Friday Mailbag: Mar-a-Lago, Assassins, Migrants and Drugs
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Version 0 of 1. This week, when The Times ran a photograph depicting an assassin standing next to the body of his victim, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, readers wrote to the public editor with questions. Some wanted to protest the photo’s publication, some simply were curious about the thinking behind the decision to run it so prominently. We took these concerns to The Times’s standards editor, Phil Corbett, and because the comments section on the resulting interview was particularly lively, we decided to highlight some of the conversation here. Many commenters stood behind The Times’s decision. Others worried that the photo’s prominence lionized the killer and would inspire similar acts. Still other commenters wondered whether the dead ambassador ought to have been included in the photo. An astute commenter immediately answered the question: The commenter also included a link to a blog post by the public editor’s predecessor on the subject, which addressed that choice, and stood by the editors’ decision. In other news, Donald Trump held an off-the-record holiday party for the press at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, and a Times journalist was in attendance. Readers wrote in to object to The Times’s presence at the meeting. Elisabeth Bumiller, the Washington bureau chief, discussed The Times’s attendance at the gala with Erik Wemple of The Washington Post earlier this week. “Our policy on off-the-record with presidents and presidents-elect is to push long and hard to do things on record,” she said. “With journalists, you need some insight into the president-elect’s thinking. We have found in the past that this has helped us with Obama,” and she said off-the-record sessions gave The Times “thought and direction to pursue stories afterward.” The public editor’s take: This is a case where I believe The Times was right in agreeing to the meeting. Such off-the-record sessions with the president are somewhat infrequent but common through the history of White House reporting. They offer a chance for the media to get to know the president they cover a little better, without sacrificing that much. After all, it isn’t that often that some information of great public import is revealed at these sessions. That said, pressing for on-the-record sessions is always the preferred route. After the terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday, a reader wrote in concerned about The Times’s use of the word “migrant” rather than “refugee.” We asked Corbett whether there have been internal discussions around these terms. “The International desk has indeed wrestled with this question, which is complicated and sensitive,” he said. “Migrants is the broader term, including both refugees and others.” Joe Kahn, the current managing editor and former international editor, also addressed this question in a blog post the public editor’s predecessor wrote last year. “While imperfect, it is accurate to refer to both migrants and refugees as ‘migrants,’ because they all belong to the class of people moving from one place to another,” he said. “It is not accurate to refer to all migrants as refugees, however, as refugees have a special status under international law that does not apply to all migrants.” Another reader noticed an issue with a story about a nightclub in T, The New York Times Style Magazine. The reader, Danny Cohen of Los Angeles, put it bluntly: “How could you not mention the problems with Tenants of the Trees?” He linked to a story that reported that multiple men and women claim to have been drugged at the nightclub earlier this year. The public editor’s take: I’m with the reader on this one. Seems like a shadow hanging over the place that the readers should have been told about. Happy holidays to our loyal readers. The public editor’s office will be shuttered next week as we take a quick breather. See you in the new year. |