Dean Baquet

07 May 2007 |permalink | email article

Integrity matters in journalism. It was illustrated again in a New York Observer banner headline, ‘Times Withdraws from Chummy Galas, Leaving Rove Dateless,’ in reference to the April 21 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

The story focuses on Dean Baquet, since March The New York Times’ Washington bureau chief, who resigned as editor of The Los Angeles Times because he refused to make further editorial cuts he believed would diminish the quality of journalism there but were demanded by the Tribune Company.

“This is a moment when people already think the press is too cozy with government and I think these events confirm this,” Baquet told The Observer.

“I think we need to start sending a signal to the public that journalists and people we cover have a polite by adversarial relationship,” he said in relation to other major D.C. events involving press and politics. Bill Keller, the paper’s executive editor, had earlier told Baquet before his return to the Times he was not a fan of such socials. 

The Times’ “last snuggle” with the Bush administration, The Observer reported, was a memorable one. Baquet sat at Table 92 in the Washington Hilton ballroom, along with Times reporters Maureen Dowd, Jim Rutenberg, Adam Nagourney, David Sanger, Douglas Jehl, Kate Phillips – and Karl Rove.

The Times’ guest has been invited months earlier by Rutenberg, prior to the time Baquet took over the bureau.

On April 29, The Times’ op-ed columnist Frank Rich skewered the Washington press corps for its prewar reporting and coziness with Bush administration officials and wrote, deep in the column, that the paper “decided to end its participation in such events.”

Baquet’s future in New York seems clear; his valiant fight for journalistic integrity in Los Angeles remains indelible.

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