(2003-04-26) — The New York Times today announced a partnership with the United Nations Security Council that it said would add credibility to its editorial page.
Under the terms of the deal, the Security Council will screen, and approve or edit, all editorials on global issues before they appear in the paper.
A Times spokesman said, “We got the idea after reading our own editorial criticizing President Bush for excluding U.N. inspection teams from the hunt for Saddam’s WMD. We wrote that the U.S. and Britain lack credibility that only an international team can provide. Then someone in the Times lunch room says, ‘Hey, who’s watching the watchdog?’ And we realized that even we need that kind of credibility.”
In addition to U.N. inspections of its editorials, the Times said it will begin printing the names of editorial board members who write or endorse each piece, along with personal email addresses for reader feedback.
This should eliminate the need to write things like “This page agreed with the president’s conviction that…”.
“In America, free speech is meaningless if you won’t stand behind your words,” said the unnamed Times spokesman. “Frankly the page has no opinion…it’s our editors who write the stuff.”

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