How Very Nicely Circular.
The eagle-eye of Avedon Carol spotted this connection:
“I was just jumping from link to link earlier and ran into this 1999 wedding announcement: Emma Gilbey, an author and journalist, was married yesterday to Bill Keller, the managing editor of The New York Times. The Rev. Robert J. Kennedy performed the ceremony at the Holy Name of Jesus Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan. […] Mr. Keller, 50, graduated from Pomona College. He is the son of Adelaide and George M. Keller of San Mateo, Calif. The bridegroom’s father retired as the chairman and chief executive of the Chevron Corporation in San Francisco. Oh, I see!”
Interesting…let me get this straight so I understand. I wouldn’t want to make any false connections or anything.
Iraq-> Oil industry -> Chevron -> NYT Editor Bill Keller-> Judith Miller -> Scooter Libby + Bush+Cheney -> Oil industry-> Iraq
‘Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel…‘
Conflicts of interest have always occurred in journalism and publishing, enough so that newspapers have to have very strict rules about disclosure of any such ties, as does the NYT.
Their own NYT Handbook on Ethical Journalism (.pdf) has this to say on the disclosure of potential family conflicts:
106. In a day when most families balance two careers, the legitimate activities of companions, spouses and other relatives can sometimes create journalistic conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts. They can crop up in civic or political life, professional pursuits and financial activity. A spouse or companion who runs for public office would obviously create the appearance of conflict for a political reporter or an editor involved in election coverage. A brother or a daughter in a high-profile job on Wall Street might produce the appearance of conflict for a business reporter or editor.
107. To avoid such conflicts, staff members may not write about people to whom they are related by blood or marriage or with whom they have close personal relationships, or edit material about such people or make news judgments about them. For similar reasons, staff members should not recruit or directly supervise family members or close friends. Some exceptions are permissible ? in a foreign bureau, for instance, where a married couple form a team, or in the case of an article by afood writer profiling her brother the Yankee star, where the kinship is of genuine news interest.
I made a cursory search of the NYT since 1981 for ‘Chevron’ +’Oil’ and got 1884 hits so I think those’re definitely topics on which the paper reports. I then searched for ‘Chevron’+’Bill Keller’ and got at least 2 editorials by Keller in which Chevron is mentioned.
Unfortunately, they are both behind the paywall and that being so, there’s no clue as to whether they’re negative or positive about Chevron. But that’s not really the point, is it? The paper’s own ethics handbook is very clear about potential family conflicts – inform your superiors. Keller might argue that his father is retired and it’s not an issue, but it’s quite possible, even probable, that Keller’s dad has a handsome pension and stock options. And opinions about his old employers and their interests too, I expect. We’ve all been to those family dinners.
So did Keller inform his superior, the owner ‘Pinch’ Sulzberger, about this? Maybe he did. But even if he did, he’s not just any reporter. He’s the Editor – with the power to hire, fire, spike stories and use the paper to pontificate at will. Keller sets the whole editorial direction and tone for the paper. He has Influence.
I can’t find ( though it doesn’t mean it’s not out there, like I said, it was a cursory search) any statement in which he informs his paper’s readers of his family connection to the oil industry. But again, even if Keller did disclose somewhere – in these paranoid and dangerous times, when there’s an illegal war being waged about oil and an oil industry cabal is twisting the US Constitution so hard it’s broken, perhaps the ‘Paper of Record”s readers could use a reminder of how the NYT is connected, even if remotely, to the oil industry.
‘ ?Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas ? reserves I?d love Chevron to have access to,? enthused Chevron CEO Kenneth T. Derr in a 1998 speech at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, in which he pronounced his strong support for sanctions.’
Chevron donations to Republicans: “15. ChevronTexaco. Donations 1999-2004 $2.5 million”
? Reporters, editors, photographers and all members
of the news staff of The New York Times share a
common and essential interest in protecting the integrity
of the newspaper. As the news, editorial and business
leadership of the newspaper declared jointly in 1998:
?Our greatest strength is the authority and reputation of
The Times. We must do nothing that would undermine
or dilute it and everything possible to enhance it.? ?
Guidelines on Our Integrity, May 1999
Interestingly, Chevron is not the only family connection. Keller’s wife Emma Gilbey, former ABC news producer and power groupie, is reputedly an heiress to the Gilbey’s Gin fortune – and Gilbeys is owned by Diageo, which gives more to Republicans than Democrats. She was also John Kerry’s paramour at one time. But that’s just by the by.
