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

[wigcon]

If the Post can have Novak why not have Kristol. Read something else if you need substance.

[YouThinkAndTalk]

So, what is the NYT going to do? It doesn't matter a bit what editors think, mistake or not, but what matters is what they do.

Are they going to fire Kristol? Or he will stay there so we can have another endless debate about him and the NYT.

I had enough/

[doodlefarbe]

- "... the most elite audience in the nation"

Hmmm...


Damme, here I find humble me part of the "most elite" audience in the nation.

Then again, I guess every population still must have someone on the left of the bell curve.

Still, to be identified as at least one of the worst of the best is gratifying.

Danke.


(Ouch! Dangit; bit me tongue).


As for the current "revelation" on Mr. Kristol's hiring, a RESOUNDING DUH comes to mind.

[A Meat Beetle]

Hiring Kristo was a mistake? hell, giving birth to Kristol was a mistake. Shame on his mother!

[hdohighdesertobserver]

I rather like having Kristol at the NYT where I can KEEP AN EYE ON THE LYING WARMONGERING BASTARD as he spews his dis- and misinformation.

[robotfog]

if i had the money, i'd start a publication with no ties to corporate criminals

but i is just a poor dope

[skindoggy]

I think it is a great idea to hire Kristol...­Put him on the front page every time he spews his incompetent, neocon talking points. The whole world will see just what a boob he is. He has not been right about any single prognostication or postion that he has taken on behalf of the goobers in basement of the West Wing that are bent on a permanent US presence in the Middle East. (sorry for the insult to goobers).
Skindoggy

[Aanya]

William Kristol is an original signature of PNAC. As early as the mid 1990s, the members of PNAC were petitioning President Clinton to go into Iraq and take hold of the regional oil. Kristol is a PNAC'er with blood on his hands and a complete "conflict of interest" and should have been vetted a little closer before being put in an editorial position at the NYT. He doesn't seem to realize that most of us in this country who know how illegally Bush took us to war, also know his part in the entire fiasco!

[bryantim]

Everyone who can think know the media is totally controlled and the mass of people are told what to think. Just look at the election, Fox News doesn't like Ron Paul's message of ending the war and welfare state so they kept him out of the New Hampshire debates. For this act of undermining our freedom to choose our leaders, Fox News management should each receive 100 lashes with a wip and then they should each be expelled from this country.

[Nonamnesiac]

Good post.

It is not just the Sulzbergers. The mainstream media is simply the propaganda arm of the corporations that own them -- and always has been.

It amazes me that even after something as obvious as The Times hiring the lying, outright stupid, warmongerer Kristol -- an ally of theirs in lying the American people into invading Iraq --that people act as if it's shocking -- evidently deluding themselves into believing the media is neutral.

[JohnJames]

Any chance Kristol would have been considered for the job if he weren't a Jew? I don't think so. It's only been a few years since Safire was retired from the opinion pages - and confined to his goofy and ill-informed commentary on the English language - and once again we have another pseudo-intellectual whose main concern in life is Israel, Israel, Israel.

[AnnoyedCanuck]

"This is not a person I would have rewarded with a regular spot in front of arguably the most elite audience in the nation."

This quote jumped out at me. Maybe the problem with the Times is its self-appointed role as the media organ of "the most elite audience in the nation".
Is America not a democracy? And does the news media, the vital so-called fourth estate, no longer have a duty to tell the truth about how the people are governed regardless of the opinions, prerogatives and interests of the "elites"? What "elite audience" are we talking about here? And why should the news and editorial content of the Times be tailored to fit its biases?
Once upon a time, the Times bravely published the Pentagon Papers, which told the hidden story of Vietnam. The Nixon administration, the military-industrial complex and the conservative establishment of the day (the "elites" who launched the failed war in Indochina) howled and fought back. The Supreme Court came down on the side of the peoples' right to know, and democracy was the stronger for it.
Thirty-five years later, the Times chose to sit on the story of Bush's illegal warrantless wiretapping operation for more than a year, at the president's request, ostensibly in the interest of national security. This shameful act withheld vital facts from the people which may well have altered the outcome of the 2004 election.
Whose interest was served by this? That of the people, or the conservative elite behind the failed war in Iraq, which has consolidated its power over the media and government since the days of the Pentagon Papers?
Hiring Kristol was no mistake. It is yet one more sign, as if one more were needed, that the Sulzbergers have become complicit with their "elite audience" in the deceit and manipulation of the people.

[mageduley]

Hiring Bill Kristol was a mistake -

I have only one word for that statement

DUH!

[gappytoofcondi]

Just call hiring him a glitch. Then, "fix" it.

[flatus]

The real problem with hiring a corporate stooge like Kristol is that too many people can still be fooled by an opinion just because they see it in print.