NY Times public editor and DC deputy editor agree: Paper should have covered Colbert's speech

In a May 15 post on his official Web journal, New York Times public editor Byron Calame agreed with the conclusion of the newspaper's Washington bureau deputy editor Richard W. Stevenson that the Times should have run an article on comedian Stephen Colbert's speech at the April 29 White House Correspondents Association dinner. As Media Matters for America noted, the Times' -- like numerous other news outlets -- devoted its coverage of the event solely to President Bush's performance. Indeed, reporter Elisabeth Bumiller's lengthy May 1 article focused on the light-hearted act involving Bush and a presidential impersonator but made no mention of Colbert's scathing routine at the dinner. The Times subsequently ran a May 3 article on the contentious debate surrounding Colbert's speech. In the Web journal post, Calame concurred with Stevenson's opinion that the paper should have initially published "a separate story that anticipated the reaction the [Colbert] routine generated and explained its political significance, rather than waiting to capture it after the fact."

—J.K.