Thread: The New York Times: a paper's commitment to accuracy, fairness, and ethical standards

Isn't it time to hold the NYTimes accountable for victimizing and demonzing the Duke lacrosse players?

How about a front-page apology?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04122007...rea_peyser.htm


DUKE CASE: WILL THE TIMES APOLOGIZE?

April 12, 2007 -- REVERSE the races, change the sport, and you have the Kobe Bryant "rape" hoax all over again.

It frightens me that, in this day and age, three demonstrably innocent men can be dragged into the public square in chains and be unjustly accused, tried and convicted in the media - forcibly lynched - for a rape that never happened.

There are many victims in the case of the guiltless Duke lacrosse players. And many more perpetrators who, through wishful thinking, greed, arrogance or lunacy, kept this case going long after the accused boys should have received a heartfelt apology.

But the biggest losers may be the ones you'll never hear about. These are the genuine victims of sexual assault: women who don't fabricate tales of brutality, or seek out the richest, whitest men to falsely accuse of forcing them into sex.

Who will believe a rape victim now?

Lakers guard Bryant was wrongly accused of raping a disappointed and willing sex partner; the Duke boys were victimized by a stripper who, for reasons that exist mainly in her head, decided that crying "Rape!" was easier than getting a day job.

But the Duke case goes far beyond the Bryant debacle. It features a "rogue prosecutor" - as ex-Durham DA Mike Nifong was called yesterday - who visibily salivated at the notion of taking down the boys.

Truth be damned.

It also benefited from a lynch culture at Duke, where 88 professors signed an ad vowing to "turn up the volume" against the falsely accused men.

Due process be damned.

Worst of all, this story so neatly fit the radical agenda of our "newspaper of record," The New York Times, that the paper disgustingly advanced the hoax on its front page, long after other media outlets had backed off.

In a case of "all the lies fit to print," the paper on Aug. 25 affected an air of Timesian authority in a damning article, spoon-fed by DA Nifong. It tried to put to rest some of the alarming inconsistencies in the accuser's story about the night she was "attacked."

"While there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury," quoth the Times. And, "The full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense."

Will the Times make reparations now?

But there is no repairing three damaged lives.

And no way to restore the good names of genuine rape victims, who will never get the undivided attention of a crew of characters who don't give a damn about women, men or the truth.

For shame.

Thumbs down for the NYTimes
From their own shareholders
via Bloomberg News; April 24, 2007

New York Times Co. shareholders, led by Morgan Stanley, withheld 42 percent of their votes from directors to protest the Sulzberger family's control over the company.

About 52.5 million of the 124.2 million shares voted declined to support the re-election of directors, New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said today at the company's annual shareholder meeting in New York.

The withhold tally compared with 28 percent at last year's meeting, which marked the beginning of a yearlong campaign by Morgan Stanley. The firm and it supporters, concerned about falling profits and a slumping share price, complained that New York Times's two classes of stock give shareholders too little say in the company. Chairman and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
should give up one of his roles, they said.

The vote ``is a clear mandate for meaningful change,''bMorgan Stanley said in a statement. ``The withhold vote this yearbis significantly higher than last year and is an emphatic call for accountability.''

Halp us, Noo Yorke Timez, Halp us,
weer Innernet dummys who kant spel


Classic. Even when the NYTimes admits its faults, the Internet gets blamed. Public Editor Clark Hoyt writes about the massive amount of misspellings that the Old Gray Lady sees fit to print: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/op...=1&oref=slogin

The fact is, The New York Times misspells names at a ferocious rate — famous names, obscure names, names of the dead in their obituaries, names of the living in their wedding announcements, household names from Hollywood, names of Cabinet officers, sports figures, the shoe bomber, the film critic for The Daily News in New York and, astonishingly and repeatedly, Sulzberger, the name of the family that owns The New York Times.
The Times has given Gen. Douglas MacArthur the middle initial A at least 25 times since 1987, though he had no middle name and didn’t use A, B, C or S, all of which have been ascribed to him.

So, you ask, what’s the big deal? Doesn’t The Times have more important things to worry about, like getting it right on Iraq and Iran and the presidential campaign?

Yes, a great newspaper has to get the big things right, but it also has to pay fanatical attention to thousands of details every day to prevent the kinds of mistakes that start readers wondering, “If they can’t spell his name right, what else is wrong with the story?”

Or, as Joe Lelyveld said in 2000, when he was executive editor of The Times, “When it comes to accuracy issues, tolerance and the larger view can be dangerous to our health.”

At a retreat of senior editors of The Times, Lelyveld called on them to “sweat the small stuff.” He bemoaned “the malignancy of misspelled names,” pointing out, among other things, that The Times had misspelled the first name of Madeleine Albright, who was then secretary of state, 49 times, despite running three corrections.

Unfortunately, the cancer appears to be getting worse. When Lelyveld spoke in mid-September, there had been 198 corrections for misspelled names in The Times so far that year. Through yesterday, still in early August, there had been 269 this year. And the mistakes keep coming.

The exasperation has spilled over onto the copy desk.

John Hinderaker noted it in “They Can’t Spell, Either” last week: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../08/018139.php

Whoever runs the Corrections section at the New York Times is getting a little exasperated. Here are two items from today’s corrections:
An article in some copies on Wednesday about Congressional efforts to pass legislation to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers misspelled — yet again — the surname of the attorney general of the United States, in three of four references. He is Alberto R. Gonzales, not Gonzalez. (The Times has misspelled Mr. Gonzales’s name in at least 14 articles dating to 2001 when he became White House counsel. This year alone Mr. Gonzales’s name has been misspelled in February and March, and in two articles in April.)

An article on the Street Scene page in Business Day on Friday, about the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s entry into bankruptcy law practice, misspelled the name of another law firm that recently lost a bankruptcy specialist. It is Willkie Farr & Gallagher, not Wilkie. (The Times has misspelled the firm’s name in at least 50 articles since 1958. The “Willkie” comes from Wendell L. Willkie, who joined the firm shortly after losing the 1940 presidential election to Franklin D. Roosevelt and remained there until his death in October 1944.)

Shakespeare couldn’t spell either; but then, he was writing fiction.

eh.

Now, we all make mistakes. But when a sloppy typo or misspelling appears on my blog, it is my fault. When you leave ghastly typos and misspellings in the comments section, it is your fault.

But when asked who’s to blame for so many spelling blunders getting past the NYTimes’ layers and layers and layers of editorial oversight, guess who’s to blame?

It’s our fault!

I asked Greg Brock, the senior editor in charge of corrections, why he thinks so many names are misspelled in the paper, especially when The Times has so many layers of editing. In theory, every article is read by at least five people after a reporter finishes it, though stories written or changed for later editions often get far fewer checks. Brock said that when he looks into mistakes he gets several common responses:

¶ Reporters say they were operating from memory and didn’t bother to check. That’s what one writer said after misspelling the name of Julianna Margulies, the television actress.

¶ Reporters assume that a name is spelled the “normal” way and don’t check. That’s what happened with the obituary of Neal Shine, the former publisher of The Detroit Free Press, whose first name was not Neil, as it appeared in the paper. Shine hired me in 1968, when he was the city editor of The Free Press, and he would get infuriated by errors like this.

¶ Reporters checking names on the Internet are carelessly misled by other people’s misspellings.

Oh, snorty-snort-snort.


“Reporters checking names on the Internet are carelessly misled by other people’s misspellings.”


Dammed Whirled Wyde Webb! How dare we mislead those poor NYTimes writers.

Paul Krugman & The New York Times Are Such Jokers
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...-are-such.html

It is very difficult to keep up with the dishonesty from the liberal media these days.

Today, the renowned columnist Paul Krugman at The New York Times goes on a conservative-bashing rampage. His column is nothing more than a list of mean-spirited liberal talking points: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/op...in&oref=slogin

"Conservatives Are Such Jokers"

...Before the last election, the actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s and has become an advocate for stem cell research that might lead to a cure, made an ad in support of Claire McCaskill, the Democratic candidate for Senator in Missouri. It was an effective ad, in part because Mr. Fox’s affliction was obvious.

And Rush Limbaugh — displaying the same style he exhibited in his recent claim that members of the military who oppose the Iraq war are “phony soldiers” and his later comparison of a wounded vet who criticized him for that remark to a suicide bomber — immediately accused Mr. Fox of faking it. “In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act.” Heh-heh-heh.

First of all, Claire McCaskill lied in those ads on stem cell research. http://theanchoressonline.com/2006/1...r-bad-science/

Senator Jim Talent was not against stem cell research, just embryonic stem cell research where embryos are killed. Claire knew this. She ran the ad anyway. http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...in-tumors.html

Rush Limbaugh never claimed that those who oppose the war are phony soldiers. That was a lie by Hillary Clinton's Media Matters. But, Krugman repeated it anyway. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/dai...106.guest.html

Rush Limbaugh never compared a wounded vet who criticized him for that remark to a suicide bomber. That was a also a lie by Hillary Clinton's Media Matters. But, Krugman repeated it anyway. http://hotair.com/archives/2007/10/0...smear-spotted/ http://mediamatters.org/items/200710...em200710040013

That was just two paragraphs!
Shame on Paul Krugman and The New York Times for their dishonest report.

Is this what the media has become? Just a bunch of liberals repeating the talking points of Hillary Clinton's Media Matters website? http://hotair.com/archives/2007/10/0...media-matters/

If Paul Krugman and The New York Times believe this column passes for honest journalism - then we all know who the real jokers are.

On the other hand... This post on economics at Instapundit is more worth your time. http://instapundit.com/archives2/010192.php

MORE... I'm a Pundit, Too reports on the financial backing MoveOn.org gives Media Matters and debunks (again) the liberal lies against Rush. http://thenewpundit.com/2007/10/05/am-i-a-hypocrite/

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

Truth, Justice, Abortion and the Times Magazine
By BYRON CALAME
Published: December 31, 2006

THE cover story on abortion in El Salvador in The New York Times Magazine on April 9 contained prominent references to an attention-grabbing fact. “A few” women, the first paragraph indicated, were serving 30-year jail terms for having had abortions. That reference included a young woman named Carmen Climaco. The article concluded with a dramatic account of how Ms. Climaco received the sentence after her pregnancy had been aborted after 18 weeks.

It turns out, however, that trial testimony convinced a court in 2002 that Ms. Climaco’s pregnancy had resulted in a full-term live birth, and that she had strangled the “recently born.” A three-judge panel found her guilty of “aggravated homicide,” a fact the article noted. But without bothering to check the court document containing the panel’s findings and ruling, the article’s author, Jack Hitt, a freelancer, suggested that the “truth” was different.

The issues surrounding the article raise two points worth noting, both beyond another reminder to double-check information that seems especially striking. Articles on topics as sensitive as abortion need an extra level of diligence and scrutiny — “bulletproofing,” in newsroom jargon. And this case illustrates how important it is for top editors to carefully assess the complaints they receive. A response drafted by top editors for the use of the office of the publisher in replying to complaints about the Hitt story asserted that there was “no reason to doubt the accuracy of the facts as reported.”

Apart from the flawed example of Ms. Climaco, Mr. Hitt’s 7,800-word cover article provided a broad and intriguing look at a nation where the penal code allows prison sentences for a woman who has an abortion, the provider of the procedure or anyone who assisted. His interviews with doctors, nurses, police officers, prosecutors, judges and both opponents and advocates of abortion offered revealing personal perspectives on the effects of the criminalization of the procedure.

Complaints about the article began arriving at the paper after an anti-abortion Web site, LifeSiteNews.com, reported on Nov. 27 that the court had found that Ms. Climaco’s pregnancy ended with a full-term live birth. The headline: “New York Times Caught in Abortion-Promoting Whopper — Infanticide Portrayed as Abortion.” Seizing on the misleading presentation of the article’s only example of a 30-year jail sentence for an abortion, the site urged viewers to complain to the publisher and the president of The Times. A few came to me.

The care taken in the reporting and editing of this example didn’t meet the magazine’s normal standards. Although Sarah H. Smith, the magazine’s editorial manager, told me that relevant court documents are “normally” reviewed, Mr. Hitt never checked the 7,600-word ruling in the Climaco case while preparing his story. And Mr. Hitt told me that no editor or fact checker ever asked him if he had checked the court document containing the panel’s decision.

Mr. Hitt said Ms. Climaco had been brought to his attention by the magistrate who decided four years ago that the case warranted a trial, so he had asked the magistrate for the court record. “When she told me that the case had been archived, I accepted that to mean that I would have to rely upon the judge who had been directly involved in the case and who heard the evidence” in the trial stage of the judicial process, Mr. Hitt wrote in an e-mail to me. So he didn’t pursue the document.

But obtaining the public document isn’t difficult. At my request, a stringer for The Times in El Salvador walked into the court building without making any prior arrangements a few days ago, and minutes later had an official copy of the court ruling. It proved to be the same document as the one disseminated by LifeSiteNews.com, which had been translated into English in early December by a translator retained by The Times Magazine’s editors. I’ve since had the stringer review the translation of key paragraphs for me.

The magistrate, Mr. Hitt noted, “had been helpful in other areas of the story and quite open.” So when she recalled one doctor’s estimate that Ms. Climaco’s pregnancy had been aborted at 18 weeks, he used that in the article. (The only 18-week estimate mentioned in the court ruling came from a doctor who hadn’t seen any fetus and whose deductions from the size of the uterus 17 hours after the birth were found by the three judges to be flawed.)

Mr. Hitt concluded the article with this summation of the Climaco case: “The truth was certainly — well, not in the ’middle’ so much as somewhere else entirely. Somewhere like this: She’d had a clandestine abortion at 18 weeks, not all that different from D.C.’s [another woman cited earlier in the story], something defined as absolutely legal in the United States. It’s just that she’d had an abortion in El Salvador.”

The caption under Ms. Climaco’s picture was notably specific. It stated flatly that she “was given 30 years for an abortion that was ruled a homicide.”

When Times Magazine editors provided me with an English-language version of the court findings on Dec. 8, just after the translation had been completed, there was little ambiguity in the court’s findings. “We have an already-formed and independent life here,” the court said. “Therefore we are not dealing with an abortion here, as the defense has attempted to claim in the present case.”

The physician who had performed the autopsy on the “recently born” testified that it represented a “full-term” birth, which he defined as a pregnancy with a duration of “between 38 and 42 weeks,” the ruling noted. In adopting those conclusions, the court said of another autopsy finding: “Given that the lungs floated when submerged in water, also indicating that the recently-born was breathing at birth, this confirms that we are dealing with an independent life.”

Exceptional care must be taken in the reporting process on sensitive articles such as this one to avoid the slightest perception of bias. Paul Tough, the editor on the article, acknowledged in an e-mail to me that in reporting this story, Mr. Hitt used an unpaid translator who has done consulting work for Ipas, an abortion rights advocacy group, for his interviews with Ms. Climaco and D.C. This wasn’t ideal, he said, but the risk posed for sources in this situation required the use of intermediaries “to some degree.”

Ipas used The Times’s account of Ms. Climaco’s sentence to seek donations on its Web site for “identifying lawyers who could appeal her case” and to help the organization “continue critical advocacy work” across Central America. “A gift from you toward our goal of $30,000 will help Carmen and other Central American women who are suffering under extreme abortion laws,” states the Web appeal, which Ipas said it took down after I first contacted the organization on Dec. 14. An Ipas spokeswoman called the appeal “moderately successful.”

The magazine’s failure to check the court ruling was then compounded for me by the handling of reader complaints about the issue. The initial complaints triggered a public defense of the article by two assistant managing editors before the court ruling had even been translated into English or Mr. Hitt had finished checking various sources in El Salvador. After being queried by the office of the publisher about a possible error, Craig Whitney, who is also the paper’s standards editor, drafted a response that was approved by Gerald Marzorati, who is also the editor of the magazine. It was forwarded on Dec. 1 to the office of the publisher, which began sending it to complaining readers.

The response said that while the “fair and dispassionate” story noted Ms. Climaco’s conviction of aggravated homicide, the article “concluded that it was more likely that she had had an illegal abortion.” The response ended by stating, “We have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the facts as reported in our article, which was not part of any campaign to promote abortion.”

After the English translation of the court ruling became available on Dec. 8, I asked Mr. Marzorati if he continued to have “no reason to doubt the accuracy of the facts” in the article. His e-mail response seemed to ignore the ready availability of the court document containing the findings from the trial before the three-judge panel and its sentencing decision. He referred to it as the “third ruling,” since the trial is the third step in the judicial process.

The article was “as accurate as it could have been at the time it was written,” Mr. Marzorati wrote to me. “I also think that if the author and we editors knew of the contents of that third ruling, we would have qualified what we said about Ms. Climaco. Which is NOT to say that I simply accept the third ruling as ‘true’; El Salvador’s judicial system is terribly politicized.”

I asked Mr. Whitney if he intended to suggest that the office of the publisher bring the court’s findings to the attention of those readers who received the “no reason to doubt” response, or that a correction be published. The latest word from the standards editor: “No, I’m not ready to do that, nor to order up a correction or Editors’ Note at this point.”

One thing is clear to me, at this point, about the key example of Carmen Climaco. Accuracy and fairness were not pursued with the vigor Times readers have a right to expect.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/op...&ex=1325221200


See also Pro-Life Nation By Jack Hitt.
http://agonist.org/node/29451/print

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/arc...o-life_nation/

The New York Times ends the year as it began: spreading ghoulish abortion propaganda.

On New Year’s Eve last year, the NYT’s own ombudsman (who no longer works there now) exposed a false, sloppy, and unrepentant pro-abortion propaganda packaged as a New York Times Magazine cover story on abortion in El Salvador by freelance writer Jack Hitt. The sensational piece alleged that women there had been thrown in prison for 30-year terms for having had abortions. Hitt described his visit to one of them, inmate Carmen Climaco. “She is now 26 years old, four years into her 30-year sentence” for aborting an 18-week-old fetus.

Turned out Climaco was convicted of infanticide; the main source for Hitt’s story (which he did not disclose) was a pro-abortion group that would profit from legalized abortion in El Salvador since it sells abortion vacuum aspirators; and court documents exposing Climaco’s lies were (contrary to Hitt’s claims) readily available and accessible.

To book-end the year with all the ghoulish abortion propaganda that’s fit to print, the NYT last week printed this chilling and stomach-turning essay by University of Iowa writing professor Brian Goedde, who shares his festive thoughts on his girlfriend’s abortion on New Year’s Eve a few year’s ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/ma...gewanted=print

Staying Home
December 16, 2007

It’s New Year’s Eve a few years back: candles are lighted in Emily’s “cozy one-bedroom” apartment, iTunes shifts seamlessly from the Magnetic Fields to Maria Callas to Nina Simone, and although we love to look out her second-story windows at the packs of people clamoring between bars and parties, and although we half-made plans to go to bars and parties ourselves, there’s no way we’re going out. The abortion is scheduled for two days from now, and we’re holing up.

We don’t, however, want to cancel the holiday altogether. Emily found a recipe for Chinese dumplings — pork (we use Gimme Lean soy mush), green cabbage, green onions, soy sauce and sesame oil, wrapped up in little purselike pastries. They’re eaten on the Chinese New Year, Emily says, in order to bring good fortune. Good fortune for our childless year.

She’s in the kitchen fussing over who knows what and has left me at the gray Formica dining-living-room table to wrap dumpling after dumpling after dumpling. First I put a tablespoon of the “meat” in the center of the pastry circle, flat in my left hand, then I dip my right index finger in a bowl of water to dab around the pastry’s circumference. Before this thin layer of water dries, I have to fold the circle over and pinch it shut. On a plate to my right are pastries mangled by my suddenly giant, sticky fingers.

“Make sure it’s completely sealed!” Emily keeps half-singing, half-yelling from the kitchen.

“What?!” I pretend not to hear every time.

“Make sure it’s — yooou heard me!”

If the dumpling isn’t sealed tight, it falls apart in the boiling water. I know, I know. I’ve been told many times, and in case I forget, it’s printed on the instructions right in front of me. If only we had always been this fastidious with precaution.

“Emily!”

“What!”

“What happens if the dumpling isn’t sealed?!”

She leans out to shoot me that mock-sour expression I love.

Over the course of the evening, a few friends call. Each time I say something like, “You know, we were going to go out, but Emily’s just not feeling well.”

This is true. She has been nauseated for almost a month. I tell them, “We’re just going to stay in and stay warm.”

Emily listens carefully from the other room. The abortion is no one’s business but ours, we’ve decided.

“But listen, have a good time.”

We’re adults, we’ve decided. We became pregnant alone, made our decision alone and will face the aftermath alone.

“And happy new year!”

I don’t feel as if I’m lying, not really, until one friend calls back and says he and his girlfriend would be happy to bring their Champagne over to Emily’s. What friends! I tell him to hold on, put the phone down and walk into the kitchen. Emily’s silence is enough of an answer. I walk back to the phone.

“Yeah, she’s not so much in the mood to see people,” I say. “She’s got stomach issues.”

I’m still not really lying, I think.

“Plus, we’d hate for you to catch it.”

The stupidest lie ever. After this I turn off my phone.

The dumplings are delicious. Dipped in a mix of soy sauce, Shaoxing vinegar, ginger and a dab of spicy-hot “rooster sauce” (from the bottle with the rooster on it), each one is like a little explosion of tangy and salty, but smooth and warm, too. I eat 10,000 of them. So does Emily. A few fall apart in the boiling water, “but that’s to be expected,” Emily says — forgivingly, I think.

At midnight we’re thankful for the partygoers who haven’t reached their destinations. Shouts of “Happy new year!” come up to us from the rolling party on the sidewalk. I take our Champagne to the window and pop it; we kiss, toasting, “To us.”

Emily has only a sip. She doesn’t want to drink while pregnant. “It’s just not something you do,” she says. Even though the pregnancy is scheduled to be terminated in two days, there’s still something — someone? — inside of her she doesn’t want to hurt. I’m utterly baffled but mask it with a respectful, if distant, “O.K.” I don’t want to ruin the mood. I just tell myself that we could never see this situation the same way, and that even what we decide together we’ll have to experience separately. That’s that.

We do the dishes, blow out the candles, put a teaspoon handle down the Champagne bottle’s neck (to keep the carbonation — it seems to work) and put the bottle in the fridge, brush our teeth, climb into bed and have unprotected sex.

“I’m not going to get more pregnant,” Emily says.

I’ve never felt pleasure more guiltily.

Brian Goedde, who is now married to Emily, teaches at the University of Iowa.


Goedde spends more time worrying about the fate of the New Year’s dumplings he and his girlfriend are cooking than the fate of the unborn life he helped create. He relates how they told lies to keep their private decision private–well, except for the fact that he blabbed about it to score a byline in the NYTimes.... Then there’s this twisted bit of illogic in the girlfriend’s refusal to drink champaign because it might, well, harm the unborn baby they’re about to get rid of...

Emily has only a sip. She doesn’t want to drink while pregnant. “It’s just not something you do,” she says. Even though the pregnancy is scheduled to be terminated in two days, there’s still something — someone? — inside of her she doesn’t want to hurt. I’m utterly baffled but mask it with a respectful, if distant, “O.K.” I don’t want to ruin the mood.

Yeah, don’t want to harm the baby you’re going to kill in a couple days. Why rush things? Morons. If there ever was a more disgusting example of the selfish, unthinking reasoning behind the majority of abortions, I haven’t seen it yet.

The moronic professor wants it both ways. He claims that his girlfriend’s abortion is “nobody’s business but our’s”. Then he write an oped piece for the NY Times, for which he gets paid, and for which he knows has a readership in the millions (counting on line readers). So after claiming that he is agonizing about how he and his GF want their privacy, he brags about his “moral courage” to an audience of millions. This professor wants the whole world to feel sympathy for him and to congratulate him for his alleged “courage”. The man obviously craves attention. He reminds me of the kid in grammar school who has a broken bone and keeps his cast on and his sling on as long as he can get attention and sympathy. The professor seems to think that the whole world is interested in his recipe for dumplings. Heck any cook at the local Chinese takeout knows the recipes for dumplings.