Plots, Politics and the Weight of Page 1: NYT chose not to run JFK terror plot on the front page

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: The Public Editor
Plots, Politics and the Weight of Page 1
By CLARK HOYT
Published: June 10, 2007

....A decision by editors not to play charges of a terrorism plot at Kennedy Airport on Page 1 last Sunday puzzled me and some readers — and angered others. Among the questions raised: Was the paper properly skeptical of officialdom, in this case the Bush administration? Was it too skeptical, just because it was the Bush administration? Was a political agenda at work?...

***

After substantial discussion through the day, John Geddes, a Times managing editor, decided to put the story inside the newspaper, on the Metro front — Page 30 in the national edition, 37 in the edition circulated in metropolitan New York.

Connie McClellan of Portland, Ore., said she had assumed that her paper was printed before editors had a chance to get the story on the front page. But then she saw Bill O’Reilly accusing The Times of a political decision. She couldn’t remember O’Reilly’s rationale, “except that it involved invoking the phrase ‘far left’ several times.”...

***

(Marty Gottlieb, the weekend editor) told me he was mindful of a history of orange alerts that came at politically convenient times and previous terror plots that wound up amounting to less than they first seemed....This time, Times reporters were hearing skepticism from sources in the government, Gottlieb said, and he became even more concerned that the newspaper not “buy into the hype on an issue where stories have frequently been overstated.”...

***

Looking back at last week’s decision, Geddes told me: “If I had it to do over again, might I have started it out front? Yes.”

Why, I asked.

“I made the purest call in terms of how I view the front page of the newspaper,” he said. “But as I look at the rest of the front page that day, could I have started a small story on the front without diminution of the page? Absolutely. We second-guess ourselves all the time.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/opinion/10hoyt.html?hp

[DeepModem Mom]

1. Self-kick -- and adding link to BerryBush's post of Keith Olbermann's "Nexus of Politics and Terror"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1051149

This was an interesting, and possibly significant decision, on the part of the NYT -- despite the second-guessing and the Public Editor's stance.