In failing to send its own reporter to cover the fascinating and important pretrial testimony of Bradley Manning, The New York Times missed the boat.
Over the past several days, as compelling testimony over the harsh treatment of this 24-year-old Army private turned whistle-blower (or illegal informant, depending on your point of view) flooded the media zone, The Times was notably absent.
Accused of giving hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables and classified reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the dealings of the United States State Department to WikiLeaks â€" which later released them to the world via its Web site and through news organizations including The Times - Mr. Manning could be sen tenced to life in prison. He has been held as a “maximum custody†detainee at Quantico, Va., for the past nine months, and this hearing is the first time he has given public testimony.
The Times has not ignored the event entirely â€" it published one story on the subject, a brief piece from The Associated Press, on Friday. But it has not sent a staff reporter â€" the national security reporters Scott Shane or Charlie Savage would have been great choices, but certainly not the only ones â€" to the hearing at Fort Meade, Md.
Why?
David Leonhardt, the Washington bureau chief, explained in an e-mail that, in essence, The Times did not think the hearing itself demanded coverage.
We've covered him and will continue to do so. But as with any other legal case, we won't cover every single proceed ing. In this case, doing so would have involved multiple days of a reporter's time, for a relatively straightforward story. The A.P. article recounting the main points of Mr. Manning's testimony about his conditions of confinement that ran on page A3 of The Times conveyed fundamentally the same material as a staff story would have. And Charlie Savage covered his conditions of confinement, as they were being debated, in two previous articles: http://goo.gl/dvFV0, http://goo.gl/gYTX7.
Again, though, readers can definitely expect more coverage of Mr. Manning in the weeks to come.
The New Republic's Eliza Gray bashes The Times in her piece on Wednesday, and a Times reader, David Morf â€" one of many readers who wrote to me a bout this - was highly critical. He wrote, in part:
The N.Y. Times is the paper of record that published and stood behind the Penagon Papers. Where are you now on the brutal prison treatment and studied legalities being visited on U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning? All he did was reveal to us what the rest of the world actually experiences of us as an actor-in-fact whenever we apparently feel we can get away with it.
Mr. Obama has run a long, low, and mean campaign when it comes to prosecuting the exposure of wrongful behavior by U.S. operatives.
I voted for him as a decent voice of liberal value in a world where the lights are going out, and this is what we get - Private Manning naked in chains? Is this the behavior the U.S. chooses to condone, while posturing itself as the home of the free and the brave?
I do not really understand Mr. Obama's silence and prosecutions. I truly do not understand your silence. It's bad enough that Pr ivate Manning has been badly maltreated for revealing truth to power.
It's unconscionable and sad if The Times sits quietly by saying nothing - even worse, simply running AP wire copy to let the story bury itself.
One doesn't have to agree with either of those viewpoints or interpretations of events to see the news value of the Manning testimony at Fort Meade. The testimony is dramatic and the overarching issues are important.
The Times should be there.
