I’ve been waiting for Taibbi to comment some of the recent Friedman-related news, but I think we’ve waited long enough now (from a recent New Yorker piece via Michael Roston):
Thomas Friedman, the Times’ chief foreign affairs columnist, lauded the efforts that Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., has made to keep the newsroom intact, saying, “I just have a great deal of admiration for him.” He told me that since taking his current post, in 1995, he has never been asked by Sulzberger what he was planning to write, or how high his travel expenses would be. “To be able to say what I want to say and go where I want to go—other than a Sulzberger-owned newspaper, you tell me where that exists today.” (Of course, star reporters like Friedman live in a special universe, even at the Times.) Friedman said that there will always be a demand for “quality, branded news that people can trust,” but he believes that the shakeout of news organizations is going to be extreme: “It’s going to be us and the BBC and the Wall Street Journal and not a lot more.” At some point, Friedman said, the Times is “probably going to need a partner of one kind or another. I just hope it’s a junior partner to the Sulzberger family.” Friedman proposed a candidate—“someone with the ethics and journalistic integrity of Michael Bloomberg,” the mayor of New York, who has his own news empire.
And this comes on the heels of Friedman getting dinged for taking lots of speaker money:
When Friedman accepted $75,000 — his standard rate — for speaking to a regional government agency in Oakland this month, he ran afoul of a Times rule that staff members may take fees “only from educational and other nonprofit groups for which lobbying and political activity are not a major focus.”
Friedman is his own brand. He has five international best sellers in print and said he gives 15 or more paid lectures a year, many more for free, and posts them on his Web site. But he is bound by the same ethics guidelines as others. When his agent presented him with an invitation to a “climate protection summit,” Friedman said, he assumed it was a nonprofit forum. “I just wasn’t paying attention,” he said.
My other favorite columnist got nailed for something similar last year, but the amounts involved were much smaller (a total of 19K for two speaking engagements). What’s always striking to me about Friedman is just how large he lives. Even in an era of appalling media celebrity arrogrance, he stands out.
I guess Friedman should follow his own advice here: when you’re in a hole, stop digging, when you’re in two, bring a lot of shovels.
(h/t Michael Calderone)