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> And, of course, in 2018 I helped create and produce the most ambitious project I’ve ever worked on: Caliphate. > While I remain proud of our team and what we

> And, of course, in 2018 I helped create and produce the most ambitious project I’ve ever worked on: Caliphate. > While I remain proud of our team and what we were able to accomplish with Caliphate, getting any aspect of any story wrong, by any degree, is a journalist’s worst nightmare. After Caliphate was corrected, in print and in audio, peers of mine in the audio industry, from outside of The Times, began to raise questions about why I had been allowed to remain in my position. I can't speak to the rest of this resignation, but it's sort of wild to see Caliphate described this way. When my understanding is that the main person they interviewed was lying and the podcast is mostly fiction. And then he goes on to say that he had "engaged in rigorous and careful journalism".

benzible 6y ago
Yes, this is well worth reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/business/media/new-york-times-rukmini-callimachi-caliphate.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/business/media/new-york-t... An excerpt: > The assignment, Mr. Flood recalled thinking, was both hopeless and quite strange in its specificity [...] Ms. Callimachi was singularly focused. “She only wanted things that very narrowly supported this kid in Canada’s wild stories,” he told me in a phone interview. > Mr. Flood didn’t know it at the time, but he was part of a frantic effort at The New York Times to salvage the high-profile project the paper had just announced.
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  and this: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-retracts-hit-podcast-series-caliphate-on-isis-executioner https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-retr...
dfabulich 6y ago
Indeed. Those who would like to know more may want to read the NYT's own repudiation of Caliphate. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/business/media/new-york-times-caliphate-podcast.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/business/media/new-york-t... This Vulture article is a good overall summary of the timeline, which I would absolutely call a "scandal." https://www.vulture.com/2021/01/caliphate-controversy-new-york-times-podcast.html https://www.vulture.com/2021/01/caliphate-controversy-new-yo... Those who are replying here to decry "cancel culture" are falling for his story. This guy is resigning in disgrace for producing journalism so bad, so false in every regard, not just in one article but in an entire podcast spanning months, that his employer had to return his Peabody award. Andy wants you to think that he's leaving because a Twitter mob is mad at him for giving a co-worker a back rub, and if you fall for this, you're Andy's next victim.
- chmod600 6y ago
  It seems he should have been removed. But it also seems like the "why" is important -- was it job performance or digging into his history?
  - athriren 6y ago
    if a person who is nominally in a journalistic role ends up producing fabulism and they are then demoted and reassigned, it’s better for that person to lead everyone to believe they were pushed out for irrelevant things many years ago rather than the issue with their work at their workplace that in fact literally just occurred. it’s just confusing, because in any other context i don’t think people would fall for this whataboutism. a pediatrician who gave babies placebo vaccinations and was then demoted and assigned to “what does being a doctor actually mean” class and then quit, and then told everyone he was fired because people found out he got speeding tickets constantly would be dismissed out of hand once everyone found out about the whole fake baby vaccination thing. andy is a liar. he purposefully mislead his colleagues when he had good reasons to doubt the credibility of his single source. he produced a work of fiction and the premiere newspaper in the world took it as carte blanche and shared it with the world as the truth. it does not matter what happened with him a decade ago, or three years ago, or even immediately before caliphate. the only relevant thing in this story is that he failed miserably at his only job.
    - chmod600 6y ago
      Why wasn't he forced to resign essentially immediately afterward, then?
      - athriren 6y ago
        he was reassigned and essentially demoted and given the opportunity (along with the cocreator, who is still at the times) to basically do remedial “how not to lie to everyone” and he decided he was not interested.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
prepend 6y ago
> When it came to fact-checking support for the project, the Times’ leadership told us that they had their own internal system in place for stories of this nature. I found this odd and stupid. Just because NYT says they have a fact checking department doesn’t absolve me of critical thinking, source development, and my own confirmation. It also seems reasonable to validate this claim from NYT to understand how they fact check. It also seems like if there was a third party fact checking me, I’d be aware because they would start with info from me and they would talk with my sources who talked with me. This makes me think how crazy it would be to not bug test my software because someone told me the company has a testbot. But I don’t see any tests anywhere and don’t see output of tests anywhere. And there’s a syntax error that would be found if anyone even tried to compile or run.

benzible 6y ago

Yes, this is well worth reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/business/media/new-york-times-rukmini-callimachi-caliphate.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/business/media/new-york-t... An excerpt: > The assignment, Mr. Flood recalled thinking, was both hopeless and quite strange in its specificity [...] Ms. Callimachi was singularly focused. “She only wanted things that very narrowly supported this kid in Canada’s wild stories,” he told me in a phone interview. > Mr. Flood didn’t know it at the time, but he was part of a frantic effort at The New York Times to salvage the high-profile project the paper had just announced.

ChuckMcM 6y ago
and this: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-retracts-hit-podcast-series-caliphate-on-isis-executioner https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-retr...

dfabulich 6y ago

Indeed. Those who would like to know more may want to read the NYT's own repudiation of Caliphate. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/business/media/new-york-times-caliphate-podcast.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/business/media/new-york-t... This Vulture article is a good overall summary of the timeline, which I would absolutely call a "scandal." https://www.vulture.com/2021/01/caliphate-controversy-new-york-times-podcast.html https://www.vulture.com/2021/01/caliphate-controversy-new-yo... Those who are replying here to decry "cancel culture" are falling for his story. This guy is resigning in disgrace for producing journalism so bad, so false in every regard, not just in one article but in an entire podcast spanning months, that his employer had to return his Peabody award. Andy wants you to think that he's leaving because a Twitter mob is mad at him for giving a co-worker a back rub, and if you fall for this, you're Andy's next victim.

chmod600 6y ago
It seems he should have been removed. But it also seems like the "why" is important -- was it job performance or digging into his history?
- athriren 6y ago
  if a person who is nominally in a journalistic role ends up producing fabulism and they are then demoted and reassigned, it’s better for that person to lead everyone to believe they were pushed out for irrelevant things many years ago rather than the issue with their work at their workplace that in fact literally just occurred. it’s just confusing, because in any other context i don’t think people would fall for this whataboutism. a pediatrician who gave babies placebo vaccinations and was then demoted and assigned to “what does being a doctor actually mean” class and then quit, and then told everyone he was fired because people found out he got speeding tickets constantly would be dismissed out of hand once everyone found out about the whole fake baby vaccination thing. andy is a liar. he purposefully mislead his colleagues when he had good reasons to doubt the credibility of his single source. he produced a work of fiction and the premiere newspaper in the world took it as carte blanche and shared it with the world as the truth. it does not matter what happened with him a decade ago, or three years ago, or even immediately before caliphate. the only relevant thing in this story is that he failed miserably at his only job.
  - chmod600 6y ago
    Why wasn't he forced to resign essentially immediately afterward, then?
    - athriren 6y ago
      he was reassigned and essentially demoted and given the opportunity (along with the cocreator, who is still at the times) to basically do remedial “how not to lie to everyone” and he decided he was not interested.
kthejoker2 6y ago

prepend 6y ago

> When it came to fact-checking support for the project, the Times’ leadership told us that they had their own internal system in place for stories of this nature. I found this odd and stupid. Just because NYT says they have a fact checking department doesn’t absolve me of critical thinking, source development, and my own confirmation. It also seems reasonable to validate this claim from NYT to understand how they fact check. It also seems like if there was a third party fact checking me, I’d be aware because they would start with info from me and they would talk with my sources who talked with me. This makes me think how crazy it would be to not bug test my software because someone told me the company has a testbot. But I don’t see any tests anywhere and don’t see output of tests anywhere. And there’s a syntax error that would be found if anyone even tried to compile or run.