The Dish

Howell Raines: Ran Whole Lies. (With thanks to a reader with too much time on his hands.)

THE FAMILY DID IT: According to the New York Observer, Howell Raines was despatched by a combination of forces: rebellion at the Washington bureau; the views of Arthur Sulzberger Sr, and Pinch-rival, Michael Golden; the New York newsroom; and the Times board. In a chilling sentence, Sridhar Pappu writes, “In the past few weeks, members of the Sulzberger family were calling Times staffers, hoping to gauge the gravity of the situation there, and to assess the staff’s faith both in Mr. Sulzberger, the publisher, and Mr. Raines.” It may have come down to Arthur Sulzberger Jr’s recognition that if he didn’t despatch Raines and Boyd, the board might think of despatching him. Every day that the crisis continued, the brand suffered. The critical issue wasn’t the Jayson Blair debacle. It was the fact that Raines couldn’t win back the confidence of the news room afterwards. “Howell ruled by fear,” said one source to the Observer. “And when he wasn’t strong enough to rule by fear anymore, he couldn’t rule.” Like all dictators, his fall was sudden, swift and complete.

THE INTERNET DID IT: But something else played a part. Only, say, five years ago, the editors of the New York Times had much more power than they have today. If they screwed up, no one would notice much. A small correction would be buried days, sometimes weeks, later. They could spin stories with gentle liberal bias and only a few eyes would roll. Certainly no critical mass of protest could manage to foment reform at the paper. And the kind of deference that always existed toward the Times, and the secretive, Vatican-like mystique of its inner workings kept criticism at bay. But the Internet changed all that. Suddenly, criticism could be voiced in a way that the editors of the Times simply couldn’t ignore. Blogs – originally smartertimes.com, then this blog, kausfiles.com and then Timeswatch.com and dozens and dozens of others – began noting errors and bias on a daily, even hourly basis. The blogosphere in general created a growing chorus of criticism that helped create public awareness of exactly what Raines was up to. Uber-bloggers like Drudge were able to take that to the mainstream media; and reporter-bloggers like Seth Mnookin picked up the baton. This media foodchain forced transparency on one of the most secretive and self-protective of institutions. It pulled the curtain back on the man behind the curtain. We did what journalists are supposed to do – and we did it to journalism itself.

GETTING THERE FIRST: It’s worth reviewing that the blogosphere was there before the mainstream media caught on and long before the Jayson Blair revelation. First, blogs revealed how many of the NYT’s polls were skewed in the way they presented or spun data. They exposed the anti-Bush fervor of the Enron coverage. Then they broadcast the revelation of how Paul Krugman had once had lucrative former ties with Enron. We exposed blatant lies on the front-page – from allegedly soaring temperatures in Alaska to the fabricated cooptation of Henry Kissinger into the anti-war camp in August 2002. The process was relentless. In the end, even fabulist Maureen Dowd couldn’t get away with doctoring quotes from the president to make a partisan point because a relatively little known blogger caught her, and passed it on. And in all this, we were helped by hundreds of readers who found errors and bias where others didn’t – meta-bloggers, if you will. A reader put it extremely well in this email:

Without the internet, Jayson Blair could not have copied stories from faraway papers while holed up in his crummy Brooklyn apartment. Without the internet, those of us at our desks in the Midwest could not have read Rick Bragg’s outrageous resignation speech in Howard Kurtz’s column in the Washington Post. Without the internet, NYT reporters could not have responded publicly to Bragg’s assertions in their postings on the Romenesko column at Poynter.org. Without the internet, NYT stringers, past and present, could not have responded to those postings with their fruitless pleas for recognition from byline reporters and 43rd Street editors. No part of the byline or attribution scandal would have become public. Without the internet, the chatter on this topic and others would have died down to a dull roar that Howell Raines, Gerald Boyd and Arthur Sulzberger could possibly have ignored for weeks until it subsided, with the collusion of the rest of the (equally guilty) elite media in New York. Now in newspaper journalism, as in so many other traditional industries (real estate, banking, computers, retail sales, airlines, travel, etc.), we see that the internet strips away discretion, power and secrecy. It is very hard to withstand the forced transparency induced by this new technology. It is truly an engine of transformation in our economy and in the way we think and respond to information, and it can bring powerful institutions to their knees.

Exactly. First Lott. Then Raines. And you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This really shouldn’t be a sign of a revolution, but it is. In any other business, Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd would have resigned weeks ago. And a few years ago, they would have been able to ride out the storm, using the Times’ enormous media power to protect themselves. But the Internet has changed things. It means that the errors and biases of the new NYT could be exposed not just once but dozens and dozens of times. It means that huge and powerful institutions such as the New York Times cannot get away with anything any more. The deference is over; and the truth will out. And this is what this campaign was all about. It wasn’t personal pique. I started to criticize the drift of the Raines Times months before he decided to purge anyone at the Times who dissented from his politics and his personal agendas. It was about stopping a hugely important media institution from becoming completely captive to the elite left and a mercurial, power-crazy Southern liberal. Of course, that battle isn’t over. But the massive power-grab that Raines attempted was foiled in the end. And Lelyveld is the perfect interim choice. This is good news – for the media, the Times, above all for the blogosphere, which played a critical part in keeping this story alive – and lethal.

I felt I was out on a limb a little when I predicted that president Bush’s main focus after Iraq would be the Israeli-Palestinian question. But I simply went by what this president actually said, which is often a good indicator of what he will actually do. The key to understanding Bush, I think, is the fact that both Powell and Rumsfeld are confidants. Bush is smart enough to know that the combination is better than either one alone – that another attempt at Israeli-Palestinian peace without desposing Saddam would have been pointless; but that not having a bash after deposing Saddam would be a foolishly wasted opportunity. It still may not work out. But the president deserves credit for trying – and, pace his critics on right and left, for getting the timing right.

One reason I find some of the grand-standing over WMDs increasingly preposterous is that it comes from people who really want to avoid the obvious: more and more it’s clear that the liberation of Iraq was a moral obligation under any circumstances. People say to this argument that if we depose one dictator for these kinds of abuses, where will we stop? But the truth is: very few dictators have resorted to imprisonment or mass killing of children. Saddam’s evil was on a world-historical scale. Ending it was one of the most prgressive things the United States and Britain and their allies have ever done.

THE END OF INFANTICIDE II: I can certainly respect those who do not believe that a first trimester fetus is essentially a human person. But I cannot respect those who are morally untroubled by the hideous procedure of partial birth abortion. In fact I’d go further: one measure of how some pro-choice activists have lost their way is their refusal to see that some restrictions on abortion are indistinguishable from a total restriction on all abortion; and that there is a moral issue here. By the third trimester on, there is an unmistakable human being at stake – visually, intuitively, morally. The awful way in which that human being has its life extinguished in very late term abortions simply shouldn’t be a part of any civilized society. Yes, I know my own abortion position – that it should be legal in the first trimester only – lacks complete moral and political coherence. But it’s a result of trying to balance in my own mind my personal view that all abortion is wrong and my understanding that in a liberal democracy, others sincerely disagree; and in many cases, such disagreement also involves such an intimate decision on the part of a woman that I feel the state is unqualified to intervene. That’s where I am – and where I suspect a lot of people are: uncomfortable, anguished, conflicted. But I see no reason to feel such conflicts about partial birth procedures. If the pro-choice movement eagerly agreed to outlaw these more horrific operations, they would surely have more credibility in arguing for retaining legal abortion in earlier stages. But they won’t, because ideology is trumping reason here. It shouldn’t. The passage of this law represents a huge step forward for humane medicine, whatever your ultimate position on the abortion matter in more general terms.

TICK, TOCK, ARTHUR: Mickey has the odds of Howell Raines’ departure at 70 percent. The arrival of the Howell-o-meter itself pushes the odds to 75 percent.

One of the more remarkable features of the Iraq war was the way in which American and British soldiers cooperated and allied to great effect. In fact, that very triumph points up an obvious fact: there is no practical disadvantage to having a handful of openly gay servicemembers in combat or anywhere else in the armed forces. The Brits did away with the ban a couple years ago; it was a huge non-event; no one even remembers the drama that existed beforehand; and the military is not losing good soldiers (and translators and technicians) because of dumb policy. There are signs that the military leadership itself is beginning to recognize this. Take a look at one of the studies making inroads in military thinking on this matter by one Aaron Belkin. I find it persuasive, and I say that as someone who would not support lifting the ban if I believed for one minute it would harm military efficacy or morale. More and more, I’m reliably told, the military leadership agrees – which may be one reason why under Bush, the number of gay discharges has started to decline.

THE POWER OF BLOGS: Hugh Hewitt says a handful of blogs could have a real impact on the coming election season. I hope so. I have plans to blog from campaigns and from the conventions. And I have a feeling that this election cycle will be the moment that blogs really hit the big time.

STILL ON THE PARK BENCH: Verizon hasn’t managed to fix my phone line so I’m still WiFi-ing from the park bench. Kinda fun, actually. Except the sea-mist can’t be good for the laptop.

Check out their even more grotesque distortion of his words. Look, I’m supportive of a real inquiry into our intelligence on this matter, but so far, there’s no solid proof that any of the Bush and Clinton administration’s claims about Saddam’s WMD program has been debunked. The hysteria about this strikes me as fueled by pent-up frustration by those who were happy to see Saddam’s murderous tyranny continue and were humiliated by the liberation. Their mania is in direct proportion to their humiliation. Hence its intensity.

In the Roanaoke Times and the Sacramento Bee. Even Alterman regrets trusting her ethics. No word yet from the Gray Lady. But then her standards have slipped below these smaller papers.

Slate’s Jack Shafer has been doggedly defending Howell Raines now for months. And part of me admires Jack’s willingness to see things from Raines’ point of view; and, to some extent, he’s right about the current piling on. (Hey, I was piling on before most of the others!) He’s also right not to despise the concept of a rough-and-ready tyrant as editor of a great newspaper. But Shafer now concedes that much of his argument is now moot, given how the NYT staff has simply lost confidence in the executive editor and that the new battery of committees amounts to a kind of suspended abdication at the top. Raines, Shafer argues, is now the NYT’s Nixon in July 1974. There’s really no way forward but out:

Having surrendered his “fear and favor” management tools, how long can Raines lead the newspaper effectively? Imagine the empty joy of running the newspaper holed up like Richard Nixon during the impeachment summer of 1974. Raines might quit next week-like a Roman-to stave off a crisis. Or he might even quit so somebody else can lead the paper back to normalcy where people can do their work instead of attend committee meetings.

Tick, tock, Arthur. Tick, tock.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS ON SPAM: Yes, some of the august members of the British Upper House got a little confused:

Lord Renton asked: “Will the Minister explain how it is that an inedible tinned food can become an unsolicited email, bearing in mind that some of us wish to be protected from having an email?”

No, that wasn’t Monty Python.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “There is left but one simple rule for the new upper crust: by all means prefer victims to oppressors, but always prefer oppressors to true liberators… True liberators, as we can now see, would deprive the world of victims, and thus dry up the supply of peons that constitute the new class’s constituency. This is why, even though the new class disliked Saddam Hussein, they hate Bush infinitely more. Just as Palestinian refugee camps justify the failures and secure the tenure of Arab despots, so the poor and downtrodden of the world justify the ascendancy of the new upper crust. At home, school vouchers are opposed in the teeth of the urban poor that want them, because decent education might help put an end to the urban poor who vote for upper crust leaders. The same goes for the inclusion of privatization in the Social Security portfolio, and any form of tax relief that might result in turning the majority of Americans into owners, and into people too proud to consider themselves victims. And without victims, where would Lady Bountiful be then?” – Frederick Turner, TechCentral Station.

The story about the female Muslim driver who wanted her license photo to be taken with a veil on provoked some wonderful blather from Hitch in Slate. But he can’t out-do reality. Here’s a full faced picture of the same woman, arrested for child battery. No wonder she wants to stay incognito.

THE NYT IN CARTOONS: Hard to beat this one, I’d guess. And, yes, it appeared in the Washington Post.

CORRECTION OF THE WEEK: “In an article on Sidney Blumenthal’s “The Clinton Wars,” Michael Isikoff referred to James Bennet as a friend of Sidney Blumenthal’s. Bennet is not a friend of Blumenthal’s.” – Slate, May 30. Ouch.

More evidence of spin. Here’s a section from the transcript of May 20 Congressional testimony given by Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh on how the Justice Department has contacted libraries in the course of its duties:

REP. CHABOT: Can you tell us how many times, if at all, library records have been accessed under the new FISA standards in the USA PATRIOT Act? And if they have been so accessed, have the requests been confined to the library records of a specified person?
AAG DINH: Mr. Chairman, Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, requires the Department of Justice to submit semi-annual reports to this committee and also to the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate counterparts on the number of times and the manner in which that section was used in total. We have made those reports. Unfortunately, because they occur in the context of national security investigation, that information is classified.
We have made, in light of the recent public information concerning visits to the library, we have conducted an informal survey of the field offices, relating to its visits to libraries. And I think the results from this informal survey is that libraries have been contacted approximately 50 times, based on articulatable suspicion or voluntary calls from libraries regarding suspicious activities. Most, if not all of these contacts that we have identified were made in the context of a criminal investigation and pursuant to voluntary disclosure or a grand jury subpoena, in that context.

{The italics are mine.] Here is how the New York Times reported this testimony the next day:

In the most detailed public accounting of how it had used its expanded powers to fight terrorism, the Justice Department released information today showing that federal agents had conducted hundreds of bugging and surveillance operations and visited numerous libraries and mosques using new law enforcement tools … Such a mingling of intelligence and criminal investigations was largely banned under internal Justice Department procedures that were in place before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 … And agents have contacted about 50 libraries nationwide in the course of terrorism investigations, often at the invitation of librarians who saw something suspicious, said Viet Dinh, an assistant attorney general who briefed members of the House Judiciary Committee on the findings at a hearing today.

Notice the critical distinction here. Dinh specifically said that the library contacts had nothing to do with national security or terrorism. The Times reported that that was precisely the context in which those contacts were made. The question is not whether you believe DOJ or not. I’m as queasy about some of these investigations as anyone. The question is what was actually said at the hearing. The Times, it seems to me, simply and critically misrepresented what Viet Dinh said, to make a point opposite to that in his testimony. The DOJ has subsequently protested the Times’ account. As well they might.

ANOTHER COUNTRY: “I think you may be a little hasty in poo-pooing the Sontag line about imagining you’re not an American. (Hell, for you it’s not even too difficult, is it?) A certain sort of person takes the position that one should not criticize others unless one’s own house is perfectly in order. When thinking about one’s own country this line of thought inevitably leads to a double standard: Judging your own country but reserving judgment on others.
To take my own case, in principle I am an anarchist and in practice I am a mild social democrat. One thing I found when I started thinking of myself as an anarchist (largely to distance myself from socialists) was that I came to view the United States as just another country, and when you put them all on a level playing field with the others it comes off rather well.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.