On December 7th, Stephanie Strom of the New York Times wrote a front-page article ("Rift Emerges at A.C.L.U. on 2 Big Issues") highlighting some internal criticisms of ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero from a few disgruntled ACLU Board members.
Both the extraordinary placement of the piece on the front page as well as the tone and balance of the piece seriously distorts the actual dynamic in the ACLU. The same writer has written two similar, previous pieces, both of which also ran on the front page of the Times, a news judgement that no other newspaper has made.
By contrast, on Dec. 8th, when the ACLU recently sued the U.S. Government on behalf of Khaled Al-Masri, a German citizen who says he was kidnapped and tortured by the CIA, a contention raised by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Times chose to run that story on page 15.
(Disclosure, I am a former member of the national ACLU Board, serve on both the New York and Southern California ACLU boards and consider myself a friend and admirer of both Anthony Romero and his predecessor Ira Glasser.)
One of the supposedly "key issues" that justified the page one treatment was over Romero's decision to name a new building the Peter B. Lewis Center for Civil Liberties which, says Strom, "critics have fumed over."
Strom then quoted a series of mostly unidentified critics of Romero who alleged that some of them think Romero doesn't consult with the Board enough and suggesting that his focus on fund-raising at the expense of activism.
Writing in the Times voice of God style, Strom continued "Mr. Romero has...become a lightning rod, with a band of vociferous internal critics saying that civil liberties are not his top concern...dissidents say Mr. Romero is ignoring the A.C.L.U.'s traditions, of encouraging dissent; threatening its core principles, like free speech..."
In the world of the ACLU, this is a major smear. Yet Strom gave no examples of civil liberties fights that Romero has ducked. Having become Executive Director shortly before Sept 11th, 2001, he has made sure that the ACLU has rigorously opposed incursions of individual rights advocated by various government agencies.
In the second half of the article, Strom, at long last, gave Romero and ACLU Board President the chance to refute these criticisms, and acknowledged the growth that has occurred under Romero's leadership : membership has jumped 81 percent, to 558,000, since Mr. Romero took over; annual revenue has risen 34 percent, to $59 million, in the year ended March 31.
Following this Strom sounded more like an instrument for Romero's in house critics than an objective journalist. "The current clash is partly driven by the transition from a longtime activist leader to a polished outsider. Mr. Romero succeeded Ira Glasser, a veteran civil rights activist who oversaw the national organization from 1978 through mid-2001. Mr. Glasser and the other A.C.L.U. stalwarts of his generation were scrappy and combative, jumping to take unpopular stances at the mere hint of a threat to principle. Mr. Romero, who came from the Ford Foundation, conveys the diplomacy and charm of a veteran foundation executive."
In this context, "Diplomacy and charm" do not seem like compliments.
To read these pieces, one would think that prior to Romero's arrival, the ACLU never had internal problems. Yet during Glasser's years there intense internal arguments about emotional issues such as campaign finance reform (Glasser and the majority of the Board opposed McCain/Feingold) and taking money from tobacco companies.
Such disagreements, as well as scrutiny of any Executive Director, including Romero are appropriate and a part of the ACLU tradition. But placing such disputes repeatedly onto the front page of the Times creates another layer of reality, a perception among elites that "something must be wrong" if the Times is giving it this much focus. Strom also notes that Romero " criticized the coverage in the New York Times. After one article recounted complaints by the group's former archivist about the use of shredders, he invited the staff to a "shred-in" and suggested they bring copies of that article and others to run through his own shredder."
The Times may be injecting itself into the inner workings of the ACLU rather than reporting on them.