Media Behaving Badly > NY Times Ombudsman Regrets Swift Banking Story
The NY Times ombudsman has retracted his earlier defense of the paper's revelation of U.S. monitoring of international Swift banking transactions. The original NYT piece acknowledged that the program had successfully intercepted terrorist activities, but "raised questions" about the program's legality. In his retraction, the ombudsman acknowledged that the program does appear to be legal.
This is the right call. The original defense was always weak. If the standard for revealing classified intelligence programs was to merely question their credibility, then there was no standard - by that logic, any program could be exposed by unelected reporters and editors, at any cost to national security.
Patterico, who had excellent Swift coverage at the time, has more.
Media Behaving Badly bonus! - The BBC admits its liberal bias.
Posted by lesjones
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