The Roman poet Juvenal posed this pretty good question that has traveled down the centuries: “Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?â€
It means, “But who watches the watchers?†In the context of a diatribe against marriage, it comments on how tough it is to enforce moral behavior when the enforcers themselves are corruptible.
The question came to mind this week when I received an acerbic e-mail from a reader, Gary Abramson. He was responding to my Sunday column, in which I reviewed my first year as public editor, a role that I described as “reader representative and internal watchdog.â€
Mr. Abramson, from Goshen, N.Y., was critical of The Times and the whole idea of a public editor.
He wrote, in part:
I regret that your column this past Sunday did not address the inherent problem with your job itself: the public editor is appointed and paid by The Times. It's a conflict of interest no matter how honest the appointee is, and I am not questioning your or your predecessors' integrity. But your humanity makes you no less vulnerable to the Stockholm syndrome than anyone else. Moreover, I do question whether The Times, as much a club as a business, would or will select any public editor whose sensibility clashes with the paper's self-important, preppy culture.
Mr. Abramson said “a committee of scholars†should choose the public editor, and that he once suggested that to The Times but got no response. He then went through a number of his specific beefs with The Times from the overuse of the word “roils†to the Sunday features sections which “cheerily if not delightedly take the unequal distribution of wealth in New York City as a given†to hiring policies (“Is there any enterprise in America with more Yale graduates per capita - including Yale - than where you're working?â€). The quality of the writing at The Times, Mr. Abramson said, has declined since the days of Russell Baker, the celebrated Times columnist. “Let's see what happens if you raise that concern,†he dared me. “I imagine homelessness in the Buffalo winter would not be to your liking.â€
He's right about that last part - it's chilly there - and not wrong on some others. His Yale line, however, is unfair. It outrageously undersells Harvard's dominance at The Times. (In all seriousness, The Times has made a good effort to diversify its staff in recent years.)
He's also right about the “inherent problem,†as he called it, with the job. I am paid by the company whose editorial content I often have to criticize, although I am not a part of the editorial hierarchy. That's a situation that led the media critic Jack Shafer, lifting a phrase from the journalist Michael Dolan, to observe that ombudsmen tend to “gum the hand that feeds†them. Mr. Abramson referred to Stockholm syndrome â€" identifying with the captors. I prefer to call it “drinking the Kool-Aid,†and am well aware of the dangers.
How tough can I actually be on The Times's journalism when my paycheck comes from the very same organization? Self-grading is a dubious proposition, but I will say this: I try hard not to pull my punches, but also to be fair to those I'm writing about. No public editor worth her salt wants to be an apologist or cheerleader, and after all, one of The Times's earliest mottos was “without fear or favor.â€
But I have some help staying honest. Backing me up are the serious readers of The Times who keep a wary eye on their advocate, the public editor. How do they do so? In critical e-mails. In blog posts of their own. Incessantly, on Twitter. In astute comments on my blogs and columns.
Readers are quick to detect any hint of the public editor's verging into being an apologist for The Times. They are quick to point out failures of logic, judgment or fact. They're a tough and smart crowd. (Also, often an encouraging and appreciative one, and I'm grateful for the many kind words in reader comments and e-mails this past week.)
In short, who watches the watcher? In this case, the rhetorical question has an answer: You do.
