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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (1643)	5/29/2003 10:37:31 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793808

This came out yesterday. Legs and Legs, John. Times expands Blair probe By PAUL D. COLFORD DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER Wednesday, May 28th, 2003 Just when many New York Times staffers were relieved to think the Jayson Blair reporting scandal was being put to rest, the prospect of still more internal digging into the mess has left them irked and confused. Nearly three weeks after creation of the so-called Siegal Committee, headed by assistant managing editor Allan Siegal, the panel has unexpectedly stirred up The Times newsroom with the vigor of its inquiry. When executive editor Howell Raines announced his plan for the panel on May 12, he said it would continue a "restorative process" that began with the paper's four-page expose of Blair's plagiarism and fabrications. But staffers were buzzing yesterday about word that Siegal and others on his panel of 20 members (plus three consultants) had called in for questioning today several key players in Blair's Times career. They were believed to include national editor Jim Roberts, who became Blair's boss without being told about the former reporter's record of errors. Though today's interviews are supposed to be collegial, they were also seen as yet another distraction from the news-gathering process. Siegal, 63, who already supervised the team that reported Blair's misdeeds, joined The Times in 1960 as a copy boy and spent 10 years as news editor, the arbiter of questions about language usage and editorial style. He's coauthor of "The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage." In setting up the panel, Raines cited Siegal's role in the Blair probe and said he "once again demonstrated his calm in crisis, his intellectual honesty, his flawless sense of what is truly Timesian and his ferocious determination to defend and preserve the standards of this irreplaceable national institution." His panel will report its findings to top management of The Times - a five-person steering committee that includes Raines - and to staffers as well. Its focus on Blair - what went wrong and what it revealed about newsroom management - is expected to include questioning of Raines at some point. The 23 members also will explore questions laid out by Siegal, such as whether to have an ombudsman, or readers' advocate, to critique the paper. nydailynews.com

To: JohnM who wrote (1643)	5/30/2003 7:06:59 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793808

As much as the Times is an institution with some serious problems, it is also one of those enduring institutions which stands apart from the government, clear partisan affiliation, the crudest dictates of money, and so forth -- in other words, precisely what an organ of a free press, a part of the scaffolding of civil society, is supposed to do It is precisely this standing of the old New York Times that Howell Raines has badly undercut, first by turning the paper of record into a crusading liberal paper, second by lowering its journalistic standards quite shockingly. Blair was only the most extreme example. I believe Bragg when he says that he only did as others did (though he may have done more of it). Both Hedges and Egan have written very fact-challenged articles (anybody remember Kissinger being enlisted in the anti-war camp last summer, or "Crack, Sag and Burn" about Alaska supposedly rising 7 degrees in temperature in thirty years?), and they are still there. And of course, Johnny Apple's dolorous quagmire predictions did not a thing to increase the factual content of the first page of the New York Times. I want the old Times back. The one whose news I could trust.