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Now, in all fairness, I want to say and repeat that wherever I have discussed this question with any of our managing editors, including the present one, in theory they're a hundred percent in agreement. I don't want to leave the impression that they think that a little editorialization is a good thing.

The rub, then, is in the actual -

Execution. Well, sure, but - that's technically true, but my feeling is that if they were really bearing down from the top on this principle, it could be controlled. I really don't think that there has been. And maybe the issue comes down to the fact that what is editorialization in one person's eyes, namely in my eyes, is not editorialization but is interpretation, in other people's eyes.

That's one view. Another would be that the times were so tumultuous that they simply couldn't man the barricades.

Well, of course, in the case of some of our respective managing editors on whom this responsibility really lies, and I can think of at least three or I guess four during my period as head of the editorial page, I really honestly feel that, while they certainly adhered to this view in principle, I really feel that the effort wasn't sufficient to control this. And I think that's been a very serious defect in the Times' handling of many news stories. This, I guess, has been another source of, shall we say, not terribly close relationships between me and the news executives of the Times. Because I probably made a pest of myself in squawking