By the New York Media Circle
If the United States is the most powerful nation on the globe, and if its cultural power is more and more evident around the globe, then it may be of more than local interest when the country's most powerful newspaper — a cultural force in its own right — scolds itself for poor judgment in handling a big, international story.
That's what The New York Times, proud flagship of American journalism, did on September 26 in an extraordinary self-critique. Later called an "assessment," it simply appeared without warning or precedent on Page 2 one Tuesday morning, obliquely titled: "From the Editors: The Times and Wen Ho Lee."
What followed was a long, windy, guarded review of how the newspaper had allowed itself to be misled by government sources and had failed to be skeptical enough in a case involving nuclear secrets. A Chinese-American
scientist, Wen Ho Lee, had been accused and indicted for stealing classified material from a government weapons lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Suspicions were that he had passed on the secrets to China, an explosive charge, especially since Lee is an immigrant (from Taiwan.)
Lee was held without bail under severe deprivation while the government prepared its case, much of which appeared on the front page of the Times, attributed to "sources." Asian-American groups suspected racial bias in the treatment of Lee, as Siva Vaidhyanathan does here. Critics in the press questioned the reporting path taken by the Times. But it continued. Not only Times reporters, but editorial writers and columnists, such as William Safire, joined in, pressuring the government to release more material implicating Lee. But in late summer, a series of trial rulings and missteps by witnesses appeared to weaken the government's hand. The tone of the Times' reporting shifted dramatically, suggesting that the case might
be falling apart.
Finally, it did. The government dropped all but a single charge against Lee, and he was freed from jail after pleading guilty to downloading classified files. In the uproar that followed, the Justice Department, the FBI and the Clinton White House came under intense scrutiny, and Asian-Americans demanded an apology. And many felt that the Times had played a key role in inflating a suspect case. All of this was in the background, then, when the Sep. 26 "assessment" was published. Never before had the Times taken so much trouble to review its own performance. Times-watchers, accustomed to one-paragraph corrections on minor matters of fact, were stunned and also puzzled by the half-page statement, since so much of it praised the reporting done. The editors did not apologize to anyone or uncover major errors. They called the lead reporters blameless. They expressed pride in their coverage and annoyance at jealous competitors.
But the editors also suggested that their coverage had failed to "give Dr. Lee the full benefit of the doubt." The Times "did not pay enough attention to the possibility that there had been a major intelligence loss in which the Los Alamos scientist was a minor player, or completely uninvolved," they said, noting their failure to achieve a tone of "journalistic detachment from our sources."
Two days later, editorial page editor Howell Raines followed up with his own review — another apparent first. "More than 14 months ago — four months before Dr. Lee was indicted, but five months after the case became public — we warned about the dangers of racial profiling in his case," Raines wrote, speaking of himself and his editorial writers. "As events unfolded, we should have looked more searchingly at the conditions under which he was confined and the government's arguments for denial of bail." But again, no clear apology appeared, and most of the statement affirmed the wisdom of the Times editorial view.
For more on the Times' apology and Raines' follow-up, see Timothy Noah's commentary in Slate.
The New York Media Circle, recognizing the weirdness of the event, decided to examine ...
The New York Times
