Ethics and Freedom

The following is a letter Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, has sent to readers who have written to him about The Times's publication of information about the government's examination of international banking records: I don't always have time to answer my mail as fully as etiquette demands, but our story about the government's surveillance of international banking records has...

I had the rare occasion, for me, of talking with a group of congressmen last week in Washington, and as our session broke up, I changed the subject abruptly. I asked, "Could you stop the present administration from locking up reporters?" They chuckled. The request was baldly self-serving, since I often write stories that concern national security. Perhaps they also regarded my concern as far...

France's tangled approach to privacy and public figures was thrown into further confusion yesterday by the removal of a magazine editor who published photographs that offended a presidential front runner. Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, was furious when Paris Match, which has a weekly circulation of about a million, last summer published images of his wife, Cécilia, in the company of a man...

NEW DELHI: Unhappy with the draft that has been prepared on content regulation, information and broadcasting secretary SK Arora has asked the panel responsible to rework it. Though no specific reasons were cited, the ministry is apparently unhappy with the way some of the issues have been dealt with as also the length of the 65-page draft, which is seen as being too unwieldy. Earlier in the week...

NEW YORK - The Bush administration and The New York Times are again at odds over national security, this time with new reports of a broad government effort to track global financial transfers. The newspaper, which in December broke news of an effort by the National Security Agency to monitor Americans' telephone calls and e-mails, declined a White House request not to publish a story about the...

NEW YORK — Major newspapers came under fire from top Bush administration officials Friday for publishing accounts, despite objections from the White House, of an extensive program to collect data on international financial transfers by suspected terrorists. Treasury Secretary John Snow said the disclosures, which appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, were...

Eleven years ago, after working only a few months as the Boston Globe ombudsman, I attended my First news ombudsmen convention in Fort Worth, Texas. While I was still relatively bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I did notice that several of my colleagues who had spent years in ombudsmanship had something of a worn, world-weary look about them. One of them pulled me aside, and, noticing my rookie...

One of several journalists sent packing by U.S. military authorities at Guantanamo Naval Base last week has come out with her story of what happened when she and others were forced to leave. Carol J. Williams of The Los Angeles Times wrote in Sunday morning’s edition of the newspaper. The reporter complained of what she called “a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an...

It's fatally easy for U.S. journalists, faced with sinking circulation numbers and what seems like public indifference – if not downright hostility – to our watchdog role in a free and democratic society, to feel like divers abandoned in shark-infested open water. But to tell the truth – and good journalists are nothing if not truth-tellers – the future of our industry just blew through North...

A Chinese journalist found guilty of extortion after writing articles about official corruption was sentenced Thursday to one year in prison, his wife and lawyer said. Yang Xiaoqing, a reporter for the state-run China Industrial Economy News, was sentenced at the Longhui No. 1 People’s Court in Hunan province, his lawyer, Zhang Xingshui said. Yang’s wife, Gong Jie, said she would appeal the...