One has to wonder what is going through Dean Baquet's head when he writes stuff like this. Baquet is the editor of the LA Times and today he writes a letter explaining why they published the story on the money-tracking program.
And he regurgitates the same, old shopworn anecdote that Keller from the NYT used: Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs reporting.
We are not out to get the president. This newspaper has done much hard-hitting reporting on terrorism, from around the world, often at substantial risk to our reporters. We have exposed terrorist cells and led the way in exposing the work of terrorists. We devoted a reporter to covering Al Qaeda's role in world terrorism in the months before 9/11. I know, because I made the assignment.
But we also have an obligation to cover the government, with its tremendous power, and to offer information about its activities so citizens can make their own decisions. That's the role of the press in our democracy.
The founders of the nation actually gave us that role, and instructed us to follow it, no matter the cost or how much we are criticized. Thomas Jefferson said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." That's the edict we followed.
This was a tough call for me, as I'm sure it was for the editors of other papers that chose to publish articles on the subject. But history tells us over and over that the nation's founders were right in pushing the press into this role. President Kennedy persuaded the press not to report the Bay of Pigs planning. He later said he regretted this, that he might have called it off had someone exposed it.
In addition to re-writing the constitution, of course. Nowhere in my well-thumbed copy of that document do I see any mention of the press having an oversight role on the government. I must not have the Media Standard Revised Edition™. That's the one that says the Times makes the rules, I think.
