In the March 11 Sunday New York Times, public editor Byron Calame upbraided his paper for waiting six days to acknowledge the Post’s Walter Reed exposé. Calame also noted that, in 2006, the Times took two months to acknowledge Time magazine’s report that Iraqi civilians had been massacred by US soldiers in Haditha, even refusing to run a 1200-word Associated Press follow-up. “Excessive pride, I believe, is the fundamental problem,” Calame wrote. “The desire to be first with the news still permeates the newsroom at the the Times and other newspapers.”If Calame can change the Times’ habits in this regard, he’ll deserve a medal. “The Times has been so dominant in so many ways that the idea is, ‘It’s not news unless it’s in the Times,’ ” says Bob Phelps, a former editor of the Times’ Washington, DC, bureau. “What they’ve got to realize is that for many years now — certainly since Watergate, but even before that — the threat posed by the Times as a national paper has been so great that other papers have improved . . . the Times is going to get beat on some stories, and in a sense it’s responsible for its own predicament.”
Victor Navasky, the publisher emeritus of the Nation, recalls one instance when a Nation reporter, poised to publish a scoop, brokered a deal: the Times could write a story based on his work as long as the Nation was credited. When the Times story ran, however, the Nation wasn’t mentioned. Navasky wrote a private letter of complaint to the Times. The editor who responded agreed that the Nation had been wronged, but added that it was a moot point now — and that the Times reporter had added new information to the story. “It’s this kind of institutional false-pride factor that shouldn’t be operative anymore,” says Navasky.
Related:
Lapdog, meet watchdog, Your ombuddy, Preaching to the choir, More 
- Lapdog, meet watchdog
Hating the media has long been a popular pastime. But after the invasion of Iraq four years ago, anti-press animus reached a new level of intensity on the left. Feast or famine: Jack Shafer defends the press pre-Iraq. By Adam Reilly
- Your ombuddy
Part internal-affairs cop, part complaint department, American news ombudsmen are truly a unique breed.
- Preaching to the choir
Despite the curious omission of the Phoenix, that bastion of liberal, progressive, alternative news, The Nation's Guide to the Nation (Vintage) mostly lives up to its stated goal of being " a kind of collage of the Left.
- Blue (-Eyed) Devils?
Once the sensational Duke University rape case — with its irresistible brew of race, class, and sex — triggered the predictable media circus, an equally predictable chorus of earnest-sounding criticism began to roll in.
- Holy terror?
On the afternoon of November 5, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan walked into a building at Fort Hood, the sprawling military base in central Texas; sat briefly in solitary silence; and then opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol, shooting roughly a hundred rounds and killing 12 soldiers and one civilian.
- The Devil and Dick Cheney
Dick: e ver since you shoved your fall guy, Scooter, off the political cliff, I simply cannot get in touch with you.
- Drive free or die
Reporter Mark Leibovich offered a parenthetical aside on a brush with former Massachusetts governor and would-be president Mitt Romney’s security detail.
- The conspiracist
“Assassination-conspiracy theorist” is a relatively recent addition to Paul Kuntzler’s résumé. Watch Paul Kuntzler on the JFK assassination
- Collateral damage?
Was Hasan suffering from PTSD?
- Silent treatment
When next year’s Pulitzer finalists are announced, the Washington Post ’s coverage of dismal conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center will almost certainly make the list. But did the Post actually break the story? The deadliest sin: The Times' blind eye. By Adam Reilly
- Less
Topics:
Media -- Dont Quote Me
, Walter Reed, Byron Calame, Victor Navasky, More
, Walter Reed, Byron Calame, Victor Navasky, Bob C. Phelps, Less
