Bill Keller (born January 18, 1949) is an American journalist. He was the founding editor-in-chief of ''
The Marshall Project'', a nonprofit that reports on
criminal justice in the United States. Previously, he was a columnist for ''
The New York Times'', and served as the paper's
executive editor from July 2003 until September 2011. On June 2, 2011, he announced that he would step down from the position to become a full-time writer.
Jill Abramson replaced him as executive editor.
Keller worked in the ''Times''
Moscow bureau
Bureau ( ) may refer to:
Agencies and organizations
*Government agency
*Public administration
* News bureau, an office for gathering or distributing news, generally for a given geographical location
* Bureau (European Parliament), the administra ...
from 1986 to 1991, eventually as bureau chief, spanning the
final years of the Cold War and the
dissolution of the Soviet Union. For his reporting during 1988 he won a
Pulitzer Prize.
[
]
Early life
Keller is the son of former chairman and chief executive of the Chevron Corporation
Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California (shortened to Socal or CalSo), it is headquartered in Sa ...
, George M. Keller. He attended the Roman Catholic schools St. Matthews and Junípero Serra High School in San Mateo, California
San Mateo ( ; ) is a city in San Mateo County, California, on the San Francisco Peninsula. About 20 miles (32 km) south of San Francisco, the city borders Burlingame to the north, Hillsborough to the west, San Francisco Bay and Foster C ...
, and graduated in 1970 from Pomona College, where he began his journalistic career as a reporter for a campus newspaper called ''The Collegian''. From July 1970 to March 1979, he was a reporter in Portland with '' The Oregonian'', followed by stints with the ''Congressional Quarterly
Congressional Quarterly, Inc., or CQ, is part of a privately owned publishing company called CQ Roll Call that produces a number of publications reporting primarily on the United States Congress. CQ was acquired by the Economist Group and combine ...
Weekly Report'' and the '' Dallas Times Herald''. He is married to Emma Gilbey Keller
Emma Gilbey Keller (b. ca. 1961) is an author and journalist, based in New York City. She specializes in writing about women and women's issues. She has written two books: ''The Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela'' (Jonathan Cape, 1993) a ...
and has three children.[
]
''The New York Times''
Keller joined ''The New York Times'' in April 1984, and served in the following capacities:["Columnist Biography: Bill Keller"]
''The New York Times''. Retrieved November 2, 2013. Coverage evidently ends before 2003.
* Reporter in the Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...
bureau (1984–1986)
* Reporter in the Moscow bureau (1986–1988)
* Bureau chief in the Moscow bureau (1988–1991)
* Bureau chief in the Johannesburg bureau (1992–1995)
* Foreign editor (1995–1997)
* Managing editor (1997–2001)
* Op-ed columnist and senior writer (2001–2003)
* Executive editor (July 2003 to September 2011)
He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his "resourceful and detailed coverage of events in the U.S.S.R." during 1988.["Bill Keller"]
The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 1, 2013. That is, in the Soviet Union during the year it established its Congress of People's Deputies, the last year before the revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe.
2003 Invasion of Iraq
Keller was a leading supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, explaining his backing for military action in his article 'The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-A-Hawk Club'. Two days after the invasion, Keller wrote the column 'Why Colin Powell Should Go', arguing for US Secretary of State's resignation because his strategy of diplomacy at the UN had failed. In contrast, Keller was much more sympathetic to Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, describing him as the 'Sunshine Warrior'.
Judith Miller
On July 6, 2005, Keller spoke in defense of Judith Miller
Judith Miller (born January 2, 1948) is an American journalist and commentator known for her coverage of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program both before and after the 2003 invasion, which was later discovered to have been based on ...
and her refusal to give up documents relating to the Valerie Plame case.
NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program
Keller was reported to have refused to answer questions from ''The Times'' public editor, Byron Calame
Byron "Barney" Calame (born April 14, 1939, in Appleton City, Missouri) is an American journalist. He worked at ''The Wall Street Journal'' for 39 years, retiring as deputy managing editor in 2004. In 2005, he became the second public editor of ' ...
, on the timing of the December 16, 2005 article on the classified National Security Agency (NSA) Terrorist Surveillance Program
The Terrorist Surveillance Program was an electronic surveillance program implemented by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was part of the President's Surveillance Program, w ...
. Keller's delay of the paper's reporting about NSA overreach until after Bush's close reelection was controversial. ''The Times's'' series of articles on this topic won a Pulitzer Prize. The source of the disclosure of this NSA program was investigated by the United States Justice Department. The NSA program itself was reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as to whether it sidesteps the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign pow ...
, and after ''The Times'' articles, the Administration changed its procedures, allowing for more safeguards and more Congressional and judicial oversight.
Keller discussed the deliberations behind the Times' decision to publish the story in a July 5, 2006 PBS interview with Jeffrey Brown that included a discussion of the issues involved with former National Security Agency Director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman.
Catholic Church sex abuse crisis
Keller widely reported on the Catholic sex abuse cases
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, nuns, Popes and other members of religious life. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, a ...
and flatly put the blame on John Paul II
Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...
himself : "The uncomfortable and largely unspoken truth is that the current turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church is not just a sad footnote to the life of a beloved figure. This is a crisis of the pope's making."
SWIFT
Keller and ''The Times'' also published a story on another classified program to monitor terrorist-related financial transactions through the Brussels, Belgium
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) on June 23, 2006. Many commentators, as well as some elected officials such as U.S. Congressman
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they c ...
Peter T. King
Peter Thomas King (born April 5, 1944) is a former American politician who represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he represented a South Shore Long Island district that in ...
, called for the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute ''The New York Times'' and the confidential sources who leaked the existence of this counter-terrorism
Counterterrorism (also spelled counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, incorporates the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, business, and intelligence agencies use to combat or ...
program despite relevant statutes that forbid revealing classified information that could threaten national security, especially in a time of war.
In an attempt to respond to criticism stemming from the disclosure of the classified Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, the NSA program's official name, Keller stated in a published letter that President Bush himself had acknowledged as early as September 2001 that efforts were underway "to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks" and "to follow the money as a trail to the terrorists." In an Op-ed column in ''The Times'', Keller, together with '' Los Angeles Times'' editor Dean Baquet
Dean P. Baquet (; born September 21, 1956) is an American journalist. He served as the executive editor of ''The New York Times'' from May 2014 to June 2022. Between 2011 and 2014 Baquet was managing editor under the previous executive editor Ji ...
wrote that "Our job, especially in times like these, is to bring our readers information that will enable them to judge how well their elected leaders are fighting on their behalf and at what price." Keller's critics, including U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow
John William Snow (born August 2, 1939) is an American economist, attorney, and businessman who is the former CEO of CSX Corporation and served as the 73rd United States secretary of the treasury under U.S. President George W. Bush. He replaced ...
, responded to Keller's letter by pointing out that there is a vast difference between stating general intentions to track terrorist finances and the exact means employed to achieve those goals. But, as Keller wrote, this was the same Secretary Snow who invited a group of reporters to a 6-day trip on a military aircraft "to show off the department's efforts to track terrorist financing."
Nelson Mandela
Keller wrote a 128-page juvenile biography of Nelson Mandela published by Kingfisher Books in 2008, ''Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela''. He had served as the ''Times'' bureau chief in Johannesburg from April 1992 to May 1995[—spanning the end of ]apartheid in South Africa
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
and election of Mandela's African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election installe ...
as the governing party in 1994.
Keller's wife since 1999, Emma Gilbey, wrote a full biography of Winnie Mandela published in 1993, ''The Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela'' (Jonathan Cape).[
]
Lisa Bonchek Adams column
In January 2014, two articles by Keller and his wife about cancer blogger Lisa Bonchek Adams generated substantial controversy about the nature of social media, digital journalism and terminal illness. The incident came to be known in social media as KellerGate.
On January 8, 2014, Keller's wife Emma had written an article about Lisa Adams in The Guardian about whether people with terminal illness should be so public on social media. She wrote, "Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Is there such a thing as TMI? Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies? Why am I so obsessed?" The article was subsequently retracted by the editor, in part due to complaints by Adams and her family that the article "completely misrepresented the nature of her illness and her reasons for tweeting, was riddled with inaccuracies, and quoted from a private direct message to Keller through Twitter published without permission."
A week later, Bill Keller published his own article about Lisa Adams called "Heroic Measures," this time questioning whether Lisa's efforts to prolong her life were worth the effort and cost, and suggesting those who "accept their inevitable fate with grace and courage" should be worthy of equal praise.
The article ignited a backlash in many media channels. Articles appeared in '' The Nation'' ("Bill Keller Bullies Cancer Patient"), and '' The New Yorker'' among dozens of others.
The Times' public editor, Margaret Sullivan, responded to the criticism in a public column. The response included Keller's responses defending the column. Sullivan wrote that it is not her practice to comment on whether she agrees with columnists, but did cite "issues here of tone and sensitivity." She also pointed out factual inaccuracies which were subsequently corrected.
The Marshall Project
The Marshall Project is a nonprofit nonpartisan online journalism organization covering criminal justice in the United States. The project was originally conceived by former hedge fund manager, filmmaker and journalist Neil Barsky
Neil Barsky is an American journalist, former hedge fund manager, filmmaker, and philanthropist, best known for making the 2012 film '' Koch'' and for founding The Marshall Project, a journalism nonprofit intended to shed light on the United Stat ...
, who announced it in his byline in an unrelated ''New York Times'' article in November 2013. In February 2014, ''The New York Times'' reported that Keller was going to work for the Marshall Project. The Marshall Project formally launched in November 2014. Keller was editor in chief of the Marshall Project from 2014 until his retirement in 2019.
Bibliography
Books
*
Essays and reporting
* [Profiles ]Pat Nolan
Patrick James Nolan (born June 16, 1950) is an American lawyer, politician and conservative activist.
Political career
In 1978, Nolan was elected to the California State Assembly, serving the 41st district comprising Glendale, Burbank, Toluc ...
. Title in the online table of contents is "Conservatives for Criminal–Justice Reform".
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;Notes
References
External links
*
Nelson Mandela: 'Tree Shaker'
(audio-video, 3:02) — Keller talks about his book on ABC News, May 29, 2008
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Keller, Bill
1949 births
Living people
Place of birth missing (living people)
American newspaper reporters and correspondents
Junípero Serra High School (San Mateo, California) alumni
The New York Times columnists
The New York Times corporate staff
The New York Times masthead editors
The New Yorker people
The Oregonian people
Pomona College alumni
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting winners