Letter to the NPR Ombudsman

From: Danny Sleator <sleator@cs.cmu.edu>
To: ombudsman@npr.org
cc: rwh+@cs.cmu.edu, guyb+@cs.cmu.edu
Subject: NPR publishing politically edited transcripts
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2003 22:18:20 -0400

Please look at this:
	http://traprockpeace.org/npr_totenberg_oct_02_2003.html

The original Totenberg interview made it clear that the
Justice Department inexplicably granted the White House time
during which it could legally destroy its records.  This
part was removed from NPR's published transcript of the
story.

Why did NPR do this?

Is it a standard policy of NPR to edit out (like a
state-controlled news agency) the parts of its stories that
are most embarrassing to the administration?

What's your personal opinion of this?

     Danny Sleator
     Professor of Computer Science
     Carnegie Mellon University
     Phones: 412-268-7563, 412-422-5377
     Web: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sleator