ARTS & FARCES internet

The New York Times, often mischaracterized as a newspaper with a left-wing agenda because of its opposition to the Iraq war on its editorial page, is coming under increasing fire for its government surveillance-related breaking news on its editorial pages.

• President Bush calls the newspaper’s conduct “disgraceful.”
• Vice President Cheney objects to the paper’s Pulitzer Prize.
• Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) asked John Negroponte, national intelligence director, for a damage assessment.
• Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) went even further, saying that the Times “should have worked in cooperation with those authorities in our government to make sure that those who leaked were prosecuted.”
• The National Review and Representative J.D. Hayworth (R-Arizona) have called for the publication’s credentials to be withdrawn.
• Representative Peter King (R-New York) has called for the paper to be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act.
• The Weekly Standard called the Times a national security threat.
• Conservative media commentators are calling the newspaper’s publication treasonous.

It’s especially surprising to see the New York Times singled out as a target for the right wing’s ire; the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal (which has the most conservative editorial page in the country) both published banking surveillance stories.

Times executive editor Bill Keller told Washington Post staff writer Howard Kurtz that he had listened to arguments to spike the banking surveillance article from Treasury secretary John Snow, Negroponte, 9/11 commission chair Lee Hamilton, and Representative John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania). Keller told Kurtz the main argument was that the program was valuable and legitimate and that if exposed, some of the banks may cease cooperating.

Keller had to weigh that information against government officials who were “uncomfortable with the legality of the program, and others who were uncomfortable with the sense that what started as a temporary program had acquired a kind of permanence.” Keller went on to tell Kurtz that he starts “with the premise that the question is why should we not

Unless the national legislature or a court can find a clear and present danger—along the lines of shouting “fire” in a crowded theater—to the publishing of these stories, this is a non-starter. According to everything Keller has said to date, concerns about any such danger were not voiced, making this merely political mud wrestling. The attacks on the Times are about stifling expression that is critical of the administration, not national security.