Does anyone else think it’s funny that Michael Hiltzik once got disciplined for logging into other people’s email accounts and reading their mail?

Patterico’s post unmasking Michael Hiltzik’s deceptive comments at Patterico’s Pontifications — and here at Independent Sources — mentioned an earlier incident where Hiltzik assumed someone else’s identity. Here’s more:

Reporter Disciplined for Reading His Co-workers’ Electronic Mail
The New York Times
December 6, 1993, Monday, Late Edition – Final
Section B; Page 9; Column 5; National Desk
By CALVIN SIMS, Special to The New York Times
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

In a stunning example of growing concern over technology and privacy in the workplace, The Los Angeles Times has recalled a foreign correspondent from its Moscow bureau for snooping into the electronic mail of his colleagues.

The correspondent, Michael Hiltzik, a well-regarded journalist who joined The Times’s Moscow bureau in August, is being reassigned to an undetermined position in Los Angeles as a disciplinary action, editors and reporters at the newspaper said.

… A Los Angeles Times senior editor with knowledge of the incident but who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the decision to recall Mr. Hiltzik came after he was caught reading the electronic mail of another Moscow correspondent in a sting operation set up by the paper.

Mr. Hiltzik could not be reached for comment.

Correspondents in The Times Moscow bureau became suspicious when they discovered that their passwords had been entered into the computer system at times when they had not been using the computer, journalists close to the bureau said. The newspaper’s computer system keeps a record of each time an employee uses his password to log onto the system.

In the paper’s sting operation, two electronic messages containing false information were sent from a correspondent in The Times’s Jerusalem bureau to a correspondent in the Moscow bureau. Mr. Hiltzik intercepted those messages and later inquired verbally about their content at the Moscow bureau, the journalists said.

It could not be learned exactly how Mr. Hiltzik obtained the passwords necessary for him to gain access to his colleagues’ electronic mail. It is also uncertain what position Mr. Hiltzik will take when he returns to Los Angeles early next year.

(the full story is behind a pay wall; I happen to be at my alma mater this weekend and have Lexis/Nexis access through the university library)

Did Hiltzik initially blame “mikekoshi” or “nofanofcablecos?”

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It doesn’t look like the LAT ever covered this story, even after the NYT piece ran. Their online archives show a final Hiltzik piece from Moscow on 12/1/1993; then nothing until he appears reporting for the Business section on March 23, 1994. It was an internal personnel matter, so nothing nefarious there.

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We don’t mean to kick Hiltzik when he’s down. But he’s apparently a master of disguise!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 8:40 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under LA Times' Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.