HERE’S AN EDITOR’S NOTE from the New York Times about the liberties taken with Phil Carter’s oped. Michael Barone emails:

I have one or two unanswered questions about the New York Times opinion editor adding two sentences to Phil Carter’s opinion article.

(1) Is the editor still working at the Times?

(2) If so, why?

Adding these sentences is totally irresponsible journalism. It is particularly offensive when it attributes these sentences to Carter who seems, from my reading of his work, to be very thoughtful and creative.

If the current editors of the New York Times want to convince us that they’re trying to run a fair newspaper, they could make some progress toward that goal by firing the editor responsible.

I worked on the editorial page at the Washington Post under Meg Greenfield. She also edited the opinion pages. I have a fairly good idea of what she would have thought of this. But perhaps Gail Collins has different standards.

I’ve never had an editor try to do anything like that to one of my pieces, but I’ve gotten emails from other people who’ve had similar experiences. My advice to editors who want to publish their own ideas under another name: Get a blog!