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"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
by 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.
- listenallyall 6y agoRolling Stone absolutely did not "own up to it," they repeatedly tried to minimize the damage the article had done to the individuals and groups portrayed in it, and further, even after the Columbia report, stood by all its editors, fact-checkers, and even the writer herself! A good summary: https://web.archive.org/web/20150410094429/http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-06/rolling-stone-can-t-even-apologize-right https://web.archive.org/web/20150410094429/http://www.bloomb...
- whimsicalism 6y ago> Their retraction of a 2-year-old story was on their homepage (below the fold) yesterday. Ultimately, whether she stays on their payroll is the decider for me as to whether they have journalistic integrity. I was discussing this with my parents (both former editors of major publications) who have had to fire people for creating composite characters like this. The lack of basic fact checking, followed up by attacking the Canadian authorities [0] once it started to come to light that the story was untrue is very unsavory. I think this should be career-ending. [0]: https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1309620500176556032 https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1309620500176556032
- bigyikes 6y agoI’m not sure if that take down says more about the NYT or the current levels of political polarization.
- jumelles 6y agoThe Times is still pretty much THE newspaper in the US, if not the English-speaking world.
- macinjosh 6y agoI would emphasize NEWSPAPER instead of the 'the'. Not many folks reading newspapers these days.
- 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.