Romenesko

Salon
Times public editor Daniel Okrent is asked by Steve Kettmann: "Do you think that the Times' prewar reporting on WMD could prove to be a longer-term embarrassment to the paper than the Jayson Blair scandal?" OKRENT: "I don't know if I could speak to comparative sins. It certainly was a very serious case of bad journalism. It was not, to the best of my ability to determine, a case of 'I know we're lying as I write this,' which Jayson Blair was. ...The Times did a lousy job on WMD, but I can't imagine there was anybody in the office saying, 'Let's make up some things.'" KETTMANN: "But an argument can be made that the paper's WMD reporting helped lead the country into war." OKRENT: "I'm not saying it's not a significant issue. I'm saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism."