Did the New York Times Just Appoint a 'Scaredy Cat' to its Helm?: 'New Executive Editor Has History of Steering Clear of Controversial Reporting'

Dean Baquet, the new executive editor at the New York Times.
(Screen capture from YouTube video)

By Kevin Gosztola
New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson has been fired and replaced by Dean Baquet, who was managing editor at the Times. But how will he defend the right to publish when confronted by opposition from government officials?

What will Baquet do to encourage and promote investigative journalism? What responsibility may he show to sources?...

To the idea of a reader that the “New York Times today is not The New York Times of the Pentagon Papers era,” Baquet heavily disagreed saying it was “unfair criticism.” He pointed to the disclosures from WikiLeaks and the “paper’s willingness to push back against the government.” And, even though the story on warrantless wiretapping story by Risen and Eric Lichtblau was initially spiked, he said that “took courage to print.”

But Baquet went along with the government and supported the decision to not publish the location of a secret drone base in Saudi Arabia.

In February 2013, Baquet said “The Saudis might shut it down because the citizenry would be very upset. We have to balance that concern with reporting the news.”

Essentially, if it would make a US government policy or operation unpopular in a country, Baquet was suggesting it was the role of journalists to withhold information so the government could continue to conceal information from that country’s citizens. How exactly is that appropriate?

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