Mea Culpa

Fox News

The public editor of The New York Times says he was wrong to support the paper's release last June of a story exposing the government's efforts to track terrorists by monitoring financial data. Byron Calame writes he now believes the article should not have been published for two reasons — the apparent legality of the program, and the absence of any evidence that anyone's private data had been misused.

Calame writes he was embarrassed that while the story asserts many people already knew about the effort, the headline contradicted that by calling it a "secret" program. He says he allowed what he called the "vicious criticism of The Times by the Bush administration" to trigger his instinctive affinity for the underdog and enduring faith in a free press.