Sulzberger on TV Says 'Morale is Just Great' at 'NY Times'

By: E&P Staff Two hours after his former star reporter Judith Miller appeared with Larry King on CNN, Arthur Suzlberger, Jr., publisher of The New York Times, went on PBS?s Charlie Rose Show, and like her, defended the newspaper?s role in the Plame legal case. He declared that "morale is just great" at his paper today.

But Sulzberger seemed to annoy Rose at times by focusing on legal or journalistic principles in the Miller case, while remaining ?not open? about how in-house complaints about her had ?rocked the institution.? Sulzberger said that the Miller fallout ?paled? next to the paper?s Jayson Blair scandal, and next to the ongoing threat to the protection of confidential sources. He called the Miller affair ?a rather small bore issue in the big scheme of things.?

When Rose said it wasn?t such a small thing if the people who work for the Times think it?s a big issue, Sulzberger stood his ground, saying it is only a big issue ?if your readers lose trust and respect and devalue the journalism that they?re getting.?

Sulzberger said, "I don't believe Judy was running amok, and I mean that sincerely."

Asked later to describe the damage the Miller endgame had caused his paper, Sulzberger said he couldn't really say, but said he was proud the paper had "stood up for core principles."

When Rose cited suggestions that Sulzberger had gone out of his way to protect Miller because of a long friendship, he declared, "There is no truth that I protected her because she was Judy Miller. We would have done the same for any reporter."

Pressed again, he said, "I had no unique and special relationsip with Judith Miller."

He thanked his family for being a ?bulwark? during these difficult times. He said the family had talked it over at length during a recent reunion in Chattanooga.

Sulzberger repeatedly admitted that the paper?s reporting on WMD in Iraq was flawed, but said Miller was not alone in the errors, and the paper had owned up to them. He said the paper had learned lessons from it, and ?I think it?s fair to say that those stories would not have run in The New York Times today.?

He asserted that Miller's grievous errors on WMD and the recent controversy do not take away "from the journalism she provided for many, many years....Judy will be remembered for that much longer than any of this other stuff."

In a bit of levity, Sulzberger said the two men had to be careful after both used the word ?entangled? in talking about issues around the Miller case. Just yesterday, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, as part of Miller?s severance deal, explained in a letter to her that his use of the word ?entanglement? in describing her relationship with Scooter Libby was not meant to suggest anything of a social nature.

Rose also learned something on the show: Sulzberger informed him that as a home subscriber to the Times he had free access to TimesSelect.

Twice Rose asked him to comment on the accuracy of the reporting on the Miller fallout at the Times in the New York Observer, and Sulzberger alternately refused or said he didn't think it was accurate. He also dismissed the Philadelphia Inquirer scooping the Times, by several hours, on Miller's release from jail as "that silly thing."

Sulzberger said "the toughest moment" in the Miller ordeal came when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal.