Clark Hoyt papers, 2009 - 2012

(Daniel Okrent will be Public Editor No. 1. Byron Calame was No. 2, Clark Hoyt was No. 3. Arthur Brisbane was No. 4. Margaret Sullivan was No. 5. Liz Spayd was No. 6, and then the position was eliminated in 2017)

(Although the Public Editor isn't supposed to open shop for a week, he does a "soft launch" after readers question a decision not to put a story about charges of a terrorism plot at JFK Airport on Page 1. It's clear from conversations with the responsible editors that politics were not involved and that, given a chance to do it over, they might have played the story modestly out front)

(The Times publishes a photo of an activist who worked against an immigration bill opposed by conservatives. He is a retired policeman who lost his right eye in a hunting accident and a tooth on the left side of his face in a fall. Then he had a heart transplant that caused swelling so that he could no longer wear a denture or an artificial eyeball. Readers accuse the paper of deliberately focusing on a "redneck" or "riff-raff" to show contempt for opponents of the bill. The subject of the photo is bemused. The complainers were showing their own prejudices, not those of The Times)

(Two recent Op-Ed columns — one by a spokesman for Hamas, the party just elected to lead the Palestinian government and dedicated to the destruction of Israel, the other by a writer contending that veganism is a dangerously unhealthy diet — are questioned. Op-Ed pages should be open to controversial ideas and healthy debate. The Times has published a wide range of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it has done little news coverage of veganism in recent years and published no Op-Ed columns on the subject for 16 years. The column that did run is disputed by multiple scientific studies, and Exhibit A for the writer was a shriveled baby whose vegan parents, the writer failed to note, were convicted of failing to feed it anything at all)

(As skepticism over the war in Iraq increases, President Bush and the U.S. military increasingly point to only one foe on the battlefield: Al Qaeda. The truth is much more complex, but singling out Al Qaeda, which attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11, is an effort to rally support. The Times has slipped too often into adopting administration language without questioning its accuracy)

(A two-part Times series on Rupert Murdoch, the media baron trying to buy Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, draws a protest from a top Murdoch executive, who charges that The Times is just trying to undermine a potential competitor. Most of the specific objections are without merit, and The Times was actually slow to the story)

(The media watchdog group FAIR urges its readers to contact the Public Editor to demand a correction of a Times report about a play that contends napalm was used by U.S. forces in the battle for the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The Times said said the play's contention was "never substantiated." That was correct)

(Coverage of a major outside shareholder's effort to break the Ochs-Sulzberger family's control of The New York Times Company shows how tough it is for the newspaper to write about itself)

(FAIR fires back, introducing a new error. Passions over the war in Iraq are high, but facts are facts)

(The Times misspells names at a ferocious rate — famous names, obscure names — and sometimes does it over and over. These failures undermine the paper's credibility. "If they can't spell his name right, what else is wrong with the story.?")

(A front¬page article on roadside bombs used to attack U.S. forces in Iraq is assailed by some readers as playing into efforts by the Bush Administration to gin up hostility toward Iran. The Public Editor finds that the piece lacks evidence and context that had appeared more than four months earlier in the paper. Readers can't be expected to remember. Complicating matters, the central point of the latest article is elusive)

(The Times' efforts to get its articles to pop up first in internet searches is leading to a perplexing problem: long buried information about people that was wrong, outdated or incomplete is getting new life. What should the paper do?)

(Why doesn't The Times just come out and say Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is a liar? After all, he's been caught repeatedly saying things that prove to be untrue. But liar is a loaded word that presumes you know someone's intent)

(The Times learns a painful lesson about corroboration after it publishes the obituary of a photographer who long and falsely claimed to have taken two iconic shots — John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's coffin and FDR, Churchill and Stalin meeting at Tehran in 1943)

(The Times runs an advertisement from MoveOn.org attacking the American commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, with a headline that asks if he's General Betray Us. The ad violated both Times standards for civility and rules against discounts for partisan ads by political action committees)

(Statistics about civilian casualties in Iraq are confusing and all over the place. A Times Op-Ed conflicts with a front-page story. The Public Editor looks into the numbers, how they are assembled and interpreted)

(Column in The New York Times Magazine reads like a transcript of a witty conversation. But in fact it is heavily edited, with questions sometimes added after the subject has been interviewed and the order of Qs and As changed. The feature fails to live up to Times standards)

(The New York Times best-seller list is the "gold standard" of the publishing industry. How is it put together, and why can one book be dropped as an "evergreen" after 80 weeks while another can remain after 164 weeks?)

(The Times takes cautious steps toward opening its online content to reader comment, a risky undertaking that opens a newspaper with a long history of dignified authority to a fractious world filled with coarse, bullying and misinformed offerings)

(Readers complain when The Times refers, on second reference, to President Bush as Mr. Bush. That's curious because The Times uses courtesy titles like Mr., Ms. when most news organizations do not, preferring just last names after first reference)

(This is a column of items about three separate issues. The first is whether The Times should be running articles by a former stock analyst who was permanently barred from the securities industry and fined $4 million for issuing fraudulent and misleading research reports on Internet stocks — especially when there is little or no disclosure of his past)

(A study by two respected organizations reaches some familiar conclusions about coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign: While the public wants to know more about candidates' records, their backgrounds and their stands on issues, the news media focuses on the horse race. An examination of coverage by The Times indicates it is doing a better job than the media as a whole)

(The editor-in-chief of Salon asks the Public Editor to get involved in a "brawl" on the Op-Ed pages over a 1980 Ronald Reagan speech in Philadelphia, MS, where he told a mostly-white crowd he believed in states' rights. Was is a coded racist appeal or just a blunder by an undisciplined candidate? The facts of what he said aren't in dispute, and their interpretation is fair game for Op-Ed columnists)

(As charges and counter-charges fly between presidential candidates, The Times remains behind The Washington Post and other organizations in providing timely fact checking)

(The Times gives front-page play to the former top U.S. military commander in Iraq criticizing the Bush administration's "incompetent" management of the war. But the paper fails to mention his equally blistering assessment of the news media's coverage of the war. The paper should have covered those comments, fact-checked them and put them in context)

(A tantalizing excerpt from a book by President George W. Bush's former press secretary, suggesting the President may have knowingly provided him with false information about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, sparks an online firestorm. The Lede, a news blog at nytimes.com, covers it. The printed paper ignores the brief controversy)

(The Times' spectacularly successful fashion magazine, T, publishes semi-nude photos of a 17-year-old model, and several readers complain. The magazine is trying to be edgy in a highly competitive world. In this case, it fell over the edge)

(The Times takes a small and unannounced step into the Internet age by eliminating dates from datelines and starting to use the day of the week — Monday, Friday — instead of today and yesterday. The Public Editor thinks these are good changes)

(There is reader outrage over the decision by The Times to hire William Kristol as a second conservative voice in a lineup of Op-Ed columnists that leans decidedly liberal. The Public Editor wouldn't have hired Kristol, but it isn't the end of the world, and everyone should take a deep breath and calm down)

(The Times' Pulitzer Prize winning Supreme Court reporter is married to an attorney who filed a friend of the court brief in a case she was covering, involving a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A conservative blogger said it was a conflict of interest. Was it?)

(Veterans who have killed or been charged with killings after returning home)

(The Times takes an appropriately conservative approach to reporting polls and delegate counts as the presidential election proceeds)

(The Times publishes three articles about scientific disputes. Two of them strike the right balance. One about the potential danger of mercury in tuna does not. This column is accompanied by a post on 02/16/2008 on The Public Editor's Journal. It contains interviews with two Harvard professors who come down on opposite sides of the mercury issue)

(A Times article says unnamed staffers feared that John McCain had a "romantic" relationship with a young female lobbyist when he was running for President eight years ago. The public editor concludes The Times was wrong to report such a hot-button allegation without independent evidence)

(Readers complain that The Times is favoring Hillary Clinton — or Barack Obama. The Public Editor examines the coverage of their presidential campaigns and concludes the paper has not been systematically biased in either direction)

(The Times is taken in — twice — by a book from a reputable publishing house that purports to be a memoir of a woman abused as a child, taken from her family and eventually into a world of gangs and drugs. It's all a fake, and the paper failed to do even cursory fact checking that would have discovered it)

(The Times navigates through sex scandals involving two New York governors and ignores one involving a former New Jersey governor)

(A Times redesign to add an expanded news index to the A Section upsets some readers who fear the news hole is being cut to accommodate the change. It isn't)

(With readers already inclined to distrust the news media, including The Times, the paper runs big risks as it blurs the line between opinion on the editorial and op-ed pages and fact-based coverage in the news pages by adding to those pages more and more columns, reporters' notebooks, news analyses, journals, appraisals and memos)

(The case of Toni Locy, a former Justice Department reporter for USA Today is a powerful argument for a federal shield law to protect journalists from revealing confidential sources)

(The printed Times is strangely lacking in energy as it reports on incendiary statements by presidential candidate Barack Obama's former preacher)

(The Times uses the Freedom of Information Act aggressively to try to get important news content from federal agencies, and the agencies are unfortunately creative at finding ways to delay or withhold information they don't want to release)

(The Times,fearing for a reporter's safety as he reports from Myanmar on a natural tragedy, withholds his name from publication. Another Times reporter is arrested for "committing journalism" in Zimbabwe on the day his datelined byline appears on the front page)

(The Times publishes an Op-Ed column by military historian Edward N. Luttwak, arguing that Barack Obama would be considered an apostate in the Muslim world because of his family background and that he might not even be safe visiting a Muslim country. The Public Editor interviews Islamic scholars who say Luttwak is factually wrong)

(At the Public Editor's request, students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism undertake a study of The Times' use of anonymous sources since the paper's policy was tightened in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. To their surprise, the students find the use of such sources fell by roughly half after the policy change. But most such sources were still not adequately described to readers)

(Some readers accuse The Times of sexism in the way it covered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, but most of the objections boiled down to over-the-top language used repeatedly by one opinion columnist: Maureen Dowd)

(The Times named the CIA interrogator who used shrewd psychology, not torture, to get the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center to talk. The agency strongly objected, and the interrogator and his family fear the newspaper has put their lives in danger. The paper was in fact cautious, using his nickname instead of his real first name and warning him to take down a social media site with a lot of personal information)

(The Rev. Jesse Jackson is caught on a live mike saying he would like to cut Barack Obama's "nuts off." The Times refuses to print the exact words Jackson used. I would have published the quote, as did many other news outlets, but paper's editors are trying to maintain civil discourse in uncivil times)

(The Times handled two stories about financial institutions in trouble in very different ways. A front page story about troubles at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac drove their stocks down 50 percent. Meanwhile coverage of a run on a California bank was restrained out of fear of causing more panic. What's the right balance?)

(The Times publishes graphic photos of dead and injured American soldiers in Iraq, and the military reacts with fury. What is the right thing to do?)

(The Times fails to pursue a scandal first reported by the National Enquirer — Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' "love child" story — until Edwards finally comes clean in an interview with ABC News)

(The government whispers its exoneration of Steven J. Hatfill, six years after naming him as a "person of interest" in anthrax attacks on Congress and news organizations that killed five people. Times columnist Nick Kristof, who wrote columns about the case, intends to be more stand-up and to apologize in the paper for pain he might have caused Hatfill — and to wrestle with the journalistic issues)

(Readers object to describing an author as a "radical Islamophobe" and want an apology for questions posed to her in a Sunday Times Magazine interview. Her publicist doesn't object to the questions, agrees she is "extreme," and the public editor thinks so, as well)

(Republicans and officials of the McCain presidential campaign complain about a front-page story calling into question how thoroughly Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was vetted before being chosen as John McCain's running mate. The story holds up)

(Readers take exception to calling Sarah Palin Ms. instead of Mrs. Palin and to using Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein. The first one follows long precedent and policy: Ms. was what she wanted to be called. The second follows another precedent that is inconsistently applied)

(Two articles taking tough looks at John McCain and Sarah Palin draw reader criticism. One backs up its assertions, while the other falls short)

(Has The Times been tougher on Republican John McCain than on Democrat Barack Obama)

(A column about how The Times and other media focus on the horse race when readers want information on issues, to help them decide for whom to vote)

(Readers see bias in The Times' coverage of the presidential campaign, but the perception of bias is tricky. Readers want coverage that affirms their own views)

(Coverage in The Times and elsewhere suggests the 2008 presidential election is already over, even before voting has begin. But, in politics, anything can happen. (In this case, the reporting was right. Obama won)

(A Times review of a play portraying Jesus as a sexually active gay man sparks outrage among some Catholic readers. The review's failure to acknowledge the tension between the play's thesis and the teachings of the church left it open to the criticism)

(For a profile of Cindy McCain, the wife of the Republican presidential nominee, a Times reporter reaches out to minors on Facebook to try to find parents who could describe what Ms. McCain was like. And The Times interviews a 12-year- old witness to a controversial police arrest. What is the right balance between reporting the news and the interests of young sources who may not know what they are getting into by talking to a reporter? This is coupled with a Public Editor's Journal blog post of the Facebook text)

(NYT business reporters cover the crisis in the American auto industry and then write columns expressing personal opinions about the issue. Where should the line be drawn to protect the paper's credibility?)

(A look at two Times articles that outraged readers — a front-page story suggesting that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt had made a deal with People magazine for favorable coverage in exchange for exclusive photos of their new twin babies and a cover story in the Times Sunday Magazine by former Times reporter Alex Kuczynski about the experience of having a surrogate bear her baby)

(An attack on Mumbai by 10 young men who came ashore in an inflatable boat and murdered men, women and children raised the issue of when to use the term "terrorists," a term The Times uses sparingly in many instances)

(A sadly evergreen topic: the struggle between Hamas in Gaza and Israel, with Times readers sympathetic to Palestinians thinking the coverage is unfair and readers who support Israel agreeing — for opposite reasons)

(An examination of three cases where false information got into The Times despite its stringent standards and layers of editing)

(An examination of a Times investigation of a Pentagon public relations program to win public support for the Bush administration's anti-terrorism program through retired generals appearing as TV analysts while working for military contractors. A subsequent Defense Department IG report found no wrongdoing. Was The Times wrong?)

(The story of Caroline Kennedy's withdrawal as a candidate for appointment to Hillary Clinton's New York Senate seat highlights the tension between online, 24-7 journalism and print, where once-a-day deadlines allow time for deeper reporting and consideration of how a story should be framed)

(A blog post on The Public Editor's Journal in which two Times journalists, Jonathan Landman, deputy managing editor in charge of online operations and Adam Nagourney, chief political correspondent, offer perspectives on the "Reporting in Real Time" column)

(In sharp contrast to the Caroline Kennedy story, Times online coverage of the forced landing of a US Airways flight on the Hudson River showed the best of how to handle a breaking news event in real time)

(The Times publishes a front page story repeating accusations that a respected historian deliberately distorted and omitted content from the Nixon tapes to paint a benign portrait of John Dean. The charge was old and long ago dismissed by most mainstream historians)

(The nation is in a recession, and some readers complain that The Times is making things worse by publishing all the depressing bad news. It has to face and report reality)

(The Times fails to live up to its tough policy on the use of anonymous sources. The column is informed in part by a study by Columbia University Journalism School students who concluded that the paper's use of unnamed sources had fallen by roughly half since a more stringent policy was introduced in 2004 but that there were still too many of them)

(Anonymous sources in Washington, where an entrenched culture of anonymity challenges The Times, with three recent examples)

(An OpEd column about the Bernie Madoff scandal by a guest contributor fails to adequately disclose that the writer's brother was deeply involved, steering clients to Madoff and collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in fees while his clients lost all their money)

(They're officially called the SEALS, but they're the Seals in The Times. A look at Times rules about acronyms and words once acceptable that become objectionable, like midget)

(The Times struggles with how to describe the Bush Administration's "enhanced" interrogation of Al Qaeda prisoners. Harsh, Brutal, Torture?)

(The New York Times Co. threatens to shut down The Boston Globe, which it owns, amid a labor dispute and plunging circulation and revenue. The Times buries the story)

(The Times is accused of - killing a story that would have been a "game changer" in the 2008 presidential election. The charge doesn't stand up to examination)

(Three different ethical issues: Tom Friedman accepting a $75,000 speaking fee from a California state agency in violation of the paper's rules; Maureen Down accused of plagiarism; and an economics correspondent writes a memoir about how he took out subprime mortgages he couldn't repay while covering the subprime mess)

(The Times leads the paper with a seriously flawed article about former Guantanamo detainees supposedly returning to terrorism)

(The Times went to extraordinary lengths to keep secret the kidnapping of one of its reporters in Afghanistan until he and his interpreter escaped. Did editors do the right thing?)

(Amid a recession and a technological revolution leading readers away from print, The Times raises the price for the in-on-paper newspaper and eliminates some content)

(A recovering heroin addict with a prison record who met his bride, a woman formerly hooked on methamphetamines, marijuana and alcohol, at a Narcotics Anonymous Meeting are featured on the weddings and celebrations pages of The Times. The times are changing)

(As ad revenue declines and technology changes the news business, The Times finds new ways to fund journalism, including partnerships with ProPublica)

(The Times publishes an appreciation of the late Walter Cronkite containing seven errors, even after his son had notified the paper that Cronkite was near death and that earlier articles in other publications had contained factual mistakes)

(Was The Times breaking the law, or journalistic ethics, by publishing the names of baseball stars whose names were on a secret list of players testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003?)

(Anonymous sources take a shot at the executors of Michael Jackson's estate, and a Times article about how technology is altering family routines relies on sources connected in one way or another to the newspaper or the reporter, which isn't revealed, even though they are named)

(J.C. Penney opens a new story in Manhattan, and it is greeted with a Times review that many readers see as offensive condescension. In an effort to be witty it seems to sneer at large-size women and their clothes. It's okay to have fun with readers; it's not okay to make fun of them)

(David Pogue, a popular technology columnist, is an example of a growing trend — and ethics challenge: journalists who become their own brands)

(British commandos rescue a reporter for The Times taken captive in Afghanistan by the Taliban. The reporter is saved, but his interpreter, a commando, an Afghan woman and others, including Taliban fighters, die)

(The Times is slow off the mark to cover the right-wing sting of Acorn, a community activist group. The stingers, posing as a pimp and prostitute, secretly taped Acorn employees advising them on how to set up a brothel)

(A follow up column on Times coverage of Acorn)

(Readers complain about Times coverage of the debate on overhauling the nation's health care system, a complex, many faceted topic tough to capture as a daily running story)

(One of several columns on anonymous sources, this one focusing on anonymous quotes used to characterize suspects in crimes)

(The Times cuts newsroom staff and considers charging online readers)

(Archbishop Timothy Dolan, head of the Archdiocese of New York, accuses The Times of anti-Catholic bias)

(Did The Times withhold crucial information showing that Mike Bloomberg's re-election race was much closer than coverage indicated?)

(An examination of Times coverage of climate change, prompted by a hacked email indicating a scientist's effort to hide data inconvenient to the accepted notion that the earth is warming)

(A Times copy editor writes about his beef with an airline, and a freelancer recommends a restaurant co-owned by her long-term boyfriend. It's wrong to use the newspaper for what can be construed as personal ends)

(Some cases where Times freelancers violated the paper's ethics guidelines)

(A column about how to handle situations where expert sources have financial stakes in the subjects they are discussing)

(Readers react when The Times prints graphic photos of an earthquake in Haiti, including pictures of dead bodies)

(An account of the 2008 presidential election that topped the NYT nonfiction best-seller list is filled with unattributed anecdotes, including one involving NYT columnist Maureen Dowd that she denies. Also a 01/30/2010 blog post, "Anonymous Sources Fuel Senate Controversy")

(The difficult issue posed when the son of the excellent Jerusalem bureau chief for the NYT joins the Israeli Defense Forces. Accompanying is a response on the Public Editor's blog by Times Executive Editor Bill Keller)

(A reporter for The New York Observer posts a tweet asking if anyone has heard that The Times is reporting a "bombshell" on New York's governor. The Times properly maintains silence while the governor and others demand that they confirm or deny the tweet)

(The case of Zachary Kouwe, a Times business reporter who resigned after multiple instances of plagiarism. Also an 03/06 blog post on the subject: "Could Plagiarism Software Have Spared The Times an Embarrassment?")

(A column on the use and overuse 2^(9 °f lat>els like "Christian," "liberal," conservative, "moderate," etc.)

(An examination of Times reporting on a sting operation by James O'Keefe that put Acorn, a community organizing group for the poor, on the verge of bankruptcy)

(The International Herald Tribune, wholly owned by the NYT Co., apologizes and pays damages to the family ruling Singapore for referring to them in a way they didn't like)

(The perils posed for journalists by social media, including Twitter)

(Column on the misuse of anonymous sources)

(A top Vatican official and hundreds of people accuse The Times of anti-Catholic bias for its coverage of the church's widening child sex abuse scandal. It would be irresponsible to ignore continuing revelations)

(Was it a "targeted killing" or an "assassination?" Was Hurricane Katrina a "natural disaster" or a "man-made" one? Times journalists have to navigate political battlefields to provide clear and even-handed news when language is weaponized on both sides of disputes)

(Times reporting that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, running for the U.S. Senate, has sometimes falsely claimed to be a Vietnam veteran sparks outrage against the newspaper. The reporting was accurate, though there were flaws in how it was presented)

(When jazz legend Hank Jones died at 91, a Times reporter who lived across the street on the Upper West Side gained access to the musician's living quarters, a small bedroom he rented from an old friend who had been taking care of him)

(The reporter wrote a blog post about the intensely private Jones' room and belongings without any other reporting or asking his family for permission. The family objected to what it felt was an invasion of privacy. Does The Times have different standards for the internet and the printed paper?)

(Clark Hoyt's last column as his three-year term expires)