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.
Did you listen to the podcast? Because I can't relate at all to this reaction, given nuanced take of the original series.
The story is very much the story of an investigation, and it's made pretty clear that the central character's story is suspect.
The second half of the series follows the reporter as she tries to corroborate the story she was told, and weighs the evidence she sees against her own knowledge. In the end the implication is that she believes part of his story is probably true, but never expresses certainty.
I didn't come away thinking I'd necessarily heard the personal account of an ISIS member. Rather, I felt that I learned a lot about the process of investigative journalism, and how incredibly difficult it is to confirm information in wartime.
The fact that it's even being retracted at all seems like overkill to me, and I think that in a different climate, where the integrity of the NYT wasn't under so much scrutiny, the response would have been more measured.
Beyond just abstractly infiltrating minds, this story directly bolstered real policy changes with real consequences for Canadian asylum seekers including children.
This whole thing is shameful and embarrassing, or at least it should be.
I recommend reading what folks like Laila Al-Alarian and other non-NYT folks have been saying about this cf*k for some time:
Also worth looking into Rukmini’s funding sources and how she was vaulted into this position of primacy for an eye into the geopolitical machinations that lead to this sort of thing playing out.
Personally I subscribe to the NYT and I only heard about this story because of the retraction and investigation that they published in the newspaper. So at least from my perspective as a NYT customer, they have done enough to let me know they messed up here. They've also reassigned the journalist to another beat, which isn't loss of a job, but fact-checking is a team effort and I don't think it's fair for a journalist to bear the entire brunt of the fallout.
That's the modern propaganda M.O. Lie and then retract and demand praise for retracting.
Go look up Nayirah's testimony where a kuwaiti diplomat's daughter lied about iraqi soldiers killing "incubator babies" and the media, working with government, spread the lies intentionally to start the first iraq war.
Go read about the nonexistent WMDs that the media like the NYT lied about to start the 2nd iraq war.
> The only path forward is to fully hold NYT accountable. Fire the editor and journalist in charge of the story would be a start.
That's not going to anything. The news industry "recycles" journalists/editors like the catholic church recycles pedophile priests.
People should simply be taught what Thomas Jefferson knew. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day"
The problem is that people expect truth and facts from the news industry. People should be taught what the news industry is - a propaganda outlet for the elites. And then let the people judge accordingly. The NYTimes will always be a corrupt agenda driven propaganda organization. You can't change that. What you can change are people's understanding of what the NYTimes is.
For what it's worth, I did see the retraction displayed fairly prominently below the fold on nytimes.com yesterday. So they're not trying to bury it, at least.
I wonder if podcasts are a much riskier medium because of this. When have 12 episodes drilling in ideas based on a faulty premise, it's a lot harder to effectively say "oops," and being longer, there are a lot more opportunities for something to go wrong.
Just 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.
> 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.
Yeah, this was my reaction as well. The reason I found Caliphate interesting was not the details of Chaudhry's story, which I experienced as were portrayed as dubious and in need of verification throughout; I certainly finished the podcast feeling uncertain whether Chaudhry had actually done any of the things he claimed.
Instead, the reason I've recommended this podcast to friends is that it spends most of its time on a fascinating exploration of the journalistic process. How does reporter verify claims made by people about events in a war zone? The people you interview have a reason to lie to you, sneaking across borders doesn't generate passport stamps, and reliable records are hard to come by.
This latest news feels like an interesting addendum to all that; I'd have expected any other podcast publisher to do an additional episode or two covering the new evidence and grappling with what that changes about the conclusions one can draw (certainly Serial has done a number of updates on new evidence about its past stories).
That said, my sense is that the NYT is taking this extreme action in part because they in retrospect are unhappy with the fact-checking process for the podcast, and I could see that sort of concern motivating this type of retraction/disowning despite all the uncertainty the podcast itself presented.
>> Also, the whole series was constructed somewhat naively.
I would use the word naively if it weren't journalist Rukmini Callimachi, who has created her entire career on the basis of secret terrorism in the Muslim community. At this point, that is her entire narrative and she finds anything to support it and ignores whatever doesnt support this specific narrative.
Interestingly, he never covers similar things in other religious communities and focuses only on Muslims. She is this generation's Daniel Pipes.
Her association with the NYT is also shameful, because she is more Fox News quality w/r/t balance
Lots 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.
Does 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.
It'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.
It 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.
Similar 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.
There'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.
As 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.
Good 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.
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.
I'm sorry but this is such an unfair take. If they were posting corrections like this daily or weekly, then you could argue for EAFP. But your comment implies that they do zero vetting and just publish whatever they want. It completely misses the nuance that "getting permission" isn't a black and white issue. It's a spectrum and you're rarely ever at 100%. You sometimes gotta make the call to publish a story at 95% or so, and in rare occasions it just turns out to not go your way.
You're implying that they should never post a story unless they are 100% certain, which means most stories would never get published, defeating the entire point of journalism. Obviously the threshold needs to be high, you don't want to post every single rumor, but just because they have 1 or 2 correction a year does not mean "they'd rather ask for forgiveness than get permission".
This 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.
I'd recommend the 2019 pseudo-blacklisted documentary Salafistes^1 (released as Jihadists in the US) if you want an unvarnished view of Salafist Islam.
Did 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.
> "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.
You 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.
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.
>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.
>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.
As 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.
It 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...
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:
Indeed, 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.
It'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.
Show 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.
This 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.
> "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."
Did 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?
[+] [-] salimmadjd|5 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] cowpig|5 years ago|reply
The story is very much the story of an investigation, and it's made pretty clear that the central character's story is suspect.
The second half of the series follows the reporter as she tries to corroborate the story she was told, and weighs the evidence she sees against her own knowledge. In the end the implication is that she believes part of his story is probably true, but never expresses certainty.
I didn't come away thinking I'd necessarily heard the personal account of an ISIS member. Rather, I felt that I learned a lot about the process of investigative journalism, and how incredibly difficult it is to confirm information in wartime.
The fact that it's even being retracted at all seems like overkill to me, and I think that in a different climate, where the integrity of the NYT wasn't under so much scrutiny, the response would have been more measured.
[+] [-] rrdharan|5 years ago|reply
This whole thing is shameful and embarrassing, or at least it should be.
I recommend reading what folks like Laila Al-Alarian and other non-NYT folks have been saying about this cf*k for some time:
https://twitter.com/PeterHamby/status/1340022426223034370?s=...
https://twitter.com/SanaSaeed/status/1339998015399088129?s=2...
https://twitter.com/LailaAlarian/status/1340002570404806656?...
Also worth looking into Rukmini’s funding sources and how she was vaulted into this position of primacy for an eye into the geopolitical machinations that lead to this sort of thing playing out.
[+] [-] sulam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elsjaako|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disown|5 years ago|reply
That's the modern propaganda M.O. Lie and then retract and demand praise for retracting.
Go look up Nayirah's testimony where a kuwaiti diplomat's daughter lied about iraqi soldiers killing "incubator babies" and the media, working with government, spread the lies intentionally to start the first iraq war.
Go read about the nonexistent WMDs that the media like the NYT lied about to start the 2nd iraq war.
> The only path forward is to fully hold NYT accountable. Fire the editor and journalist in charge of the story would be a start.
That's not going to anything. The news industry "recycles" journalists/editors like the catholic church recycles pedophile priests.
People should simply be taught what Thomas Jefferson knew. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day"
The problem is that people expect truth and facts from the news industry. People should be taught what the news industry is - a propaganda outlet for the elites. And then let the people judge accordingly. The NYTimes will always be a corrupt agenda driven propaganda organization. You can't change that. What you can change are people's understanding of what the NYTimes is.
[+] [-] meowface|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] admiralspoo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalbasal|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] tabbott|5 years ago|reply
Instead, the reason I've recommended this podcast to friends is that it spends most of its time on a fascinating exploration of the journalistic process. How does reporter verify claims made by people about events in a war zone? The people you interview have a reason to lie to you, sneaking across borders doesn't generate passport stamps, and reliable records are hard to come by.
This latest news feels like an interesting addendum to all that; I'd have expected any other podcast publisher to do an additional episode or two covering the new evidence and grappling with what that changes about the conclusions one can draw (certainly Serial has done a number of updates on new evidence about its past stories).
That said, my sense is that the NYT is taking this extreme action in part because they in retrospect are unhappy with the fact-checking process for the podcast, and I could see that sort of concern motivating this type of retraction/disowning despite all the uncertainty the podcast itself presented.
[+] [-] taway21|5 years ago|reply
I would use the word naively if it weren't journalist Rukmini Callimachi, who has created her entire career on the basis of secret terrorism in the Muslim community. At this point, that is her entire narrative and she finds anything to support it and ignores whatever doesnt support this specific narrative.
Interestingly, he never covers similar things in other religious communities and focuses only on Muslims. She is this generation's Daniel Pipes.
Her association with the NYT is also shameful, because she is more Fox News quality w/r/t balance
[+] [-] TillE|5 years ago|reply
How do you fail to do even the most basic fact checking? They've clearly learned nothing since Judith Miller.
[+] [-] spamizbad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] admiralspoo|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jakevoytko|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Simulacra|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garyrob|5 years ago|reply
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.]
[+] [-] cheezymoogle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mellosouls|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chrisseaton|5 years ago|reply
They got caught - they didn't come clean.
And now they're trying to milk the fact that they were caught to make themselves sound humble.
[+] [-] ehsankia|5 years ago|reply
You're implying that they should never post a story unless they are 100% certain, which means most stories would never get published, defeating the entire point of journalism. Obviously the threshold needs to be high, you don't want to post every single rumor, but just because they have 1 or 2 correction a year does not mean "they'd rather ask for forgiveness than get permission".
[+] [-] starkd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbob45|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivraatiems|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
---
1 - https://vimeo.com/ondemand/jihadists
[+] [-] ehsankia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blhack|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] solumos|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CharlesW|5 years ago|reply
Also, every day Facebook does 10,000 times the damage that this has done. Perspective, people.
[+] [-] dwighttk|5 years ago|reply
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
[+] [-] ohhhhhh|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucidone|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fqye|5 years ago|reply
Now I subscribe to New Yorker and Bloomberg.
[+] [-] TMWNN|5 years ago|reply
The Times pointed out the day after Trump's election stunned the press (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.)
[+] [-] busymom0|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] olivermarks|5 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] oftenwrong|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_wot|5 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] macinjosh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IndySun|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gnarbarian|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] DaedPsyker|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] robertlagrant|5 years ago|reply
Deifying people is unlikely to go well.
[+] [-] ppod|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panabee|5 years ago|reply
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.