{"id":14035,"date":"2018-09-06T08:23:56","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T08:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14035"},"modified":"2018-09-06T08:23:56","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T08:23:56","slug":"the-story-behind-the-new-york-times-anonymous-op-ed-blasting-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14035","title":{"rendered":"The story behind the New York Times’ anonymous op-ed blasting Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Senior\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Several days ago a senior official in the Trump administration used an intermediary to contact New York Times op-ed page editor Jim Dao.<\/h2>\n

Through the go-between, the senior official expressed interest in writing an explosive piece for the paper, describing a “resistance” to President Trump within the government that works overtime to protect the United States from the president’s worst impulses. <\/p>\n

The result, published on the New York Times’ website on Wednesday<\/a>, prompted speculation all across Washington about who the official is. <\/p>\n

Dao, of course, isn’t saying. In a telephone interview, he was careful not to share any identifying details, even the person’s gender. <\/p>\n

“The person contacted me through an intermediary,” he said. <\/p>\n

Dao said it happened “several days ago,” declining to be more specific. <\/p>\n

Many officials within the administration can be considered “senior,” even if they do not work in the West Wing or interact directly with Trump. <\/p>\n

Dao declined to characterize just how “senior” the whistleblower is. He said the Times did speak to the author directly, but wouldn’t say how so. <\/p>\n

“We were simply trying to abide by the standard that the Times in general would use when referring to someone who’s not named,” he said. <\/p>\n

Dao reports to editorial page editor James Bennet, who in turn reports to the Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger. The opinion section is separate from the newsroom. <\/p>\n

Dao said there are only a “very small number of people within the Times who know this person’s identity,” but he declined to name them. <\/p>\n

He said “we have taken a number of special precautions to protect the person’s identity.” <\/p>\n

\"James
James Dao in a photo taken in 2009.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Face to face meetings? Encrypted messaging? The speculation will continue, but Dao would not go into any detail. <\/p>\n

He said there was no special effort to disguise the person’s writing style, for example by rewriting the piece in some fashion. <\/p>\n

“There’s editing in everything we do,” he said, but it’s based on making the person’s views “clearer” and adhering to style standards. <\/p>\n

Despite the extraordinary nature of the op-ed, Dao said, his initial response to the intermediary was the same as it would be for anyone else. <\/p>\n

The op-ed came on the same week that the excerpts from Bob Woodward’s book “Fear” have revived conversations about Trump’s behavior and fitness for office. <\/p>\n

Dao said that as far as he knows, “this is a coincidence,” meaning the senior official’s outreach was not related to the Woodward book. <\/p>\n

Major newspapers almost never publish unnamed op-ed pieces. At The Times, it is very rare, but not quite unprecedented. <\/p>\n

Dao said he had published a few other anonymous pieces during his tenure as op-ed editor, which began in early 2016. The most recent example was a piece in June by an unnamed asylum seeker from El Salvador. <\/p>\n

In the case of the senior Trump administration official, The Times said it granted anonymity “at the request of the author” because the person’s job “would be jeopardized by its disclosure.” <\/p>\n

Dao declined to say whether he pressed the person to speak on the record. <\/p>\n

He said, “we felt it was a very strong piece written by someone who had something important to say and who’s speaking from a place of their own sense of personal ethics and conscience. That was our main focus.” <\/p>\n

He said he couldn’t talk about the fact-checking process in detail, but “we do make an effort to check the facts for all the pieces.” <\/p>\n

Dao did not rule out publishing another op-ed from the senior official in the future. <\/p>\n

CNNMoney (New York) <\/span> First published September 5, 2018: 7:00 PM ET<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several days ago a senior official in the Trump administration used an intermediary to contact New York Times op-ed page editor Jim Dao. Through the go-between, the senior official expressed interest in writing an explosive piece for the paper, describing a “resistance” to President Trump within the government that works overtime to protect the United…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":14036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}