Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

White supremacy is terrorism.

After roe, women are no longer free.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

T R E 4 5 O N

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The words do not have to be perfect.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You are here: Home / Hot Scoop! Must Publish Quick!

Hot Scoop! Must Publish Quick!

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The NYT public editor addresses what are now the repeated attempts to smear Dems on the front page with scoops based on anonymous sourcoes that turn out to be bullshit. First, as discussed by Mistermix, it was HRC, this time, the President:

Mistakes are bound to happen in the news business, but some are worse than others.

What I’ll lay out here was a bad one. It involved a failure of sufficient skepticism at every level of the reporting and editing process — especially since the story in question relied on anonymous government sources, as too many Times articles do.

Here’s the background: A Times article Sunday reported that the U.S. government had missed something that was right out there in the open: the jihadist social-media posts by one of the San Bernardino killers. Its initial paragraphs read as follows:

Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as she moved to the United States from Pakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide — that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad.

She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.

It was certainly damning – and it was wrong. On Wednesday, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, referred to such reporting as “a garble.” And, as it turns out from his statements and from further reporting, Ms. Malik had not posted “openly” on social media. She had written emails; she had written private messages, not visible to the public; and she had written on a dating site.

In other words, the story’s clear implication that those who vetted Ms. Malik’s visa had missed the boat – a clearly visible ocean liner – was based on a false premise.

On Thursday evening, an editors’ note was appended to the article; it appeared in Friday’s paper. Editors’ notes are sometimes used instead of corrections to provide more context and explanation. But there’s no question that this also functioned as a correction.

Too bad she wasn’t around for Whitewater. Whatever happened to Gerth?

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  1. 1.

    BGinCHI

    I think Tommy Tutone said it best.

    I tried my imagination, but I was disturbed

    How do you climb this high in your profession (NYT, Paper of Record) and suck so bad at your job?

    Wait, isn’t there a legislative body this also applies to?

  3. 3.

    Wyrm

    I hate reading these fake “oh my, how could this have happened” from the people they stick in the public editor/onbudsman role.

    If you are going to rely on anonymous sources without fact-checking, thinking about what their motive is, or confirming, you are consistently going to get burned by people with their own agenda. If the Times isn’t willing to burn their source when they fed you a flat out lie, then they are not serious about getting away from anonymous sources.

  4. 4.

    GR

    It’s pretty hilarious that the flawed front-page article was and is still free to read, but the public editor’s condemnation is behind the paywall.

    No wait … that’s not hilarious. “Galling”, that’s the word.

  5. 5.

    scav

    “The paper needs to show far more skepticism—a kind of prosecutorial scrutiny—at every level of the process,” Sullivan wrote. “Two front-page, anonymously sourced stories in a few months have required editors’ notes that corrected key elements – elements that were integral enough to form the basis of the headlines in both cases. That’s not acceptable for Times readers or for the paper’s credibility, which is its most precious asset.”

    (quote via TPM)

    Oh how sweet. Sullivan and NYT counting credibility as an asset in the present tense.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    Laziness at cocktail hour: plugging in my original comment on this from the Sanders v HRC database debacle thread:

    OT: NYTImes public editor (ie. ombudsman) Margaret Sullivan has her column up re the “jihadis messaged blatantly on social media! — oh wait” story.

    Systemic Change Needed After Faulty Times Article (you can be excused for saying: which one?)

    Burned by anonymous sources — again — but circling the wagons around reporters etc. (They remind us of Apuzzo’s Pulitzer.)

    Editor Dean Baquet dismisses possibility source has an agenda outright. Says source actually did not understand the difference between publicly seen and private messages.

    And the reporters did not ask to actually see Tashfeen Shooter Malik’s messages.

    Sullivan: I asked [top editor Baquet] why reporters or editors had not insisted on seeing or reading the social media posts in question, or even having them read aloud to them;he told me he thought that this would have been unrealistic under the circumstances, but that without that kind of direct knowledge, more caution was required.

    The circumstances being the rush to publish?

    Also from Sullivan’s column:

    In other words, the story’s clear implication that those who vetted Ms. Malik’s visa had missed the boat – a clearly visible ocean liner – was based on a false premise.

    I’m not sure anything that straightforward appears in the annotated story.

    Hours on, that Baquet “nothing to see here with the source” quote still astonishes.

  8. 8.

    sukabi

    @GR: yep, I believe it’s called “having your cake and eating it too”. They get their propaganda out for constant public consumption, while the correction is for the 3 people willing to pay for their garbage.b

  9. 9.

    Baud

    I simply don’t trust anything I read anywhere that makes any Democrat looks bad. I want to see tangible eveidnce in every case. This crap isn’t random.

  10. 10.

    Elizabelle

    Realize it’s a partisan thought, but I wonder if one final part of editors’ signing off should be “if we got this totally wrong, how much hay could the Republican politicians and rightwing news make with this?”

    Because there’s no filter any more.

    And once a story is out there, very hard to get a correction appended. It’s out the door.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: The Times needs to fire some people. I don’t know about Apuzzo, per se (he deserves suspension, I think), but Amy Chozick — on the Hillary beat — is a nightmare.

    The Times’ Hillary coverage has been awful, absolutely awful. It’s clickbait for GOP and, lately, for Sanders supporters (allegedly, who knows on the internet) to tear her a new one.

    I don’t read the Times closely on politics, because it is just not a good use of time.

  12. 12.

    redshirt

    I’m not sure why Anne Laurie bothers here, with Cole seemingly out to Bigfoot her every chance he can (from the hours of 5PM onward).

    Also, Cole, could you be sure to make another post later tonight on some horrific subject like rape or police violence or child abuse? You do know how to get the Friday evening crowd engaged.

  15. 15.

    John Cole

    @redshirt: She posted an open thread a half hour ago.

    Big footing is when someone posts something and someone 3-5 minutes later posts something completely different. Just stop whining about little shit and quit trying to derail every damned post I make.

  16. 16.

    goblue72

    We are talking about a newspaper that employed Judith Miller. Credibility went out the window a long time ago.

  18. 18.

    MomSense

    The summer that “Jenny” was popular, 867-5309 was the phone number at the camp I attended. Imagine 50 pre-teen girl giggling and fielding multiple calls for “Jenny”.

    So silly and fun.

  21. 21.

    JustRuss

    @John Cole: I thought big footing was posting about the same subject soon after someone else. Of course Everything I Know About Blogging I Learned At Balloon Juice*, so I could be wrong.

    *Also the title of my pending best-seller!

  26. 26.

    Mike J

    @GR:

    It’s pretty hilarious that the flawed front-page article was and is still free to read, but the public editor’s condemnation is behind the paywall.

    What are you talking about? I was able to read it fine, no paywall at all.

  27. 27.

    Mike J

    @JustRuss:

    I saw Tommy Tutone soon after 867… caught fire. Really fun performance.

    Interviewed them when they played Memphis in May that year. Of course I also interviewed a pig.

  29. 29.

    MomSense

    @JustRuss:

    I never saw him perform but I have very happy memories of that song and that summer. It was the last summer before the teenage angst set in. We were carefree and silly.

  37. 37.

    JPL

    Now that recent comments appear on the side, it makes it easier to keep up with several posts. Multi-tasking isn’t just for the young anymore.

    @Baud: That’s a winning message!

  38. 38.

    redshirt

    @John Cole: John, for the record if it matters, I think you’re an awesome dude and an obviously nice guy. You’re one of the good ones.

    My critiques only apply to the way you manage your blog, which I find, overall, self-defeating. But then I think maybe that’s what you want – not to be too successful.

  39. 39.

    cokane

    honestly, I actually think this is an error of reportorial laziness as well as ignorance about how social media and online communication can work, more than any nefarious explanation.

    Alot of reporters, even tech savvy millenial-aged people are still utterly confused by how some digital communication is public and some is private

  42. 42.

    MomSense

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    I still get carded!! Went out to dinner with my kids and my oldest didn’t get carded but I did. I told him it’s probably the facial hair (his obviously!).

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne

    I guess no one at the NYT ever heard the old cliche, “If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

  47. 47.

    Applejinx

    o/` 86 75 30 ni-ee-ine o/`

    I went and listened to the song on YouTube and now I have the bestest earworm ever :D

  51. 51.

    MomSense

    @Mnemosyne:

    I wanted to ask “Can I kiss you” but I thought it was a little too cougar/Mrs. Robinson.

    My son’s Arnold rap earned him an A+ and he converted his teacher to Hamilmania. Win win.

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    I look pretty young for my age, actually — thank goodness for sunscreen and a lack of interest in smoking. Plus a really good colorist for my hair. :-)

  56. 56.

    raven

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    The song was inspired by the classical poet of Persian literature, Nizami Ganjavi’s The Story of Layla and Majnun, a copy of which Ian Dallas had given to Clapton. The book moved Clapton profoundly, as it was the tale of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful, unavailable woman and who went crazy because he could not marry her.[1][2] In his autobiography, Clapton states, “Ian Dallas told me the tale of Layla and Manjun [sic], a romantic Persian love story in which a young man, Manjun [sic], falls passionately in love with the beautiful Layla, but is forbidden by her father to marry her and goes crazy with desire.”[3] The song was further inspired by Clapton’s then unrequited love for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his friend and fellow musician George Harrison of The Beatles.

  57. 57.

    Mnemosyne

    @MomSense:

    Ha! More cult members added! Resistance is futile!

    I’m going to a 7 pm screening of “Star Wars” and already know to listen for LM in the cantina scenes.

  58. 58.

    Villago Delenda Est

    One can conclude one of two things about these hacks:

    They’re useful idiots of Rethuglican shitstains.

    They are Rethuglican shitstains.

    Either way, they do the credibility of the Grey Lady no favor. Yes, like that hack named Jeff Gerth did.

  60. 60.

    denali

    According to Twitter,Margaret Sullivan is leaving her job – Actually, she has been the best public editor that job for a good while. Any relevance to the current dust-up?

  62. 62.

    Germy

    Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Apuzzo, why do all your mistakes always favor GOP talking points?

    You remind me of my local supermarket. Every time I find a mistake on my receipt, it’s always an overcharge. It’s never a mistake in my favor.

  63. 63.

    Baud

    @raven:

    The song was inspired by the classical poet of Persian literature, Nizami Ganjavi’s The Story of Layla and Majnun,

    Polls say a majority of Republicans support bombing Layla and Majnun.

  64. 64.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @MomSense: How does that explain my youthful look?

    ETA: Eh, what’s this sunscreen you speak of and I can only type with one hand cause I got my cig in the other.

  74. 74.

    Germy

    Saw this comment on LGM:

    JustRuss says:
    December 18, 2015 at 12:01 pm
    I get the strong whiff that these reporters have an agenda and are happy to run with any crap story that grinds their axe. The fact that they’ve pulled this twice is disgraceful.

  75. 75.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Elizabelle: For her sake, I hope it’s as far away from the mess that is the Grey Lady that is physically possible. Say the Earth embassy on Vulcan.

  78. 78.

    Villago Delenda Est

    OT, but where the hell is the HAMMERTIME we were promised earlier? Didn’t make it for the Friday newsdump?

  79. 79.

    Elizabelle

    We still have Margaret Sullivan for eight months. Per Poynter.org, she was on a four-year contract as public editor/ombudsman and declined to extend to six years.

    What timing, though. Leaves NYT without a public editor, or with a brand new one, in the months immediately prior to election day 2016. Hope they will allow for overlap.

    Margaret Sullivan will conclude her tenure as public editor of The New York Times when her four-year contract expires in eight months, she told Poynter today.

    “Yes, I am headed into the home stretch of my four-year term,” she said in an email. “The role really requires an outsider’s perspective, so I’ve thought all along that having a clear time limit serves The Times and its readers best.”

    Editors at The New York Times have “already begun considering who should replace her,” according to POLITICO Media, which first reported Sullivan’s pending departure.

    Sullivan signed a four-year contract in 2012 to replace Art Brisbane as public editor, the paper’s in-house ombudsman. The contract came with the possibility of extending her tenure to six years, an option Sullivan has opted not to exercise.

    Most public editors at The New York Times have occupied the job for two years or less.

  81. 81.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Elizabelle:

    Most public editors at The New York Times have occupied the job for two years or less.

    Probably because that’s as long as they could stand the stink of the place.

  83. 83.

    Elizabelle

    @Villago Delenda Est: Suspect that may be true.

    There’s so much to like about the NY Times, but the coverage of 2016 race has pretty much sucked for Democrats. By design, methinks.

    Republicans are always complaining, but their party and politicians are already off the rails.

  86. 86.

    schrodinger's cat

    Speaking of NYT, their review of Bajirao Mastani is so bad, the woman who has reviewed the movie doesn’t even know what she doesn’t know. She is trying to project the present day Indian politics to that of the early 18th century add to that zero understanding of Indian society.

    The saffron flag was appropriated by the Hindu nationalists from the Marathas. The revival of Hinduism storyline is what the British era Hindu nationalists projected on Marathas, there is no evidence that was Bajirao’s or even Shivaji’s agenda.
    Plus, the Mughal empire and the Marathas were in a fight unto death long before Bajirao was even born, so when the chance to drive the final stake in the Mughal Empire after Aurangzeb’s death presented itself it was not surprising that Bajirao took it.

    An open relationship between a Hindu Brahmin man and a Muslim woman (or vice versa) would raise eyebrows even now in India. In the traditional society of Pune 300 years ago, it definitely must have caused a stir.

  87. 87.

    RAM

    Michael Schmidt has now been involved in three stories that have been proven either completely untrue or misleading this year. The first ran on March 2 falsely suggesting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton broke the law by having a private email server, the second falsely reporting Clinton was the subject of a criminal investigation regarding those emails, and the latest false story concerning whether one of the San Bernardino terrorists had been posting anti-American screeds publicly on Facebook. That’s three either false and misleading front page NYT stories this year that Schmidt had a hand in, which you’d think ought to get him fired. But then that’s just my perspective as a grumpy old retired editor after 30 years in the newspaper biz.

  89. 89.

    Mike G

    It involved a failure of sufficient skepticism at every level of the reporting and editing process — especially since the story in question relied on anonymous government sources, as too many Times articles do.

    When the NYT’s “mistakes” put clicks on their website and serve right-wing ratfvcking interests, we can expect them to make such “mistakes” over and over. The repetitiveness of such incidents and forgiveness for the perpetrators would be baffling if anyone actually believed the organization was trying its best to avoid making such “mistakes”.

  90. 90.

    kindness

    C’mon now. None of us fell off the turnip truck yesterday. The Times ‘source(s)’ obviously knew they were peddling bullshit and I can’t believe those two reporters didn’t know it too. The Times isn’t subtle. Both pieces of fiction did exactly as they were supposed to work. Our complicit media is in the tank for continued Republican rule.

  92. 92.

    Procopius

    @cokane: So is NSA — confused about how some digital communication is public and some is private, I mean. Probably the FBI, as well, but they’re more confused about real investigating and grabbing publicity. I was astonished that they came out so quickly with the statement that wossername did NOT post on public media. What’s that about? There’s some weird infighting going on in the top reaches of the bureaucracy which is showing up in the unpunished leaks going on about the real situation on the ground in Syraqistan. Kerry managed to nail Victoria Nuland by having her publicly acknowledge the latest agreement with Putin. No wonder the Times blew it. They can’t keep track of who the authorized anonymous sources are this week.

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