The Paper of (Correcting The) Record
Oh, my, the New York Times has failed to verify a story again:
For the second time in less than a week, The New York Times today admitted to a serious error in a story. On Saturday it said it had misidentified a man featured in the iconic “hooded inmate” photograph from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Today it discloses that a woman it profiled on March 8 is not, in fact, a victim of Hurricane Katrina–and was arrested for fraud and grand larceny yesterday.
As it did in the Abu Ghraib mistake, the Times ran an editors’ note on page 2 of its front section, along with a lengthy news article (this time on the front page of Section B). Again mirroring the Abu Ghraib episode, the newspaper revealed a surprising and inexplicable lapse in fact-checking on the part of a reporter and/or editor.
I’m shocked, shocked, shocked – but I note for the record that once again, the person so identified (falsely) was a person whose story fit in with the built-in biases of the paper – a rather good argument for extending diversity beyond accidents of birth like race and gender towards items of choice like, oh, say, political preferences…
Yeah, but this is so bad. I mean, even fitting the story line a background check should be, I would think, standard operating procedure for any paper. Yesterday they had a lengthy correction on their story OF ANOTHER NEWS ORG (McClatchy) that had so many facts wrong you wonder if the reporter even picked up a phone.
Apparently, this is another example of a story being “too good to check.”
Keller must be wondering why he ever took the top job over there – must have been a lot easier to play columnist prior to this stuff.
Comrades,
Are you folks really really sure that Jason Blair isn’t still working for the “Paper of Record”? I mean, he COULD be running things from a home office, you know?
They keep losing subscribers and soon they will be the “Pauper of Record”…. after all, it’s no great step to go from pandering to pan-handling.
Respects,
Gwedd