If you follow my blog regularly, you'll know I'm a big fan of NYT public editor Daniel Okrent (it killed me I had to work on federal budget day instead of listening to him speak in Toronto at a Canadian Journalism Foundation event -- but adult life is like that. :) ).

Here is some reader reaction to some of his recent columns:

In Rx to the April 10 'scoops' column:

You've got a tough job when the reasoning in the Editors' Note on the Columbia story is essentially Richard Nixon's advice to aides on how to answer questions from Watergate investigators: Tell them you can't remember, say that you can't recall.

It defies belief that not one editor raised a question about the propriety of running the story without opposing comment. Obviously there was discussion about whether to knuckle under to Columbia.

If no one objected to doing so, then The Times has bigger problems than the arrogance of a managing editor who stiffs her own public editor for comment, saying that the Editors' Note "speaks for itself" when it clearly didn't, since you had a question about it.

DON GUTHRIE
Lawrenceville, Ga., April 10, 2005

It is all well and good to have an in-house person periodically point the finger of misconduct or ethical lapses, but unless there are repercussions, nothing will ever change.

Just as those who made mistakes in providing intelligence on Iraq have been allowed to go on without penalty, if the reporters and editors involved were not disciplined, then nothing will have been accomplished.

STEVE LIEBERMAN
Somerville, N.J., April 11, 2005

In Rx to the March 27 'worldviews' column:

You did not mention that most reporters and their editors have a form of the Stockholm syndrome, that is, they are captives of their employers and managers. They know what is expected of them. They know what is culturally acceptable.

E. JOSEPH WEST
Falls Church, Va., April 3, 2005

I find it amusing when media folks think it proves something when they say that no one has ever put pressure on them to say or not say something.

I taught high school social studies for 33 years. No one ever told me to say or not say something, too. And having tenure, I said pretty much what I wanted.

But I also knew not to say some things without being told. There are limits to the protection of tenure.

I am sure reporters know what is a career-ending article without an editor telling them.

DONALD ZWIER
Grayslake, Ill., March 27, 2005

You speak of the "apparently normative, basically liberal worldview" of the staff at The Times. This only furthers the myth of a liberal, left-leaning press that has been so successfully promulgated by so-called conservatives and the radical right.

In fact, the news media have given the current administration toothless, uncritical coverage, making it easy for it to start a war based on fabrications, gut the treasury and take other abhorrent actions. A truly left-leaning or liberal press would have held this administration's feet to the fire on these issues. To the extent that The Times gives it a free pass, the paper furthers a radical right-wing agenda.

RUTH KASTNER
Greenbelt, Md., March 27, 2005