mediacrit.com

A letter sent to Clark Hoyt, Public Editor of the New York Times , Friday, Jan. 25, 2008

Dear Mr. Hoyt,

Today the New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Fair enough. But the editorial, written by this particular editorial board, seems to violate the Times’ own Ethical Journalism handbook.

As the beginning of your guidelines states,

“The goal of The New York Times is to cover the news as impartially as possible — “without fear or favor,” in the words of Adolph Ochs, our patriarch — and to treat readers, news sources, advertisers and others fairly and openly, and to be seen to be doing so. The reputation of The Times rests upon such perceptions, and so do the professional reputations of its staff members. Thus The Times and members of its news department and editorial page staff share an interest in avoiding conflicts of interest or an appearance of a conflict.”

Yet a clear conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of one, exists. Two of the board’s 18 members are former (Bill) Clinton administration officials. David Shipley, the deputy editorial page editor and op-ed editor, was a special assistant to the president and senior presidential speechwriter from 1995 to 1997. Carolyn Curiel was special assistant to the president and senior presidential speechwriter for Clinton’s first term, and later appointed by him to be ambassador in Belize.

The Times lists this biographical information on its web site, which is a good move towards transparency. But, the Times does not note this conflict of interest anywhere in the editorial itself, where such information would be most useful to readers. (Ironically, the Times guidelines list the deputy editorial page editor–presently David Shipley–as the contact person for most conflict of interest situations.)

How are the readers to know that the editorial board members with former professional relationships with one of the candidates (from the web site biographies, it does not appear that any of the other board members held Democratic or Republican political positions) did not prevent candidates Obama and Edwards from gaining equal consideration from the board? What were the procedures to deal with this conflict, or the appearance of one?

Sincerely,

Christopher R. Martin