More Questions About Times Timing

Monday, there was some suggestion that NYT editors broke a story they’d been sitting on for over a year about unwarranted government wiretaps in such a way as to hype Jim Risen’s upcoming CIA book. I thought the alleged motive didn’t quite gel, and now LA Times reporter James Rainey is subtly proffering another interpretation: the paper’s editors printed the story to scoop the book.

“‘When they realized that it was going to appear in the book anyway, that is when they went ahead and agreed to publish the story,’ said one of the [unnamed NYT] journalists [who spoke to Rainey]. “That’s not to say that was their entire consideration, but it was a very important one of them.”

Today’s New York Observer has more of the same, in Gabriel Sherman’s “Off the Record” column.

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