"Unfettered" Times ombudsman barred from addressing editorial errors

A New York Times editorial asserts that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's statements and actions are inconsistent with the First Amendment. The assertion contradicts the views of "legal experts" cited in a news article published in the Times four days earlier. The Times public editor responds to a reader's note concerning this contradiction with the statement: "The positions taken by the editorial board of The Times are not within my purview, nor should they be."

The editorial states that Scalia's suggestion that he has a "First Amendment right" to bar audio and visual coverage of his public speeches by the electronic media is "offensive to the First Amendment."

"There is no such right," says the editorial, "as any person charged with safeguarding America's cherished free speech rights should easily see. With due respect, Justice Scalia, this is about something larger than being camera shy." (Justice Scalia's Apology, April 13, 2004.)

Four days earlier, a Times news article had noted that "Justice Scalia does not typically allow audio or video recorders at his speeches, though he often allows print reporters to attend and take notes." The article's next sentence reported the uniform view expressed by "legal experts": "Imposing such conditions ahead of time for speeches in private settings generally creates no legal problems." (Legal Experts Express Concern About Erasure of Scalia Tapes, April 9, 2004.)

The Times was not content with publishing a wrongheaded editorial that insulted a Supreme Court Justice and contradicted the unchallenged views of legal experts cited in its own news story. Six days after the editorial, it published a derisive letter to the editor from one Michael Blaine echoing the editorial's views:

Justice Antonin Scalia ... still contends that he has a "First Amendment right" to bar audio-visual coverage of his public speeches by the electronic media.

Is he so insecure about his remarks that he fears being quoted accurately? Is he making extreme assertions that he wishes to hide or disavow after the fact?

Justice Scalia's grudging apology [relating to an incident in which aides improperly applied his policy] sends the chilling message that those in power are above the scrutiny of a free press.

("Scalia and the Press," April 19, 2004)

The creation of a "public editor" position at the New York Times was a direct outcome of a scandal at the Times which forced out the newspaper's two top editors, Howell Raines and Gerald M. Boyd -- the discovery of a rogue reporter, Jayson Blair, who'd inserted fiction into at least three dozen news articles published in the Times.

The article introducing Daniel Okrent as the Times's first public editor said he would "operate outside the management structure of the newspaper's newsroom and its editorial page.... He will be given an unfettered opportunity to address readers' comments about The Times's coverage, to raise questions of his own and to write about such matters, in commentaries that will be published in the newspaper as often as he sees fit." (The Times Chooses Veteran of Magazines and Publishing as Its First Public Editor, New York Times, October 27, 2003.)

If editorials were excluded from his "purview," the article didn't mention it.

Mr. Okrent has devoted a column to the question, "Should opinion columnists be subject to the same corrections policy that governs the work of every other writer at The Times?" The column offered no indication of any restrictions on Mr. Okrent's purview. ("The Privileges of Opinion, the Obligations of Fact," March 28, 2004.)

The column cited Times editorial page editor Gail Collins's policy regarding opinion columnists, which states that they "are obviously required to be factually accurate" and to "promptly correct" errors.

If somebody in the Times's management has indeed placed restrictions that have not been publicly acknowledged on the public editor's purview so that he may not discuss Times editorials, the question naturally occurs: How high does knowledge of these restrictions go?

The article introducing Mr. Okrent quotes publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s comment that "the creation of the public editor's job and the installation of Mr. Okrent in it were 'stepping stones' toward the goal of 'making The New York Times less opaque as an institution.'"

Is Mr. Sulzberger aware of the restrictions on Mr. Okrent's purview?