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Did the Times bury its story on interrogations' effectiveness?
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
04/22/09 11:34 AM EDT
If you go to Memeorandum, the most talked-about story on the Web today, or at least as of 11:20 this morning, is Peter Baker's New York Times piece, "Banned Techniques Yielded 'High Value Information,' Memo Says." The story begins:
President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.
“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.
Baker's story attracted a lot of attention soon after the paper posted it on its Web site. In addition to a link on Drudge, it is, according to Memeorandum, the talk of PowerLine, JustOneMinute, The Daily Dish, The Plum Line, Hot Air, Commentary, RedState, Political Punch, AmSpecBlog, and lots of other places on the Web.
In fact, it appears there is just one place you won't find Baker's story: the print edition of the New York Times.
I read the story on the Web last night and, going through the actual newspaper this morning, noticed that it wasn't there. Instead, there were a few graphs devoted to Baker's material placed deep inside another story, "Obama Won't Bar Inquiry, or Penalty, on Interrogations," by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, on page A-15.
I asked Richard Stevenson, who is the Times' deputy Washington bureau chief, what was going on. He told me Baker got the Blair information late in the day Tuesday, and there just wasn't room for it in the paper. "We already had three stories on this subject," Stevenson explained, "and it was late, there was no more space to do this separately…We just didn't have the space to put it in the print newspaper."
The other interrogation stories the Times published in the paper were, "In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Past Use; Interrogations Based on Torture Methods Chinese Communists Used in '50s" on the front page; "Report Gives New Detail on Interrogation Approval," on A-14, and Stolberg's, on A-15.
One reason Baker's story has attracted so much attention is that it provided some balance to a number of interrogation stories we have seen in the Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. There is a legitimate argument to be made by the defenders of the Bush administration's interrogation program, and to see it echoed by Barack Obama's national intelligence director is striking. My guess is that, even given the attention Baker's story has gotten on the Web, it would have had even more impact were it the paper, as well.
Stevenson denied that there was any bias in the Times' decision not to run the story in the paper edition. "If your implication was there was some sort of ideological or value judgment made about the subject matter, that's preposterous," he told me. "It was 8:30 at night, we had a lot of stories going, a limited amount of space, and the ability to get that news into a different story." Stevenson stressed that the Times, after all, broke the news that all those blogs are talking about. "We no longer think of the print paper as the sole definition of the New York Times," he said. "We can get a big pop on a story by putting it on the Web, faster, more completely, and with more impact."
Nevertheless, I don't think anyone would deny that the actual newspaper is still extremely important to the Times. When the paper was under pressure, with a news judgment to make, the Blair material got the short end of the stick.
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