Priscilla Painton

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Priscilla Painton is an American journalist. She was a Deputy Managing Editor of TIME magazine from 2006 until she joined Simon & Schuster in 2008.

1 Personal
2 Career
3 Controversy
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Personal

Painton is the daughter of Frederick Painton and the late Patricia High Painton, a business journalist based in Paris, France for many years.

Painton received her B.A. in history from Mount Holyoke College in 1980.

She currently resides in Bronxville, New York.

[edit] Career

Painton has worked at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post and The Berkshire Eagle. She joined TIME as a correspondent in 1989. She served as the Nation Editor for a number of years before becoming Executive Editor. She became a Deputy Managing Editor in 2006. In early 2008, she joined Simon & Schuster as Editor in Chief of the flagship imprint.^[1]

In 2006, Painton taught a journalism course at Mount Holyoke College as a visiting instructor in the English department.^[2]

[edit] Controversy

Painton edited^[3]^[4] a controversial November 21, 2007 column^[5] by Joe Klein in which Klein published false information^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9] regarding legislation that amends the F.I.S.A. law, based upon claims by Pete Hoekstra^[10], an opponent of the Bill.

Klein reported that the Democratic version of the FISA bill "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court" and that it therefore "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans."[5]. The proposed bill actually says:

IN GENERAL - Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, a court order is not required for electronic surveillance directed at the acquisition of the contents of any communication between persons that are not known to be United States persons and are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence information, without respect to whether the communication passes through the United States or the surveillance device is located within the United States

After Klein had backed away from the central allegations of his article, commenting "I may have made a mistake in my column this week about the FISA legislation passed by the House", Painton was contacted by Jane Hamsher to ask "what the editing process was, and how a piece with so many errors made it into print." Painton reportedly replied "That assumes there are any errors" and immediately hung up on Hamsher^[3] prompting those reporting on the controversy to question Painton and Time Magazine's integrity.^[4] Painton is the subject of controversy both for editing the original Klein article and for her reactions to the article's subsequent criticism.