My Letter to New NYTimes Public Editor Byron Calame (X-post ER&D)

[GuvWurld]

The NYTimes has a new Public Editor who used his first column to introduce himself with a pledge of greater transparency and accountability. It inspired the following letter.


Dear Mr. Calame:

Welcome to the New York Times and congratulations on your new position. Your opening column was inspiring and cause for hope. You made it seem like you want to be held accountable for your work. I can think of only one relevant way for me to judge your performance. My view is that in repeatedly failing to cover major stories getting significant attention around the world and on the Internet, The Times has migrated from the so-called reality-based community into the land of advocacy journalism. Readers are told what to think is real, not necessarily what is real.

If you are going to represent the readers, you will have to approach your new job like a whistleblower, pre-cleared for immunity and acting with impunity. Here are the two most important things you could address:

--Why should election results be accepted as legitimate when the elections are conducted under conditions which ensure inconclusive outcomes? Please see the Voter Confidence Resolution which is targeted for City Councils and already scheduled for a vote in Arcata, CA on July 6.

--Why do so many unanswered questions about 9/11 remain unasked? Please see: http://www.ny911truth.org/articles/coverup911_v2.pdf

As the reader's representative, the only way I can judge your performance and hold you accountable is by how much myth-busting you do to bring the Times either to the reality-based community or obsolescence. Welcome to the peaceful revolution, Mr. Calame, and congratulations again on your new position. I look forward to working with you.

In Respect and Peace,

[spooked911]

1. Excellent! I suggest everyone who reads this board send

Mr. Calame a message along these lines. We can only try.

Thanks for posting this.

[spooked911]

2. Here is my letter

Dear Mr. Calame:

Congratulations on your new position. 

I will get right to the point and say that there are very serious questions that still remain about the terror attacks of 9/11 and the Bush administration's handling of those attacks.  The 9/11 Commission, while finding some faults in the government's handling of Al Qaeda, neglected scores of issues that are of utmost importance to 9/11.

There are many questions about 9/11 that are still unanswered, which is shameful considering how significant this day was for our nation.

Here are some links for further information on the unanswered questions of 9/11:

http://www.ny911truth.org/
http://www.911truth.org/
http://911research.wtc7.net/
http://reopen911.org/
http://www.pentagonresearch.com/
http://www.911citizenswatch.org/

Of course there are many books that have been published recently on the unanswered questions of 9/11.  David Ray Griffin's recently published book "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions" is a good place to start.

Since you are the reader's representative, I am hoping you can bring the important issue of the unanswered questions of 9/11 to light in the NY Times.

Your opening column suggests that you want to be held accountable for your work. The best way for me to judge your performance would be if you can make an impact in getting stories covered that are being ignored by the New York Times, such as possible government complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

Sincerely,

[GuvWurld]

3. Thanks for the backup, Spooked911...

Is this forum active enough to kick off a letter writing campaign like that of Wiley50 in the ER&D forum when the Tribune syndicate spiked Koehler's columns on election fraud?

[delver]

4. here's my letter....

Dear Mr. Calame,

I hope this email reaches you, and that I will at least receive a response from a human. You see, I have lost all faith in the institutions of our government and mainstream media. The NYT is no exception, in fact, as the preeminent journalistic arbiter of public discourse, your paper, or rather your corporate media conglomerate, could be seen as especially guilty of supressing the vital stories that are not reaching the public. Stories such as the coming environmental and energy crises and all the unanswered questions behind the events of 9/11 have been given scant or no coverage. Truly structural critiques of the values of capitalism or the history of American foreign policy seem to be off the table. That is not democracy.

See here Professor David Ulansey's compilation of information about the mass extinction that we are currently undergoing:
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/extinction.html
It is estimated by some of the world's leading experts that 25% of all mammals face extinction within 30 years as do 50% of all species within 100 years. Does the public know this? Should they, in a supposedly democratic society based upon an "informed citizenry?" Can the people make rational decisions without accurate information about the drastic changes to the environment that will wreak havoc on ecosystems and climate? These are questions for you and your colleagues to answer.

I would like to pose a simple question: How censored is the NYT? Is there a CIA or other governmental oversight department within the actual organization or is there daily monitoring/censoring of the newspaper's content? These are not conspiratorial or ridiculous questions. We the people know what's going on, we know what it means when our government invokes "National Security" to quash anything that threatens the credibility of our current fascist government. (See Laurence Britt's 14 points of fascism and ask yourself if that description is accurate: http://secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm) Here's the title of an article for you: "Has America Become a Fascist State While We Weren't Paying Attention?"

It is quite hard for me to restrain my indignation at the NYT's cowed and complicit position in relation to the current administration. From where I stand, it seems that your organization has been thoroughly compromised, that those of you who work there have basically given up on democracy and resigned yourselves to being a propaganda arm of the government. What are we supposed to think when Donald Rumsfeld actually proposes a "Ministry of Propaganda" and when government "video news releases" are aired as real, independent news? What are we supposed to think when there are glaring lies and inconsistencies in the official story of 9/11 and the NYT goes on ignoring them?

See here an article in the Philadelphia Daily News, which actually had the courage to pose these questions:
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/6742902.htm
http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/williambunch/williambunch.txt
Perhaps the NYT could actually do some followup journalism with their considerable resources.

Let me conclude by saying that what is at stake is nothing less than Democracy and Freedom. It may be time for all of you at the NYT to do some soul searching and ask yourselves what you really believe in. Unless you can face these tough issues and begin to bring them into the public debate, your legacy will be that of a subtle and finely-tuned propaganda machine that helped to propel us into the depths of fascism. If the institution cannot reflect on it's role in a democracy and decide to finally cover these stories, perhaps the individuals who still believe in such values as freedom and an open marketplace of ideas, should band together and resign in protest.

[spooked911]

5. Nice!

[spooked911]

6. I don't know how active it is here actually. It seems to have spiked up

since David Ray Griffin's speech on CSPAN. I've seen some new people here but then others drop away...

I would say there is only about twenty to thirty regular posters here these days.

[seatnineb]

7. There may be more who just read......

.....but don't participate.

I did for a couple of months before finally joining in.

[spooked911]

8. This isn't a good sign for Mr. Calame--his first real column is responding

to wing-nuts criticizing the NYTimes coverage of the CIA air rendition story:

The Thinking Behind a Close Look at a C.I.A. Operation
By BYRON CALAME

A STRIKING number of readers have denounced The New York Times for describing the Central Intelligence Agency's covert air operations for transporting suspected terrorists in a Page 1 article on May 31.

The 2,900-word article focused on a C.I.A.-affiliated company, Aero Contractors Ltd., whose planes are often used when the agency wants to grab a suspected member of Al Qaeda overseas and deliver him to interrogators in another country. The legal term for this is rendition, and the practical result is interrogation in a country with looser rules on what constitutes torture. Given the heated public debate over the rendition program, the article's detailed look at the C.I.A. air operations was especially controversial.

The generally strident e-mail messages demanded to know why The Times had decided to publish information that the readers believe will aid terrorists and make life in the United States less safe for everyone - especially the people carrying out the operation. Most of them didn't seem to be aware that the once-secret air operations had been mentioned in earlier articles and broadcasts elsewhere.

So it seems like an apt time to explore with readers The Times's process for handling covert intelligence stories as the war on terrorism continues. We'll start with a fairly typical reader complaint letter, and then consider a response prepared by one of the reporters and sent by the public editor's office to most of the readers who wrote to us about the article. Finally, I'll offer some comments from Times editors and my thoughts about the process.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/opinion/19public.html?pagewanted=print

Oy. We're fucked.