NYT Former Exec Editor Misrepresents Bradley Manning

from the wow dept

A few days ago, the former executive editor of the NY Times, Bill Keller wrote about the Bradley Manning situation, in which he discusses Manning's revelation that he originally tried to go directly to the NY Times and the Washington Post, but was ignored, leading to the decision to approach Wikileaks. Keller's piece is basically an attempt by the NY Times to rewrite history to make Keller and the NY Times feel better. I wouldn't say that Keller lies necessarily, because he might just be very, very ignorant, but there is no doubt that he blatantly misrepresents what Manning said and did.

Specifically, Keller argues first, that Manning was trying to dump all of the information he had, indiscriminately, and the wise reporters at the NY Times would have figured out what was really important: "If Manning had connected with The Times, we would have found ourselves in a relationship with a nervous, troubled, angry young Army private who was offering not so much documentation of a particular government outrage as a chance to fish in a sea of secrets." Furthermore, he argues that Manning's motivations in making his speech to the court last week somehow contradict the only other clear statement into Manning's motivations: his 2010 chat logs with Adrian Lamo that Lamo turned over to the government, leading to Manning's arrest. Those chat logs were leaked to the press, and Keller argues that Manning's reasoning for leaking the material is not clear, summarizing it as:

His political views come across as inchoate. When asked, he has trouble recalling any specific outrages that needed exposing. His cause was "open diplomacy" or — perhaps in jest — "worldwide anarchy."

Furthermore, Keller insults the many people who have supported Manning by suggesting that Manning has created his current views based on what his supporters have told him.

However, as multiple people shot back, this is simply untrue. Author Greg Mitchell points out that Keller is flat out "wrong" and that if he actually read the chat logs, Manning lays out his reasoning, which is entirely consistent with his statement in court. He points out that contrary to Manning "having trouble recalling any specific outrages," Manning has no problem doing so, pointing to examples of corruption in favor of Iraqi prime minister Maliki (rounding up dissidents who were just exercising basic free speech rights), along with the now famous Collateral Murder video. Mitchell points out that for Keller to claim that Manning had not mentioned anything specific, is simply wrong:

More from the Lamo chat log: It virtually opens with Manning saying he had seen evidence of "awful things" such as at Gitmo and Bagram. Then he mentions "criminal political dealings" and cites the "buildup to the Iraq war." He details what he saw on the "Collateral Murder" video and why he wanted it released ("I want people to see the truth"). He wants to get this and much else out (he IDs more) because it might "actually change something." As for the State Dept. cables, he hopes they will spark "worldwide discussion, debates and reforms." Yet Keller claims this was all "vague."

When Nathan Fuller, a supporter of Manning, emailed Keller about all of this, Keller doubled down and stood by his original assessment, saying nothing more than that he believed his characterization is "fair." When pressed, Keller reveals his general attitude towards Manning's supporters, claiming that they have "assembled a coherent political motivation by fishing here and there in the Lamo file." As opposed to Keller who quoted five whole words from the transcripts and took even those out of context?

Meanwhile, Daniel Ellsberg, who probably identifies with Manning more than anyone else in the world, having famously given the Pentagon Papers to the NY Times decades ago, has responded angrily to Keller (video) stating that: "It shows him as an arrogant, ignorant, condescending person. A very smart person who manages to be stupid in certain ways.... What we've heard are people like the NY Times who have consistently slandered [Bradly Manning]." Ellsberg goes on to point out that there was a ton of material that Manning had access to, but which he chose not to disclose. He first mocks Keller's description of Manning as a "boy" who was "indiscriminately dumping" files, and notes that the evidence shows otherwise:

He, personally, had access to material higher than top secret, higher than Bill Keller has ever seen.... He chose not to put out the top secret communications intelligence, to which he clearly had access. He put out only material that he felt would be embarrassing [rather than harmful], and which, three years later we can say, only was embarrassing.

Filed Under: bill keller, bradley manning, motivations, reporting, wikileaks
Companies: ny times, wikileaks

NY Times Editor Claims Twitter Killing Conversation, While His Tweets Spawn Conversation

from the compartmentalism-in-140-characters dept

There's been some buzz about NYTimes Editor Bill Keller's recent column, in which -- in true curmudgeon fashion -- he posits that Twitter and such are a problem because they are killing deep conversation:

As a kind of masochistic experiment, the other day I tweeted "#TwitterMakesYouStupid. Discuss." It produced a few flashes of wit ("Give a little credit to our public schools!"); a couple of earnestly obvious points ("Depends who you follow"); some understandable speculation that my account had been hacked by a troll; a message from my wife ("I don't know if Twitter makes you stupid, but it's making you late for dinner. Come home!"); and an awful lot of nyah-nyah-nyah ("Um, wrong." "Nuh-uh!!"). Almost everyone who had anything profound to say in response to my little provocation chose to say it outside Twitter. In an actual discussion, the marshaling of information is cumulative, complication is acknowledged, sometimes persuasion occurs. In a Twitter discussion, opinions and our tolerance for others' opinions are stunted. Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid, it certainly makes some smart people sound stupid.

He then compares this to claims heard in yesteryear about how calculators meant people weren't good at doing math in their head any more, and how future generations with their brains and retinal displays jacked directly into the network would make people bad at remembering stuff. We've heard such claims before, but I think it misses the point. Yes, it's important for people to be able to understand the basic building blocks of things like mathematics, but is it really such a horrible thing if you can free up that part of your brain and let it work on other tasks?

As for the claims about the lack of deep conversations on Twitter, I think that's unnecessarily compartmentalizing communication. Twitter isn't designed for deep conversations, so asking it to do deep conversations and mocking it for not doing so seems sort of silly, doesn't it? And, yet, I know first hand that short bursts of conversations on Twitter have resulted in much deeper conversations outside of Twitter for me, as well as all sorts of connections to people and conversations I never would have had otherwise. That those didn't all happen directly on Twitter seems entirely besides the point. In many cases they happened because of Twitter, and that seems a lot more interesting and powerful than worrying about how some people sound "stupid" on Twitter. Some people sound stupid off Twitter too. Perhaps the problem isn't Twitter.

Filed Under: bill keller, conversation, social networking
Companies: ny times, twitter

NYTimes: When We Do It, It's Journalism, When HuffPo Does It, It's 'Piracy'

from the um,-ok dept

We regularly see established newspaper journalists look down on the world of sites that add value to news by assuming that aggregating, commenting on and providing context for news first reported by others is somehow a "lesser" product. Of course, what they're doing in some sense is overinflating their own role in the media ecosystem. After all, they don't make the news (usually). They're really adding value to the actual events by reporting on it. The others are then adding additional value to the reporting. It's all part of the ecosystem.

The latest sad example of this overvaluing of one's own work and talking down about someone else's work comes from the NY Times' Executive Editor Bill Keller (also a driving force behind the NYT's plan for a paywall). In a weird and somewhat rambling discussion, which eventually gets around to the future of news, Keller decides to attack the Huffington Post as a bunch of sniveling copyists, compared to his high minded version of journalism:

"Aggregation" can mean smart people sharing their reading lists, plugging one another into the bounty of the information universe. It kind of describes what I do as an editor. But too often it amounts to taking words written by other people, packaging them on your own Web site and harvesting revenue that might otherwise be directed to the originators of the material. In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model.

But wait. Aggregation is exactly the work that Keller does as an editor. And his sneering complaints about "taking words" from other people, packaging them on your own website and harvesting the revenue describes the NY Times too. After all, the news was actually initiated by the people his reporters are covering. They're the ones who provide the actual story and the quotes and information needed. Does the NY Times direct any of its revenue to the real originators of the material? The people the news actually happened to and the sources of their stories? Of course not. The very thought would certainly horrify Keller. "Real" news organizations like the NY Times never pay sources. It goes against their very moral core.

But there's massive cognitive dissonance at work here. Keller and the NY Times are aggregators. They're aggregating stories that happen to other people. They then add value (often tremendous value) to it in how they report on it. But other forms of aggregators also add value by doing more with those stories: adding commentary, details, criticism, promotion and many other things. The problem is that Keller, in a fit of pure ego, seems to think the chain of news stops with the reporter, rather than the sources and the actual newsmakers. As Mathew Ingram notes, Keller appears to be saying: "when we do it, it's journalism; when the Huffington Post does it, it's piracy."

Keller, of course, is also being incredibly misleading, if not downright dishonest, in how he portrays the Huffington Post. The site certainly does plenty of aggregating of content from other sites. Though, I will say as the recipient of just a few experiences where HuffPo has chosen to "aggregate" content from Techdirt, that it is an amazing driver of traffic. Frankly, I wish HuffPo would "aggregate" more of our stories because it is the single biggest driver of traffic we've ever seen. It beats every other big driver of traffic by many multiples.

But, more importantly, Keller is being misleading in pretending that HuffPo has always just been focused on reposting content from elsewhere. From its very beginnings, it has always produced tons of new content. Some of it may be more high quality than others, but the site has always produced unique content, which Keller pretends is some "recent" change in how HuffPo does business.

Filed Under: aggregation, bill keller, journalism
Companies: huffington post, ny times

NY Times Editor Says He's 'Alarmed' By The Idea That The US Might Try To Prosecute Wikileaks

from the took-them-long-enough dept

One of the more frustrating things about the press's reaction to Wikileaks was that so many of them tried to shy away from the fact that the same laws that protected them as journalists almost certainly protected Wikileaks as well -- and any legal attack on the organization or someone like Julian Assange could come back to haunt the journalists themselves. So it's nice to see NY Times executive editor Bill Keller (who has detailed his contentious relationship with Wikileaks and Assange) finally come out and say that he would be alarmed by any legal action taken against Wikileaks:

"It's very hard to conceive of a prosecution of Julian Assange that wouldn't stretch the law in a way that would be applicable to us," said Keller. "Whatever one thinks of Julian Assange, certainly American journalists, and other journalists, should feel a sense of alarm at any legal action that tends to punish Assange for doing essentially what journalists do. That is to say, any use of the law to criminalize the publication of secrets."

The panel, where this was being discussed, also included former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith (now a Harvard Law Professor) who has spoken out in the past saying that he believes Wikileaks is legal. He noted that any lawsuit would be very difficult to pull off. He still thinks the administration will try to bring a lawsuit, but he expects that it will eventually fail in the courts. I'm still hopeful that the administration recognizes the likelihood of failure in any lawsuit and recognizes the dreadful legacy it will leave in suing an organization for publishing leaks.

Filed Under: bill keller, free speech, journalism, ny times, wikileaks

The Background Story Of The NY Times' Relationship With Julian Assange

from the complex-actors-in-complex-situations dept

If you haven't yet, set aside some time to read the NY Times' executive editor Bill Keller's account of the paper's association with Julian Assange. It gives some interesting (and not too surprising) background details about the relationship, Assange himself, and Keller's views on the overall impact of Wikileaks. Assange, not surprisingly, does not come off too well in the account, reinforcing the reports of his being someone who has an incredible ego and a conspiratorial bent. By this point, such claims are pretty much old news, but from an anecdotal level, the story is still entertaining.

Keller's final suggestion that Wikileaks' impact has been "overblown" is belied somewhat by the fact that Keller just spilled so much ink on the background of the paper's association (and subsequent blacklisting) with the organization. There are other points that could be nitpicked, but it's not surprising that Keller seeks to position the NY Times in the best possible light, and perhaps minimize the contributions of Wikileaks itself. But, just the fact that the NYT's is now considering its own Wikileaks, shows that the idea certainly has changed the way many people think about this aspect of reporting.

I'd argue -- as some others have -- that the impact of Wikileaks has actually been both over- and under-estimated. And part of the problem is that so many people are quick to conflate the idea of such an organization with the single organization itself (or worse, with a single person in the form of an easily dislikable Julian Assange). But it's a mistake to think that just because the particular organization itself is flawed, that its existence and what it's accomplished so far won't have profound effects on secrecy in organizations (government and corporate), the practice of journalism itself (which has suddenly gotten a hint of what's possible), and the idea of distributed or "stateless" organizations as enablers of information flow. It's that last point that I think many are ignoring, and that will later prove to be a mistake.

Filed Under: bill keller, journalism, julian assange, leaks, ny times, sources, wikileaks
Companies: ny times, wikileaks