Central Intelligence Agency
Scene: A tabloid newsroom, in the middle of the Petraeus scandal
Each day, the New York tabloids vie to sell readers at the newsstands on outrageous headlines, dramatic photography, and, occasionally, great reporting. Who is today's winner?
(2)How scintillating is this Jill Kelley addition to the Paula Broadwell story, actually?
Each day, the New York tabloids vie to sell readers at the newsstands on outrageous headlines, dramatic photography, and, occasionally, great reporting. And each day, Capital New York calls a winner. More
(2)A.P. wants you to know they waited for approval before publishing Al Qaeda bomb-plot mole story
They waited for assurances that officials' "security concerns had been satisfied" and that the White House was planning to make an announcement about the successful C.I.A. operation the next day. More
Apuzzo and Goldman's long campaign: Behind the Associated Press' big NYPD counterterror investigation
The two reporters pitched the NYPD story, explaining that a variety of sources had been dishing to them on the department's aggressive anti-terror tactics.
"They said, 'Look, we wanna break some news here, not write navel-gazing stories about how America has changed, or, "Did the terrorists win?", or how dramatic this was,'" Bridis recalled. "That was the genesis."
The stories have been just that: Solid reportage from the front-lines of the tradeoff between civil liberties and security, not from a philosophical or legal standpoint but from the standpoint of actual facts on the ground.
For New Yorkers, the reports give body to the most delicate quandaries to have emerged from the rubble of 9/11.
For the AP, it justifies the wire's calculated increase in U.S. intelligence community coverage in recent years. It's a tough beat, and the gatekeepers of American journalism didn't exactly nail it the last time around, when their credulous reporting on W.M.D. in the early 2000s helped usher in a protracted war that American troops are only now preparing to withdraw from.
"It's an enormous area for society to be watching," said Mike Oreskes, the AP's senior managing editor for U.S. news. "For journalism to be watching."
