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New York Times retracts core of podcast series ‘Caliphate’
- gotem 6y agoCould’ve been avoided if the people in charge knew it was false from the beginning.
- ttul 6y agoIsn’t that sort of the whole idea here?
- gthtjtkt 6y agoThat's the point. They had numerous reasons to believe he was lying and they chose to ignore them. Sadly it no longer surprises me to see the NY Times reporting what they want to be true rather than reporting the actual truth.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TillE 6y ago"Baquet says the Times did not have evidence Chaudhry had ever been to Syria" How do you fail to do even the most basic fact checking? They've clearly learned nothing since Judith Miller.
- admiralspoo 6y agoDoes it matter? The NYT is not as relevant as it was in the near past, nevermind a generation or two ago. And the NYT has no standard for peer review, and in the digital age routinely edits its works after publication without any discernible changelog. See the 1619 scandal.
- zarkov99 6y agoIt does matter. The NY has actually grown its subscriber base during the Trump years and remains a major cultural force. Witness the immediate take down of Pornhub after a single article in the NYT, after conservative activists had spent years railing the exact same issue. For better of for worst, mostly for worst, the NYT remains a powerful force, long after it lost any semblance of journalistic integrity.
- rgovostes 6y ago> any semblance of journalistic integrity First sentence of the article: > The New York Times has retracted the core of its hit 2018 podcast series Caliphate after an internal review found the paper failed to heed red flags Clearly it would have been better for them to have done their jobs correctly in the first place, but in what way are they not displaying journalistic integrity in this instance? Their retraction of a 2-year-old story was on their homepage (below the fold) yesterday. Mistakes are inevitable (though in this case avoidable). Owning up to publishing something erroneous is the way you display journalistic integrity. I'll trust what you tell me today, if I can trust you to tell me the details you got wrong tomorrow.
- vntok 6y ago> an internal review Yeah that's their spin on the story, the reality is that they got busted though.
- rgovostes 6y agoSeveral years ago, Rolling Stone published story about a rape that allegedly occurred at a University of Virginia fraternity. It was the Washington Post and not Rolling Stone themselves that discovered holes in the story. But Rolling Stone owned up to it and engaged the Columbia School of Journalism to investigate the lapses in their reporting and fact-checking processes, resulting in a damning report which RS published in a subsequent issue. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/rolling-stone-and-uva-the-columbia-university-graduate-school-of-journalism-report-44930/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/rolling-st... I don't expect NYT to be perpetually fact checking stories after publication, but when they "get busted," I absolutely expect them to re-investigate and publish their findings.
- Shivetya 6y agoSimilar to how many people just up vote or down vote a comment. It is far easier to believe something you want to be true than to believe something you don't want to be true. We all do this. Most of the time its harmless but when it is a news organization it can become harmful and there will still be people who believe the story is true or that it is based on a truth. Fortunately the internet has given us more of both, the stories we want to be true but are not and the stories that are true we wish there we not. Now we have many more eyes on both so that they can be called out for what they are.
- jakevoytko 6y agoIt's worth listening to the 30 minute explanation on their podcast feed if you want a legitimate explanation to that question. They really try to account for it. They relied on the gut-check from other terrorism experts, what was publicly available about Canada's investigation, and got a verification from a field commander in ISIS who said that he remembered the fraudster but the fraudster didn't serve directly under him like he had claimed. In retrospect, the hook of the story was so strong that they hadn't subjected it to the level of scrutiny of their other ambitious projects. He contrasted it with the Trump tax return story, where he had personally reviewed so many versions of that story that he had memorized the details. When they gave the same investigation to another investigative team who was familiar with the terror beat (with the benefit of hindsight), that team concluded that the story was a hoax.
- stevenwoo 6y agoIt feels like the NYT is the USA equivalent of the BBC, where it has a big audience for the medium and on the surface seems like it should be trustworthy but often is a mouthpiece for those in power via insider sources ala Judith Miller for the NYT. Even that one writer Haberman who covers Trump often amplifies totally fictional favorable Trump stories on social media.
- spamizbad 6y agoLots of talk about NYT and bias but by far their biggest is their bias towards interventionalism. Any journalism project under their umbrella that nudges its readers/listeners in this direction is going to face the absolute bare minimum amount of scrutiny.
- macinjosh 6y agoBut their war reporting staff needs _something_ to do! /s
- Simulacra 6y agoThere's a lot of NYT and liberal fans that will defend the paper against any transgression, but I contend the NYT is not a newspaper, but an entertainment organization. They don't retract or change anything unless they absolutely have to, and probably in this case were forced to. There is no journalism anymore, it's all mass entertainment.
- briefcomment 6y agoThe NYT is compromising on comprehensive, un-opinionated, fact discovery, and is instead catering to an audience. The former makes a news org, and the latter (under the guise of reporting) makes for a tabloid. It's hard because there are some pieces that are unbiased and thorough, and NYT and their supporters can point to those in its defense. But a news org should be required to do that with almost 100% consistency. Anything less is an entertainment org that is taking advantage of being considered a news org.
- ehsankia 6y agoWhat do you consider a real newspaper?
- briefcomment 6y agoI would contend that there aren't really any at the moment. There's an opening for comprehensive fact-based reporting with a reputation for not taking a side.
- kevinmchugh 6y agoHow do the AP and Reuters differ from your description?
- briefcomment 6y agoI think they're closer, but I believe they leave they're not completely comprehensive, meaning some things are under investigated.
- draw_down 6y agoIgnominious.
- cheezymoogle 6y agoGood on NYT for coming clean, but this is precisely why I don't trust institutions to vet their own product. "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" is a mission statement for pathological organizations to get away with gambling on the market and socializing their failures.
- jimbob45 6y agoOmbudsmen are typically hired for this reason.
- cheezymoogle 6y agoMy only experience with ombudsmen is ignored emails until top stakeholders face the pain, then immediate action to resolve their and only their issues.
- ghaff 6y agoOf course, the NYT got rid of their public editor--i.e. their ombudsman. But I disagree a bit, an ombudsman is more reactive; it's not reasonable for them to vet every story before it's printed. That's the job of the editors and their editors. This seems a pretty major failing. Of course, they always seem that way after the fact. And TBH a lot of stories run that can't be verified beyond the tiniest shade of a doubt that are substantially accurate.
- starkd 6y agoThey came clean too late for any congratulations.
- mellosouls 6y agoGood on NYT for coming clean They didn't come clean, it's clear from the article they were busted. They strongly resisted multiple challenges to the obvious problems with his accounts by other writers and organisations culminating in him being arrested for fraud.
- ttesttom 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ivraatiems 6y agoThis is so disappointing. I really enjoyed Caliphate; it was fascinating, and I trusted the NYT to be able to vet its claims. Now I know I enjoyed a piece of nearly-fiction, and I feel cheated, because I still want to know about the subject matter. I'm not sure retracting a years-old podcast is going to be enough to rebuild trust. I need to hear how the NYT is going to engage some actual experts on this, and I want to hear their perspectives on the story Calpihate presents. The fundamental questions the podcast asked are still very live: What was it like to live under ISIS? How did that organization operate in the areas where it had control? And so on. Editing to add: I'm not sure how to trust further work from Rukmini Callimachi. The fact she's still working at the Times, with no information on how they'll be vetting her work, is concerning.
- cheezymoogle 6y agoI'd recommend the 2019 pseudo-blacklisted documentary Salafistes^1 (released as Jihadists in the US) if you want an unvarnished view of Salafist Islam. --- 1 - https://vimeo.com/ondemand/jihadists https://vimeo.com/ondemand/jihadists
- ehsankia 6y agoDid we listen to the same podcast? It still had a lot of information and value even if you entirely remove Chaudhry's story. And even for his story, it was very clearly presented as not fully certain. I wouldn't call it "nearly-fiction", it's closer to your average True Crime podcast where you are presented with the known information and it's up to you to decide if you believe it or not.
- ivraatiems 6y agoIt absolutely did have a lot of other information in it. However, the mistake here was so substantial that it's hard for me to feel like I can trust the rest of its reporting. Remember, it was not presented as true crime - it was presented as investigative journalism. I don't hold average true crime podcasts, which are usually non-experts quoting secondary sources in an obviously non-expert context, to the same standard.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- solumos 6y agoAt least they had the decency to retract. I get the sense that other news sites these days would leave it up with its "alternative facts".
- dwighttk 6y agoE.g. Bloomberg’s The Big Hack https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
- chance_state 6y agoHere's another classic: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-hel...
- weakfish 6y agoCould you elaborate on the problems with this article? I couldn't find any info online.
- dwighttk 6y agohttps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg-reporter-challenged-big-hack-story-gets-promoted/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg...
- CharlesW 6y agoYeah, I don't get the hate here. You don't complain about companies doing the right thing if you want them to do it more and better. Also, every day Facebook does 10,000 times the damage that this has done. Perspective, people.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoIf they were ever doing their jobs this never would have seen the light of day. Even the most basic amount of research showed it was unsubstantiated. Same with 1619 which is “problematic”. Their desire to push a narrative outweighed their desire to be factually correct. The scandal here isn’t they removed something quietly. It’s that if they failed their jobs here, where else are they failing and just haven’t been exposed yet? This isn’t the first time they lied to you, it’s just a time they were caught.
- garyrob 6y agoAs I remember the series, they presented pro and con arguments about believing him near the beginning, and never expressed certainty that it was true, but felt it was likely enough true that it was worth reporting. Then when more facts came out, it was retracted. This is akin to Fauci saying he didn't think we should be wearing masks, and changing his mind as more data came in. We should be praising the Times for having the courage and integrity for calling out their own errors, which many publications wouldn't do, rather than punishing them for not figuring it out in the first place. No one is perfect. They never will be. What we want is people who are willing to call themselves out on their own errors. Wanting people to never make them is impossible, and just encourages them to pretend they are perfect by never doubting themselves and never revealing the truth when it is eventually available. [Edited for a missing period.]
- kenjackson 6y ago100% agree. We are in this cultural state that it is better to dig in your heels on something wrong than to say, hey, I made a mistake. This is my new take based on new data.”
- BoiledCabbage 6y agoThat's my biggest issue with stories like these. Some news sources call out when they make mistakes and own up to them. And they get piled on for being wrong. Other news sources (ahem...) say misleading stuff frequently and never correct it, never retract it and continue to mislead their audience. This whole concept of pile one because someone admitted their wrong has to be the least healthy event I've ever seen. And yet instead of it going down as upholding editorial standards, it will be a case of "see they're wrong, don't trust them". As an example, a significant portion of an American political party spent years believing (still believe last I checked) a former US president was born in Kenya.
- kergonath 6y agoYes, it takes courage to admit you were wrong in front of a global audience. I blame them for not having the proper fact-checking procedures in place for the podcast, but I applaud them for owning this and for their apparent willingness to learn from this.
- OneGuy123 6y agoI'm suprised why people are still suprised by this. Has no-one learned by now that you cannot trust _ANYTHING_ that the media produces?
- InitialLastName 6y agoI don't know why you're calling out the media specifically. Are the anonymous commentariat, politicians, and random youtubers somehow more reliablie?
- kmonsen 6y agoI don’t think this is true at all. I would guess 95% of what is in nytimes is true. Are they always right and never have a political slant , of course not. It is interesting to see that when nytimes do print something that is obviously false for political purposes it is usually leaving right not left. The most obvious example being the build up to the Iraq war.
- vntok 6y ago> I would guess 95% of what is in nytimes is true. This is even worse. The most dangerous lie is a lie wrapped around a core of truth that entices readers to trust the whole package.
- gspr 6y agoAre you mixing up "it happens that the media is untrustworthy" with "nothing the media produces is trustworthy"? If so, may I suggest a logic course before venturing forward?
- konjin 6y agoI don't, but I do trust the web of media, once there are multiple corroborating reports of the same thing it is vastly more likely to be true. Few people do this because the comforting lies you tell yourself fall away rather quickly.
- tech-historian 6y agoRukmini Callimachi, the "journalist" at the center of this podcast series, is essentially Scott Templeton from The Wire. https://thewire.fandom.com/wiki/Scott_Templeton https://thewire.fandom.com/wiki/Scott_Templeton
- kyleblarson 6y agoThe NYT is good for crosswords and that's about it.
- gnarbarian 6y agoShow me an objective publication and I'll show you a person with confirmation bias. I've come to accept that every media outlet is pushing an agenda, intentionally or not. It may be impossible to escape. I think the best we can do is be cognizant of the intentions and ideological slant of the people and institutions and be extremely skeptical of these PR firms masquerading as objective media.
- robgibbons 6y agoI don't think that's true, there are just a scant few publications that actually value real, classic journalism these days. One example is Reuters. They report facts, stated exactly as things happened, without editorializing and injecting their own opinions on top of every other sentence. In other words, they let you form your own opinions, instead of giving you theirs. That's called journalistic integrity, and it's the reason they're the only news source I actually pay for.
- gnarbarian 6y agoEven if you only report facts as they happen bias is injected by what facts are reported and what stories are covered or omitted. The reporter will naturally be drawn to stories that match up with their perspective on the world. It's very difficult for us to actively and constantly challenge our own assumptions and seek out evidence that contradicts them. I've thought about this a lot. I think that if an outlet is reporting on some statistical fact. Like the frequency of mass shooting deaths for example they should also place that in perspective against car accidents, cancer, heart disease etc. Contrast that with crime and murder trends over a large swath of time etc. This way people can properly contextualize and rank the real risk in the situation and separate it from the sensationalism. But even if all of that is carried out. There is still bias from what the reporter chose to write a story about. I think the worst offenders of situations like this are the investigative NPR style stories where a reporter seeks out an individual's story as a means to emotionally manipulate the reader into a particular policy position. It's far better to look at the larger statistical picture. You can find a sob story to emotionally manipulate people towards quite literally any policy position imaginable.
- 6y ago
- itronitron 6y ago>> In posting real-time analyses on social media about unfolding terrorism attacks, Callimachi has helped to cement her reputation as a leading source on terrorism. Seek karma for too long and eventually karma will seek you
- oftenwrong 6y agoText-only version of this article: https://text.npr.org/944594193 https://text.npr.org/944594193
- salimmadjd 6y agoIs retracting enough? So a news story gets out, millions read it, share or watch it. Then NYT retracts it. Maybe adding a footnote or correction (sometimes they don't even do that [1]) is added to the story. Maybe the story is removed from their site. However, the faulty information has already registered into the minds of millions of people. NYT has already intentionally or unintentionally indoctrinated the minds of many readers and with the "retraction" at the same time they can claim the highest standards of journalism. Unless in good fait, NYT tries to bring as much attention into the correction to the readers they have already impacted, the retraction is journalistic virtue signaling and a very small victory for truth. Even if they do as much work in publicizing the retraction so many people have already formed a biased view and it'll be hard to undo that. The only path forward is to fully hold NYT accountable. Fire the editor and journalist in charge of the story would be a start. [1] https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1187036978463891456 https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1187036978463891456
- elsjaako 6y agoThey put the retraction in the podcast feed, which I'm guessing most people who listened to the series are still subscribed to.
- xondono 6y agoIf the podcast stopped posting new episodes, a lot of people will miss a new one.
- dmix 6y agoMost podcast apps stop auto-downloading dead feeds.
- ehsankia 6y agoThey also advertised it in The Daily, one of the most popular podcasts around, which is how I heard about it since I unsubbed from the Caliphate feed (as it was finished). EDIT: Most charts put it at #2 in US [0]. [0] https://chartable.com/charts/itunes/us-all-podcasts-podcasts https://chartable.com/charts/itunes/us-all-podcasts-podcasts EDIT2: They also wrote a full column in the NYT itself.
- dalbasal 6y agoJust listened to most of this earlier. I don't quite get it. IIRC, the original series did treat Chaudhry as dubious, but maybe partially truthful . He was caught on a timeline lie, confronted by the journalist, he adjusted his timeline... Also, the whole series was constructed somewhat naively. It follows the journalist's investigations sequentially. The "story" follows leads and narratives that do or don't turn out to be true. You're following an investigation in progress. In that frame, this is just further evidence as the story continues. Caliphate just isn't framed as a traditional print "feature" where the journalist weighs everything in advance and only references fact-checked reliable evidence once they're done. I actually felt that caliphate did a better-than-most job at communicating shades of certainty. I wish the NYT did more of this. Journalistic standards are good tools, but they do not (should not, IMO) just sort everything into "true" or "unverified" piles and . Uncertainty about truth is inevitable. Communicate this well, honestly, and we'll all be better informed. This felt like way more than a retraction. Maybe they're using it as a "teaching moment" about how journalism works. I don't love it though. I can think of much better targets for NYT mea culpa or soul search. Caliphate is not a low watermark for journalism in any way. Maybe I'm missing something. If they (or any major paper) is feeling reflective, why not reflect on more systemic questions. How about double confirmed rumours from anonymous sources? Two sources, even if both remain nameless and have a personal interest in leaking to the press is considered fine.. I believe. This is common in political reporting. Stuff gets leaked. Journalists get confirmation from another insider.. maybe two. That can be printed. If it turns out to be a fallacious rumour, they still "met standards." Maybe they print a retraction, but no one did anything wrong. Meanwhile, this is the cause of many untruths getting published each year.
- whimsicalism 6y ago> He was caught on a timeline lie, confronted by the journalist, he adjusted his timeline The fact that they kept going after this (and didn't investigate further) is when you start having serious issues. You can see her attacking the Canadian police once it starts coming to light more and more that he was lying - she was attached to the story (and the fame) and didn't want to hear otherwise. [0] I am glad that the NYT retracted it, this was a good move, but I think this ought to be career-ending for her. [0]: https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1309620500176556032 https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1309620500176556032
- olivermarks 6y agoIt is so hard for media mastheads to build and maintain trust, and so easy to destroy that trust which can then take years to rebuild. Many people still operate on the last century paradigm of a few 'trusted' impartial news sources 'telling it like it is'. Once these huge organizations lose credibility we find ourselves in the situation Soviet union era citizens were in with the official party organ Pravda - not believing a word of the official line and reading between the lines for clues...
- whimsicalism 6y agoI think that these "impartial organizations" have always had some credibility issues (although it has accelerated with journalism's decline). The democratization of information brought by social media has led to the "fake news" epidemic, but has also allowed smart people to coordinate and discover instances where these organizations are lying, whereas in the past it would take years to come to light.
- ttesttom 6y agoI think we do have those organizations with trust. If you want facts only news, go to apnews or reuters. They are the mastheads of impartiality, or at least as much as possible with humans. However, the NYT is what I consider as investigative journalism that includes informed speculation. A lot of stories that otherwise never would have seen the light of day were broken by the NYT, however at the time of publishing there was a degree of uncertainty given the nature of the story. The uncertainty means they could be wrong, even if the odds are high at 90% correct. However, I would argue both are valuable, just understand which you are reading.
- olivermarks 6y agoI'd suggest apnews & reuters have lost much impartiality credibility, resulting in the rise of populism. We have Trump & Sanders as a result over the last ten years and a vacuum where a reliable trusted and impartial media should be.
- blhack 6y ago> "We fell in love with the fact that we had gotten a member of ISIS who would describe his life in the caliphate and would describe his crimes," This should serve as a warning to anybody who trusts “anonymous sources familiar with the matter”. Unfortunately this seems to have become the basis for a lot of entertainment reporting like what you find in the NYT. The allure is just too strong, and the economic necessity of keeping people coming back for their fresh 2 minutes hate is too powerful. I worry that the damage to public understanding of the world that people have is going to take a long time to reverse.
- rriepe 6y agoPerhaps we'll get a series called 'Media Empire' which explains this allure?
- enriquto 6y agoOfftopic, but the NPR is one of the few sites that I cannot read at all with cookies and javascript disabled.
- tzs 6y agoTry changing ‘www’ to ‘text’ in the URL to get the plainer version of the site. That might help. Here is the modified link: https://text.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-retracts-hit-podcast-series-caliphate-on-isis-executioner https://text.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-ret...
- enriquto 6y agoThanks! I love NPR but always had trouble with the unbreakable cookie barrier.
- dxdm 6y agoThey have a text-only version of their site. For single articles, just replace the 'www' subdomain with 'text': https://text.npr.org/944594193 https://text.npr.org/944594193
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chris_wot 6y agoThe NYT wrote the following about the series: Told over the course of one year in 11 cinematic episodes, ‘Caliphate’ marries the new journalism of podcasting -- stories told with sound design, musical scoring and high production values -- with traditional boots-on-the-ground journalism. This worries me. Hard reporting may find very boring stories. The need to make them "cinematic" really tempts the reporter and producers to make the story more sensational than they are. In this case, they appear to have made grave errors. Edit: I would also like to highlight the following twitter thread: https://twitter.com/SanaSaeed/status/1339998013922701312 https://twitter.com/SanaSaeed/status/1339998013922701312
- macinjosh 6y agoIndeed, in addition I personally have never thought of podcasting as something with sound design, musical scoring, and high production values. Some of my favorite podcasts are really just a few people talking over skype or sharing a mic. Literally, the opposite of the description which is clearly just an old media outlet trying to maintain relevance.
- ppod 6y agoDid they actually meet the guy at the time, or know where he was? What is the ethical status of that -- if he was admitting to murders to them, don't they have an obligation to turn him in? I didn't think journalist-source privileged would cover beheading civilians?
- smabie 6y agoWhat kind of obligation? Certainly not a legal obligation, which is the only obligation that actually matters.
- DaedPsyker 6y agoThis is the worrying bit for me. "Even when confronting some of them, the reporting and producing team sought ways to show his story could still turn out to be true." It says they didn't seek to mislead the public and yet they were pulling the story at the seams to make it fit. Journalism should operate entirely on the scientific method. Assume false until you have nothing left to poke holes wit.
- lucidone 6y agoI was once a subscriber to the NYT and am within their ideological range to enjoy most of their reporting. I feel as if since 2016 they've lost a lot of credibility. Their reporting feels like editorials, and their internal issues often become public. It seems like a highly political newsroom (i.e., "what facts ought we to report" instead of "what are the facts to report"). I subscribe to a more local newspaper now instead.
- TMWNN 6y ago>I was once a subscriber to the NYT and am within their ideological range to enjoy most of their reporting. I feel as if since 2016 they've lost a lot of credibility. Their reporting feels like editorials, and their internal issues often become public. It seems like a highly political newsroom (i.e., "what facts ought we to report" instead of "what are the facts to report"). I subscribe to a more local newspaper now instead. The Times pointed out the day after Trump's election stunned the press (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/media/media-trump-clinton.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/media/media-trump...) that >Whatever the election result, you’re going to hear a lot from news executives about how they need to send their reporters out into the heart of the country, to better understand its citizenry. >But that will miss something fundamental. Flyover country isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind — it’s in parts of Long Island and Queens, much of Staten Island, certain neighborhoods of Miami or even Chicago. And, yes, it largely — but hardly exclusively — pertains to working-class white people. In other words, it isn't just a question of The New York Times (and the TV networks, and pretty much all of the rest of mass media) completely ignoring the rubes out in rural Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (which all, strangely enough, unexpectedly voted for Trump in 2016), but their ignoring the residents of their own city, just across one bridge. (This obviously didn't last.)
- fqye 6y agoWas a subscriber too. cancelled for its politicizing everything, and a superficial and biased China desk. Now I subscribe to New Yorker and Bloomberg.
- padseeker 6y agoI'm fine with calling out the NYT for making a mistake or worse enabling substandard journalism. There has been a review of this content, a large organization that has a lot of reporters generating content. The NYT could have done a better job on this. Kudos for the NYT for admitting its mistake. It's not the first, it won't be the last. I just have one problem with some of the commentary here - I'm willing to wager a sizable portion of the commenters on this board who are experiencing schadenfreude because they hate the NYT most likely get their news from a significantly less reputable news source that would never admit to making a mistake or perform a correction. Maybe you hate the NYT because it's too liberal and you listen/watch/read the WSJ or Fox News or Breitbart. Maybe it's because you think the NYT isn't 'liberal' enough, and you read Jacobin or Common Dreams or watch MSNBC. This isn't about your concern over adherence to the truth. Many of these comments is about your joy when you point a finger and laugh like Nelson from the Simpsons when the news source that doesn't completely and consistently deliver the information that fits your exact and already hardened world view has anything that diminishes it's credibility. This is like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald accusing the media of covering up the Hunter Biden laptop story. Both want to destroy the same political contingent but for completely different reasons. If you are holding the NYT to a standard that your own news source does not adhere to you are the problem.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoYou know I'm sure we can fault their fact checkers on this, but given what certain other news sources do (like constantly twist the truth and support the actions of a tyrannical President) I'll keep sailing along and trusting the Times. Stuff happens.
- renewiltord 6y agoIt's the NYT. If the Judith Miller nonsense didn't reveal to you what they're like, and you're still listening, you deserve the crap information you get.
- bosswipe 6y agoWhy are some people so obsessed with every little thing that NYT gets wrong? It's the same with California, any bit of bad news out of California is blown up into a national story. To me this obsession with NYT and California is obvious propaganda. It's what 1984 would call "two minutes hate".
- macinjosh 6y agoPossibly, and I am just spit ballin' here, it is because to some people the ideas brought forth by the NYT and California's government generally come with an air of them knowing what is best for everyone else, what you should and shouldn't believe, and what is and isn't a problem. To many, right or wrong, it comes across as judgmental or condemning so they are eager to point out any faults.
- IndySun 6y agoIt's very poor, the lack of double checking prior to publication of the podcast. I listened to it all and he was easily the weakest cast member. NYT have admitted their mistake, returned their award. However, it's not on todays front page, but "Here are 10 great The Daily's" is, which is insidious and in poor taste. The dumbest mistake is that something as hideous as a caliphate does not need some wannabe braggadocio to explain this.
- fortran77 6y agoBut they won't fire Rukmini Callimachi? Why not?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- panabee 6y agogood journalism is not unlike good science. both seek to unearth truths. good journalists present a conclusion based on facts. bad journalists present facts based on a conclusion. truth != narrative. good journalism is extremely difficult and not appreciated enough. we need to increase compensation of good journalists.
- robertlagrant 6y ago> "She's a powerful reporter who we imbued with a great deal of power and authority," he says. "She was regarded at that moment as, you know, as big a deal ISIS reporter as there was in the world. And there's no question that that was one of the driving forces of the story." Deifying people is unlikely to go well.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- busymom0 6y agoAs if retraction is enough. The entire main stream media has lost all credibility. And if you are on the opposite side of the political spectrum of the 95% of media, then you are aware of a lot more fake journalism done by the media and yet get called names by people. Even now, reading through the comments, it seems like a lot of people are congratulating NYTimes for finally admitting their entire podcast was bust. After all the damage has already been done, majority of the retractions don't even get to most people who read/listened to the original fake journalism and NYTimes is only retracting now because they got caught and they ignored all the multiple challenges which were raised originally.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago> The entire main stream media has lost all credibility. This is such baloney. Yes, the main stream media does have certain biases that may swing what they choose to report on, and how they choose to report it. But fundamentally the main stream media still cares about fact and truth. When confronted with evidence the story was falsified, the NYTimes convened an investigation, issued a retraction, returned the Peabody, and reassigned the reporter. You may argue "too little, too late", but they addressed their mistake. Compare that with much of the "alternative" media, that when presented with clear evidence of fraud or lies, usually just doubles down and screams those lies on repeat.
- wmeredith 6y agoDid this submission get deleted? I can't favorite it.
- IndySun 6y agoDay two and this news is again not on todays front page, but "Here are 10 great The Daily's" still is.