N.Y. Times Dumps Mystery "Official"   

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Those muddleheads who, at this late date, are trying to snatch away credit from Christopher Columbus for discovering America have not shaken for a second my confidence in what Miss Schroeder told us in geography.

In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue – looking for India. He ran into America, but the people there weren't what he expected. They had no turbans and no elephants. They couldn't even speak British.

Discoverers, of course, cannot be held responsible. They discover the damned thing because it's there. In every case they were hoping for something better.

And by that convenient token, I don't want anybody putting down what I discovered the other day in The New York Times . I can hear some negative nabob nattering now: "But what you discovered in the Times has been going on 18 years." I can't help that. It's just like Columbus and America – I never stumbled on it before. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In my case I discovered a Times correspondent stomping all over an honored journalistic convention sacred to the memory of Henry Kissinger Himself. Kissinger, you will recall, was always accompanied on his shuttling around the Middle East by a "senior official" who would explain things to reporters on the Plane of State. Every comatose bureaucrat in Washington, of course, knew that Kissinger was playing both parts. For one thing, Senior Official sounded exactly like Kissinger: he dispensed thin news in fat language. The skinny on the secretary's dual role not only sloshed around the world in diplomatic cables, it was even written about out loud.

Bruce van Voorst of Newsweek , for example, raised the curtain on a day in the life of Kissinger back in 1975:

"8:05 a.m.: It is time for what his staffers cheerfully call 'the breakfast crisis' – food either too early or too late, orange juice too sour or too sweet...

"9:10 a.m.: 'Where's Sisco and Atherton?' Kissinger bellows...

"6:30 p.m.: In an impromptu press conference, Kissinger, appearing in his role as the anonymous 'senior official' who always happens to travel on the secretary of state's plane, briefs reporters on the Middle East peace talks..."

Transparency, however, has not discouraged the persistence of this venerable fiction right down to this moment. On September 17 of this very year, a personage on Secretary of State Jim Baker's plane, spritzing between Jerusalem and Cairo, told reporters the United States would stand firm on its demand that Israel suspend the building of new West Bank settlements.

Every newspaper and wire service referred to the personage as either "a senior U.S. official," a "high administration source" or "a senior U.S. official aboard Baker's plane."

Except one. Tom Friedman told readers of The New York Times , "Reporters on Mr. Baker's flight to Cairo were summoned for an unusually blunt briefing during which they were told..."

Hey! No senior official. My God, he must have fallen out over the Sinai.

"Reporters were told." By whom? Aha, dear readers, guess who? Ten more times in the course of the story Friedman used "reporters were told."

What's the effect of this device? The effect is to refuse to collaborate with the secretary of state in setting up a straw man, a mythical public official, as a source. The effect is to lead the reader in a truer direction. Who on Baker's plane is most likely to summon reporters for a blunt briefing? Hmmm.

An alert senior reporter for WJR put a question about all this to Friedman, whose immediate reaction was laughter.

"This is something," he said, "that started 18 years ago with Bernie Gwertzman. They decided back then that the convention of 'a senior official' was a bit dishonest with the reader. So we use this passive voice: 'reporters were told.' But, of course, if a senior aide of Baker's actually does a briefing, I use 'senior official.' "

Later the senior reporter for WJR was briefed by a senior official of The New York Times traveling at the same desk as Foreign Editor Bernie Gwertzman:

Q: Under your system, the thinking reader knows that if you use "senior official" it's not the secretary of state, and if you use "reporters were told" they know it is the secretary. Right?

A: Ummmm...If that's the logical conclusion, so be it.

Q: Has anyone at the State Department ever objected to "reporters were told"?

A: Not once.

It all reminded me of the story I heard recently from a Columbus expert who prefers to remain anonymous. It seems a Barcelona reporter created a ferocious uproar in Spain with a 1492 dispatch from the Santa Maria that said, "A senior official traveling with Columbus claims the world is round." Columbus denounced the story as a damnable fabrication. The reporter, unable to produce a senior official, went to his death (less than bravely, alas) before a firing squad. l