Decision ‘08

Paul Krugman: Partisan Hack, Says Times’ Public Editor

I wonder, will TimesSelect prevent us from seeing what the Public Editor (essentially the ombudsman) says? His latest on Paul Krugman is so remarkable (hat tip to the Instapundit) that I am printing it in its entirety:

An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who makes an error “is expected to promptly correct it in the column.” That’s the established policy of Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page. Her written policy encourages “a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece.”

Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president. Mr. Krugman still hasn’t been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn’t offered any explanation.

As a result, readers of nytimes.com who simply search for “Krugman” won’t find any indication that there are uncorrected errors in the columns the query turns up. Nor will those who access Mr. Krugman’s columns in an electronic database such as Nexis or Factiva. Corrections would have been appended in all those places if Mr. Krugman had complied with Ms. Collins’ policy and corrected the errors in his column in the print version of The Times. (Essentially, to become part of the official archive of The Times, material has to have been published in the print paper.)

All Mr. Krugman has offered so far is a faux correction. Each Op-Ed columnist has a page in nytimes.com that includes his or her past columns and biographical information. Mr. Krugman has been allowed to post a note on his page that acknowledges his initial error, but doesn’t explain that his initial correction of that error was also wrong. Since it hasn’t been officially published, that posting doesn’t cause the correction to be appended to any of the relevant columns.

If the problem is that Mr. Krugman doesn’t want to give up precious space in his column for a correction, there are alternatives. Perhaps some space could be found elsewhere on the Op-Ed page so that readers—especially those using electronic versions of his pieces — could get the accurate information they deserve.

A bottom-line question: Does a corrections policy not enforced damage The Times’s credibility more than having no policy at all?

So says current Public Editor Byron Calame.

Maybe Calame has it in for Krugman? Well, let’s see what the first Public Editor of the Times, Daniel Okrent, had to say:

I learned early on in this job that Prof. Krugman would likely be more willing to contribute to the Frist for President campaign than to acknowledge the possibility of error. When he says he agreed ‘reluctantly’ to one correction, he gives new meaning to the word ‘reluctantly’; I can’t come up with an adverb sufficient to encompass his general attitude toward substantive criticism.

I and many others spotted Krugman’s lies from a mile away; the Public Editor called for a correction, not of Krugman’s opinions, but of plain factual inaccuracies; Gail Collins, the viciously partisan Times editorial page editor, says Times columnists are required to issue corrections; yet no correction has been issued.

I have stated on many occasions that the Times has a natural antipathy towards George W. Bush, Republicans, and indeed, what they snearingly refer to as ‘Jesusland’ (see here for an example of the accusations that Bush supporter were engaged in jihad when the exercised their democratic rights), where people like (gasp!) NASCAR races, among other sins, and actually think abortion on demand is a pretty loathsome thing. I believe it now more than ever, and I also believe that nothing will change until Gail Collins is forcibly removed. The columnists of the Times have become national laughingstocks; no one but the most extreme partisan believes anything they read in a MoDo column, to take just one glaring example.

Well, you’re not a liberal, you might say, so you’re biased. True enough; but compare the Times to, say, the Washington Post, another liberal bastion that is consistently reasonable and measured towards the incumbent Administration (in other words, they don’t like him, but they don’t demonize him). Disgraceful - and as far as putting the columnists behind a subscription wall, I say - good riddance to bad rubbish…

3 Responses to “Paul Krugman: Partisan Hack, Says Times’ Public Editor”

1 Dennis Says:
September 17th, 2005 at 8:56 am
Part of me wonders if the money wall isn’t actually a fiendish plot to take some power away from their bigfoot columnists. The powers that be at the NYT don’t want another Jayson Blair on their hands. Yet guys like Krugman probably get their way to print whatever they want because they can threaten to quit and take their readers with them.

With the money wall, the Times will soon find out how many of those readers really love those Krugman rants. If it turns out they’re quite willing to go elsewhere for free rants, Krugman loses leverage next time he pouts when someone points out an error.

And the fact that two editors, neither of whom can be described as part of the VRWC, have gone public telling the world that Krugman is a pain in the keister, makes me think that even if his editors enjoy Krugman’s red meat, they recognize he might be more trouble than he’s worth.
2 Decision ‘08 » Blog Archive » Times Executive Editor Bill Keller: My Spidey Sense Was Tingling Says:
September 25th, 2005 at 10:06 pm
[…] Byron Calame, the semi-new Public Editor of the New York Times, is okay in my book. First, as we’ve discussed before, he takes Paul Krugman and Gail Collins to the woodshed for their non-correction corrections; now, he catches an anti-Geraldo bias that goes all the way to the top. Now, God knows, I’m no big fan of Geraldo Rivera (or even a small one), but when Allesandra Stanley claimed that Geraldo nudged an Air Force rescue worker out the way so he could look good on camera, Geraldo called foul. […]
3 Decision ‘08 » Blog Archive » The Most Painful Correction of All Time Says:
October 1st, 2005 at 6:20 pm
[…] Paul Krugman can rest easy - he will not be forced by Gail Collins into admitting the error behind his continued stubborn insistence that he got the story right on the 2000 Florida recounts despite widespread evidence to the contrary. Instead, Miss Collins goes through hundreds of words before finally landing here: CORRECTION […]