NYT Public Editor: Hiring Kristol "A Mistake"

When we broke the news that Bill Kristol would be joining the editorial pages of the New York TImes as a regular contributor, we called it "a move bound to create controversy." After a mistake-laden first effort, now the New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt has delivered his verdict: "[NYT Publisher] Sulzberger and [editorial page editor] Rosenthal made a mistake." Hoyt's reasoning:

On Fox News Sunday on June 25, 2006, Kristol said, "I think the attorney general has an absolute obligation to consider prosecution" of The New York Times for publishing an article that revealed a classified government program to sift the international banking transactions of thousands of Americans in a search for terrorists.

Publication of the article was controversial -- my predecessor as public editor first supported it and then changed his mind -- but Kristol's leap to prosecution smacked of intimidation and disregard for both the First Amendment and the role of a free press in monitoring a government that has a long history of throwing the cloak of national security and classification over its activities. This is not a person I would have rewarded with a regular spot in front of arguably the most elite audience in the nation.

Read Hoyt's entire argument here.

Comments

[leftLibertarian]

File Lil' Billie Krisol under Chicken Hawk.

[LittleGreenGreaseBalls]

Howard Kurtz
Washington Post
January 28, 2002

Pundits Sponsored by Conservative Philanthopies Also On Enron Payroll
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47180-2002Jan27.html

Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, was paid $100,000 for serving on an Enron advisory board over two years. In November, the Standard disclosed his service in a largely positive article about Enron by contributing editor Irwin Stelzer, who served on the same advisory board, which was assembled by former CEO Kenneth Lay.

[doneflyin]

Bottom line, hiring Billy-gimme more war, more killing-Kristol must have been nepotism.

Billy needed a paycheck so he had some powerful friend or friends call in some chips.

Nothing else makes any sense. I don't see how it will sell any more papers.
I won't being buying anymore papers and I've read The Time for decades.
I don't think that I will be the only one.

[Dvmx]

Big Big Mistake. Why on earth hire the guy who tried to get espionage charges brought against the NYT for doing an important public service? Something weird there.
Kristol is a horrible toxic creep that contributes only stupidity and poison to American discourse. After Judith Miller, you'd think the Times would be more careful. Safire was bad enough, a big enough fool in his own right. Kristol is in a whole other league.
I stopped buying the paper. I don't want the physical traces of that creature in my house in any form. Too bad.
SM

[HanFeiTzu]

You can always correct the "mistake" by terminating him immediately with recommendation to extradite him to the Iraq frontline. Just so he doesn't feel too defenseless give him a pistol.

I'm sure he'll be welcomed with parades and roses. Just what he deserves.

[hmmmmm]

Can anyone ever imagine Bill Kristol saying he was: “grandly, gloriously, egregiously wrong” on the Iraq war?

Mr. Kristol, until you do, you are no William Saffire.

[fisharefreinds]

The NYTimes is the only game out there right now and it is not a liberal paper--despite all the Hoopla form the rest of the "fake press" that contends otherwise. Fox has been very successful at biting away at this papers integrity for years; and their trying to appease this monster is and has been the NYTimes biggest mistake. Fox wants the NYTimes dead and giving it credibility on the papers board with Kristol? what a sad day. Get rid of Kristol. Don't think that buy making this paper "fair and balanced" by Fox's standards, the boogeyman will go away. Just the NYTimes that I loved reading growing up will; and this paper that has NOT reported anything crucial to the American people in 10 years. Like Bushs sham elections or his 2000 robbery of this country. His "privatization" of our government and plans to sell America. The NYTimes is being shamed because it has left behind its voice of "all the news." It has left behind us. Write the truth and advertisers will come. Please don't go the way of Fox for Fox.

[eggman]

Whoever told NYT that hiring Kristol was the worst mistake ever hasn't been reading the paper. The words "worst mistake ever" have to be followed or preceded by the words "Judith Miller."

[Baggaratz]

No one has mentioned an extremely important fact about Kristol: his criminal involvement as a member of Enron's board of directors. Has there been an investigation into when he dumped his Enron stock? What did Kristol know and when did he know it?

Meanwhile the Times hires this guy because they're looking for a differing opinion on their op ed page? That's like hiring John Gotti to write for them prior to his early'90's murder trial. Oh, wait a minute, Gotti was small time compared with Kristol. What's 10 murders and a couple of million dollars pocketed through racketeering compared with tens of thousands dead in Iraq or billions of dollars looted from honest hard working people?

[lungfish]

I don't think that hiring Kristol was a mistake. If controversy sells papers then it isn't a mistake - that is the cynical view.
My personal view is that the Neocons and the PNAC folks successfully snuck in under America's "common sense radar" and did a hell of a lot of damage in the process.

Using buzzwords like "NeoConservative" and other tricks they convinced a large part of the nation (and the GOP) that they were exactly that - conservative. Everyone was taken in by these ploys including the vote for Authorization of Military Action against Iraq... repeatedly legislators cautioned that they weren't supporting an assault on Iraq but as soon as the authorization cleared Congress the President gave marching orders that supported a plan to attack Iraq that existed from the begining of the Presidency and probably well before that...

We almost did it again with Ron Paul - if you actually read any of the essays and docs attributed to him and his publications over the years you would see a very frightening and dangerous man with extreme beliefs. It was the exposure of those beliefs last week by journalists that probably facilitated his withdrawl.­..

If we want to know what the dangers of any particular movement are, it is helpful to let them speak out to know what they are thinking and make informed judgements.
If these guys make idiots out of themselves in the process, so what?

[KeysDan]

Mr. Hoyt seemed to be writing with one eye on his computer and the other on the NYT front office. He did not think Mr. Kristol should have been hired and, after all, the employment agreement is only for one year. What closed the deal for Mr. Hoyt was that Mr. Kristol has, in the past, attacked the NYT. However, of the over 700 comments opposing the Kristol appointment, he selected one from a guy that seemed unhinged, when he could have picked a carefully reasoned one that raised points such as if you really think you need another conservative, find one that is smart and one that has a track record of being right at least 25 per cent of the time, a stellar performance for a conservative.

[JulieSA]

Hoyt makes some good points, like this one:

"Rosenthal’s mail has been particularly rough. “That rotten, traiterous [sic] piece of filth should be hung by the ankles from a lamp post and beaten by the mob rather than gaining a pulpit at ANY self-respecting news organization,” said one message. “You should be ashamed. Apparently you are only out for money and therefore an equally traiterous [sic] whore deserving the same treatment.­”

Kristol would not have been my choice to join David Brooks as a second conservative voice in the mix of Times columnists, but the reaction is beyond reason. Hiring Kristol the worst idea ever? I can think of many worse. Hanging someone from a lamppost to be beaten by a mob because of his ideas? And that is from a liberal, defined by Webster as “one who is open-minde­d.” What have we come to?"

[bitabingbitabangbitaboom]

The MSM is "Monkey See Monkey Do" although the Saturday edition of the NYT is a treat.

Viva Craigslist!

[realpolitic]

The only positive I can see from this very unfortunate event is that Kristol may confront a mainstream audience for the first time in his life. I am sure he will get countless letters stating what people think of him and his fascist tendencies.

As with many former administration hacks, including Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez, who now encounter student audiences and other groups who boo and turn their backs toward them when they speak, perhaps Kristol will see for the first time what clear thinking Americans think of his love of warfare with the blood of their sons and daughters.

Of course, these reactions will not change Kristol's mind, but perhaps only for a second they will make him take a look in the mirror. But I doubt he is capable of even this minor appraisal. He just wants war too badly!

[mivogo]

I am not a big fan of Bill Kristol, but it's obvious most of these posters would have a heart attack if the Times hired any real conservative (no, David Brooks is not one)

A truly open minded person could read the Nation and the National Review and be the better for it.
When you only hear from like-minded people, you become a self-rightous true believer, whether on the left or right--and we have way too many of those!