In his article in Slate Jacob Weisberg condemns “a pitchfork-waving mob of talk-show hosts and conservative bloggers†for hyperbole in their reaction to the NYT’s publication of a story last month about a program to monitor international financial transactions and defends the virtue of the NYT, editorial writers, and journalists generally:
Editors at the New York Times and other major American newspapers do not pursue stories of this kind because of animus against the Bush administration or a wish to help terrorists. They struggle mightily with such decisions and often do, in the name of national security, withhold, delay, or modify what they would otherwise publish. The legal basis for prosecuting journalists who reveal classified information is tenuous, and demands to do so betray a fundamental lack of appreciation for the bedrock principle of the First Amendment.
He goes on to expand on why he believes that the reasoning of the Times editors was weak.
The one thing he doesn’t explain is why they published.
I’ve heard a number of explanations: animus, political opposition, the public’s right to know, because they could. I’d like to propose another: economic. The Times editors know their target markplace and the story was enormously appealing to it.
I find Mr. Weisberg’s portrait of newspaper editors as saintly custodians of the nation’s rights doesn’t quite jibe with my own experience of newspapermen (my dad was a newspaper editorial writer; the editors of the big St. Louis newspapers were family friends).
I think Ben Hecht’s character of Walter Burns from The Front Page is a little closer to the mark: get the story, be the first, publish.
The son of a bitch stole my watch!
UPDATE
Jeff Jarvis comments on a group letter from five journalism deans defending the actions of the NYT:
The deans start their piece saying, “It is the business — and the responsibility — of the press to reveal secrets.†I fear that makes it sound as if the only true mission of journalism is to reveal secrets: scoops define journalism.
I’d say that pretty much covers it. Take away the piety and the parsley.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jed Babbin’s take is that the Times is “totally dysfunctional” and is, essentially, completely dominated by Washington editor Jill Abramson and columnist Maureen Dowd.   Where I come from instead of saying “dysfunctional” we usually just say “nuts”. I have no way of knowing whether Babbin’s analysis is right, partly right, wrong, or, uh, dysfunctional.
I continue to think that the Times is just trying to sell newspapers and has correctly taken the temperature of its readers. I suspect that many of them still think that the Rosenbergs were innocent and Alger Hiss was framed.
