At least he didn't take it personally
Clark Hoyt, the "public editor" of the New York Times has finally addressed Ed Whelan's contention that Linda Greenhouse has a conflict of interest by virtue of reporting on Supreme Court cases in which her husband has participated. Readers will recall that Hoyt failed to respond to Ed for a full month. Eventually, Hoyt responded by asking Ed for the briefs Greenhouse's husband filed -- documents that Hoyt surely could have unearthed himself -- and by repeating Greenhouse's misleading attempts to gloss over the conflict under which she has been laboring. Once Ed accommodated Hoyt's request for documents and blew away Greenhouse's evasions, Hoyt had little choice but to write something in his paper.
What Hoyt wrote is quite a piece of work. In essence, Hoyt admits that there is a conflict and that the Times mishandled it. But he does so only after attacking Ed for calling the problem to the paper's attention.
Deep into his column Hoyt acknowledges:
Like it or not, the perception is that Greenhouse is writing about something in which her husband is a player — and The Times isn’t telling the public. Newspapers routinely question public officials in similar circumstances. . . .The Times should have clued in readers.
Moreover, according to Hoyt, Bill Keller, the paper's executive editor, "happily endorses" Hoyt's analysis and his proposal for how to avoid such problems in the future. In short, Whelan has called a legitimate problem to Hoyt’s attention and as a result, the Times has come up with a proposed solution with which its executive editor is happy.
Yet Hoyt sees fit to devote the first half of his column to attacking the messenger, Ed Whelan. According to Hoyt, Ed is guilty of “increasingly intemperate and personal attacks on Greenhouse” which “indicate something other than a legitimate concern about ethics.” To Hoyt, they “feel like bullying.” But Hoyt fails to cite any such personal attack. As far as I can tell, Whelan limited himself to describing the conflict, which Hoyt concluded is real, and to debunking Greenhouse’s attempt to dissemble her way out of it. In what sense does that constitute a personal attack?
Hoyt ends up arguing that the Times should take measures to prevent future conflicts like Greenhouse’s not in the interest of full disclosure to its readers, but to “make the newspaper less vulnerable to attacks like Whelan’s.” Hoyt may be a "public editor" but his priority is his paper, not the public.
Ed has dissected Hoyt’s column here, here, and here.
