I Get White House Letters Letters

Here's the response I received from the office of the public editor at the NYTimes. I wrote about the infamous "Comfy Feathers" White House Letter.

Several readers have voiced concerns about the White House Letter.

I include Mr. Okrent's response below:

As for the White House Letter, it’s part of a longstanding Times practice of trying to provide a glimpse into the personal side of newsmakers’ lives. I do think the paper could do a better job of labeling these pieces and making clear that they are not about, nor meant to be about, life-and-death issues.

Sincerely,
Arthur Bovino
Office of the Public Editor
The New York Times

What would that label possibly say? White House Letter: Helping You Decide to Elect Dear Leader? White House Letter: There's No Beating Bush!? And as for "life and death" - that's just a nice way of telling me to calm the hell down about stuff that doesn't matter. Remember, the idea for the WH Letter came up during the days after 9/11 in the A Nation Challenged section. It may have started out as filler, but they decided to keep it for a reason. Ms. Bumiller herself says that the space they set aside for the Letter is valuable simply by virtue of being in the NYTimes. She says that she had better have something valuable to say in it. Maybe they think she's still a style reporter and she thinks she's on the Washington beat. Maybe I'm being lied to by Mr. Bovino. But when the WH Letters clearly toe the RNC CREEP line and are not balanced by similarly fawning pieces about Kerry and his people, and given BushCo's record of war mongering, I consider that a matter of life and death.

Comments

[Dimmy Karras]

You appear to have received the same email that they sent to The Daily Howler guy, who complained about this on Tuesday, so it's a form email, not responding to anyone's specific complaints.

[eRobin]

I'm in good company. I'm not surprised it's a form letter though. They must get tons of complaints about that column. What surprises me is that they admit it's trash and they keep on going with it. How can they even claim to be unbiased?