The Monday In-Box: What Readers Are Telling the Public Editor

Here's a look at what readers of The Times had to say over the weekend, based on what came across my desk.

1. Many readers are reasonably criticizing the way an anonymous quote was presented in the compelling front-page article about Katherine Russell, the widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspected Boston bombers:

Stephen Dougherty of Santa Barbara, Calif., phrased it gently:

The article is well written and I appreciate the obvious effort the reporters went to get such a well-researched story.

But I am curious about this sentence: “She seemed to embrace her new religion willingly and enthusiastically,” said someone who occasionally attended Russell family gatherings, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to betray the family's confidence.”

How does remaining anonymous prevent the person from betraying the family's confidence. To prevent that, the person should not have spoken.

To be clear, I have no problem with The Times reporting what the person said, but I don't think the family's confidence was maintained. Perhaps it would have been better to simply say “a person who wished to remain anonymous.”

I love the New York Times reporting, excellent writing and editing. But this phrase just does not seem to ring true.

Another reader, Jeff Cohen, made the same valid point but did so more critically:

This sentence is inaccurate in explaining the grant of anonymity to a New York Times source: “She seemed to embrace her new religion [...] said someone who occasionally attended Russell family gatherings, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to betray the family's confidence.”

Instead, didn't the source request anonymity just exactly in order to betray the family's confidence - but without getting caught at it?

Anonymity doesn't negate a breech of confidence, it just makes it impossible to pin on the source. The logic of quoted characterization is especially poor. Using the same logic you could write that someone leaking government secrets did so anonymously so as to avoid breaking laws prohibiting leaks.

There's gentling euphemism and then there's mischaracterization, and the “Path From Social Butterfly” article crosses the line in the above instance. It's especially egregious because it affirmatively states that a breech of confidence can be avoided by doing it anonymously. If euphemism is needed or deserved, it could be done more artfully with less damage to the truth.

Explaining grants of anonymity in ways friendly to the source, to get the source to speak at all or for any other reason, should not trump the paper's obligation to report truthfully and accurately.

The article's editor, Hilary Stout, agreed that the description was faulty. She wrote to me in an e-mail, after I sent her Mr. Cohen's complaint, that she was wrong in not changing the wording and regrets not doing so. “This reader makes an absolutely valid and important point,” she wrote.

Ms. Stout, a deputy editor on the National desk, was handling two major front-page stories that day and, she said, “I managed to read straight past this illogical explanation for his anonymity.”

Separately, although on a related subject, some readers objected to the large photograph of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev used with a strong Sunday front-page profile of him â€" and criticized the prominence of the article itself, saying that both the photo and the display gave harmful attention to the suspected killer, thus encouraging others.

Jenny Callicott put it this way: “I am deeply disturbed to see on the Sunday front page the huge photo of Tsarnaev! This portrait-like photo and headline only serve to elevate and glorify him. I am sure every terrorist will cut this out and frame it!” She wondered why editors would make “such a poor and hurtful choice for your newspaper?”

I understand the point these readers make but don't agree. The article, which gives us a deep look into this young man's background and personality, was worth the major display. I don't believe that terrorists are created by this kind of media attention.

2. They're wondering why I haven't commented on or written about Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's criticism of The Times last week, regarding its coverage of stop-and-frisk and the killing of a black teenager. In fact, I am interested in this topic, and hope to return to the subject later this week.

3. They are responding to my column in Sunday's paper about Jayson Blair, with one reader making the point that I “buried the lead” in making the comparison to The Times's coverage of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the end of the column. William Fordes of Santa Monica, Calif., wrote:

Most of the article was directed to Jayson Blair and, by paragraph count, only 3/20th of your time was devoted to the horrendous New York Times coverage of the Iraq war and the WMD debacle. The former was,
certainly, an embarrassment for The New York Times itself, and an annoyance for your readers, but in the end the many false Blair stories damaged only The New York Times. The latter, deeply flawed coverage - led by the awful reportage of, as you put it, “the disgraced reporter Judith Miller” - affected the country and the entire world, ultimately.

I understand Mr. Fordes's point of view but this column's purpose was to look back, 10 years after the Blair episode. The coverage leading to the Iraq war â€" though obviously very important - was not central to this particular column.

And in talking about the need to preserve credibility at The Times - one of the main points of that column - the subject of anonymous sources came up again. Jim Lagier of Walnut Creek, Calif., expressed it well:

I worked for The Associated Press for 40 years, and the pressures for accuracy were incredible. A.P. had stringent requirements for the justification of anonymous sources. Noting the horrible failure during the Boston Marathon, I wonder if the pressure for feeding the insatiable appetite of the Internet has hurt the rules on anonymous sources. When I worked at A.P., the word “anonymous” flashed on the computer screen so everyone knew that was in the story.

Mr. Lagier makes a good point about the dangers of anonymous sources. It's sometimes necessary to quote a source anonymously, but it's almost always problematic in one way or another.