who Gave Loads to Dems Too
 

     Lobbyist Jack Abramoff cops a plea on three felony counts in Wednesday’s lead story by Anne Kornblut, who writes that “Abramoff, 46, once a prominent Republican lobbyist, accepted a recommended reduced prison sentence of about 10 years in exchange for testifying against former associates in the influence-peddling case.”

     A “news analysis” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Tremors Across the Capital,” hammers in the same description: “As a high-flying Republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff has long been known as a mover and shaker in Washington. But when he cut a deal with federal prosecutors on Tuesday, he shook up this town as never before.”

     The Washington Post had the self-control not to identify Abramoff as a “Republican lobbyist” in its Wednesday coverage. After all, Abramoff money went to prominent Democrats as well, though that has never been trumpeted by the Times.

The Post also ran a useful graph back on December 12, based on FEC data, showing the party breakdown of Abramoff’s giving, with Republicans getting 63.7% of Abramoff money, Democrats, 35.1%, a breakdown of slightly less than 2-1 Republicans-Democrats.

For more Kornblut on Abramoff, click here

For more of Stolberg’s “news analysis,” click here

Cynical Sanger
 

     David Sanger relays his cynicism in Sunday’s “President Uses Vacation to Prepare Agenda for 2006.”

     “For six days, President Bush has stayed in nearly complete isolation on his ranch here -- just mountain-biking and brush-clearing, the White House insisted daily, with only one guest, his mother-in-law, Jenna Welch. He never even ventured into this little town of about 700, not even to the cheeseburger joint that he often uses as a political stage to show that he is in touch with his Texas neighbors.”

     Upon reading this next sentence, the question that comes to mind is, accused by whom?

     “Winning passage of the Patriot Act, however, will be trickier, especially at a moment when the president is accused of circumventing existing law that places checks on the administration's power to trace and monitor calls inside American borders.”

     Perhaps Sanger realized that the wording “the president is accused by Democrats and left-wing activist groups of circumventing existing law…” wouldn’t carry quite the same fearsome effect, so he leaves the identity of Bush’s accusers amorphous.

For more Sanger on Bush and NSA spying, click here