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January 30, 2015

New York Times editor: we failed to do our job after 9/11. Dean Baquet admits that US mainstream media did not ask ‘hard questions’ about Bush administration’s prosecution of so-called war on terror

Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, believes his newspaper – in company with the US mainstream media – failed their audiences after 9/11.
He told the German news magazine Der Spiegel that he agreed with the criticism originally made by an NYT reporter, James Risen,
Baquet said: “The mainstream press was not aggressive enough after 9/11, was not aggressive enough in asking questions about a decision to go to war in Iraq, was not aggressive enough in asking the hard questions about the war on terror. I accept that for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times”. 
Baquet, in charge of the NYT since May 2014, was previously editor-in-chief of the LA Times. In his wide-ranging interview with Der Spiegel, Baquet also spoke about the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden having chosen to tell his story to the Guardian.
He said he regards the Guardian as “a new competitor [for the NYT] in the digital age.” He said: “Does it make me nervous that they compete with us and in fact beat us on the Snowden story? Yes.
Der Spiegel asked: “How painful was it as an institution thatEdward Snowden didn’t approach the New York Times?” Baquet replied:
It hurt a lot. It meant two things. Morally, it meant that somebody with a big story to tell didn’t think we were the place to go, and that’s painful. And then it also meant that we got beaten on what was arguably the biggest national security story in many, many years.
Not only beaten by the Guardian, because he went to the Guardian, but beaten by the [Washington] Post, because he went to a writer from the Post. We tried to catch up and did some really good stories that I feel good about. But it was really, really, really painful.
It was suggested that Snowden didn’t approach the NYT because it had refused to publish the initial research about the NSA’s bulk collection in 2004.
Edward Snowden.
Edward Snowden.
Asked whether it was mistake to have held back on that reporting, Baquet pointed out, reasonably enough, that he wasn’t at the NYT at the time.
The magazine also asked Baquet about digital rivals, citing a leak of an internal NYT document saying that its “journalistic advantage” was shrinking in the face of online competitors. Baquet said:
We assumed wrongly that these new competitors, whether it was BuzzFeed or others, were doing so well just because they were doing something journalistically that we chose not to do. We were arrogant to be honest.
We looked down on those new competitors, and I think we’ve come to realize that was wrong. They understood before we did how to make their stories available to people who are interested in them. We were too slow to do it.

Source:http://www.theguardian.com 

3 comments:

  1. Start asking questions NOW. Do not whine that you "should have" Ask them NOW and DEMAND ANSWERS. Not demanding answers NOW when you have admitted your failure ......makes you TWICE as DAMNED.
    Where was NORAD on 9/11? 24/7/365 for 60+ YEARS, NORAD was "standing by" yet on ONE day.....? How do THREE buildings fall STRAIGHT down? Since WHEN does THIS Government come rushing out handing BILLIONS of Dollars left and right to victims of something that the Government has not (yet) been PROVEN to have been part of !? This government denied WWI Bonus Army, It denied leaving 8,000 POWS alive in Korea, it denied Agent Orange Vets, It denied Gulf War Syndrome Vets, even TODAY it denies CURRENT Vets treatment for PTSD and injuries from Iraq ........ And people don't think throwing those BILLIONS around before the dust settled on 9/11 was SUSPICIOUS ! Meanwhile, OBL puts out more videos than Madonna, whenever THEY need one ........... OBL has been dead for a long time. After all, he needed kidney dialysis. It has to be very hard to get it done while living in a cave. Or, is CIA providing this service to keep him alive....as a bogeyman to scare the Americans and keep their jobs intact?
    Nothing worked on 9/11. Airport security failed four times in one hour, more failures in one hour than have occurred during the other 116,232 hours of the 21st century combined. For the first time in history the US Air Force could not get interceptor fighters off the ground and into the sky. For the first time in history Air Traffic Control lost airliners for up to one hour and did not report it. For the first time in history low temperature, short-lived, fires on a few floors caused massive steel structures to weaken and collapse. For the first time in history 3 skyscrapers fell at essentially free fall acceleration without the benefit of controlled demolition removing resistance from below.

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  2. No. The NY Slimes didn't "fail to do their job". They knowingly and intentionally lied to the American people, over and over again, and now they're trying to salvage their credibility in the eyes of the few idiots who still read that trash by claiming they "failed to do their job".
    Non-sense. The NY Slimes is nothing but a gang of lying, Zionist trash in the business of deceiving the American people. It's NOT a "newspaper". It's a Zionist propaganda rag that's not worth the paper it's printed on.

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  3. Ask ALL the questions and DEMAND answers. If they refuse to answer they are hiding the truth.

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