The New York Times’ executive editor responds to the WSJ’s scathing editorial regarding the press complicity with intelligence leaks. He starts off by denying the existence of political bias in the media, and then proceeds to exhibit the very bias he denies.

In the body of Bill Keller’s defence he writes:

Among the suspects swept up and summarily convicted in your argument are: a) government officials who have disclosed secret doings of the government (with the exception of President Bush, whose leak-authorizing somehow escapes your notice); b) reporters and editors at the New York Times and Washington Post for reporting on these secret doings–notably the detention of terror suspects in CIA facilities in Europe and eavesdropping on Americans without warrants; and c) the Pulitzer Board, which honored both of those journalistic exploits last week.

I leave to others, including the court of public opinion, whether the government officials who spoke to reporters about secrets that troubled them were partisan evildoers, as the Journal contends, or conscientious public servants, or something more complicated.
Interesting how he accuses the WSJ of “summarily convict(ing)” the Times, then proceeds in the next line to categorically declare “secret doings” of the Administration such as the detention of terror suspects in CIA facilities in Europe, and eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

The last I checked, the first “secret doing” may not even have taken place. As for the second point, assuming for the moment one agrees that counter-terrorist surveillance carried out pursuant to statute is a secret doing, any rational, impartial observer would agree that it involves “something more complicated” than merely eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

As for Keller equating Bush’s constitutionally sanctioned right to release information he deems to be in the public’s interest with a CIA officer violating her oath of office (and perhaps one or more laws) as well his suggestion that the latter may be merely an act of a “conscientious public servant”, I leave it to the court of public opinion to decide whether such statements arise out of genuine ignorance of the legal and ethical obligations of CIA members regarding classified information, or are merely the result of blinding bias.

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