I fear you are correct.
Has the NYTimes become the Jeb! of national new media organizations? I can’t tell whether they’ve adopted Jeb!'s walk-a-back strategeries or he has theirs.
The other piece Sullivan’s condemnation refers to is of course written by the same reporters, out of the same connection to Associated Press, to the same effect attacking Dems.
TNYT hasn’t been a great news organizatin some time. It’s like that old outlaw Bill in Little Big Man, who from when we first see him we realize is rotting from the inside out, and who over the course of the stories keeps on losing pieces of himself, yet endures due in part to peculiar strengths in certain areas for which we still look to newspapers (book reviews, science section, Krugman), but otherwise and mainly because the alternatives among daily national newspapers are few and worse.
4 Likes
Nope.
But this Sunday, Maureen Dowd will again take up valuable (although getting less so, given the mud on the Times) space in a column obsessing over Obambi or BillAndHill.*
Count on it.
*Yes, I am aware that the op-ed pages are kept separate from the rest of the paper, but sometimes, I do wonder.
1 Like
One of the rules of anonymous sources is that if they fed you false information they don’t have a right be anonymous anymore.
11 Likes
In a time long ago…
NYT Editor: ‘Systemic Change’ Needed After Botched IRAQ WMD Story
I think we can expect systemic changes any day now!
3 Likes
Too bad that that never actually happened.
It’s not simply that the sources were “anonymous” that’s the problem. It’s the fact that it clearly wasn’t vetted with any level of scrutiny.
Also, it appears the disconnect in technology in remaining journalism circles is becoming more glaring by the year.
2 Likes
Ever since the Judith Miller/NY Times helped mislead us into the Iraq war, I’ve become much more skeptical of their reporting.
1 Like
Asked how the Times could have gotten that crucial distinction wrong, executive editor Dean Baquet told Sullivan that the sources “misunderstood how social media works” and apparently did not know the difference between public and private messages on social media.
Perhaps – but your reporter should know the difference … and your various editors should know the difference. You people did this deliberately. As a reporter, if a source tells me “that stuff is all over social media,” my very next question would be, “Which ones?” Again, you people did this deliberately.
2 Likes
In my experience, public sector management is capable of utilizing the technology they learned to use in graduate school. I cannot speak about the private sector. In any case, the NYT should keep that in mind when covering the public sector.
There are no coincidences in politics. Two failures by two reporters in two months equals 2 job openings. Fire them now!
But, but, but on an episode of 24 they did…
Yeah - one is the public face who probably has little or nothing to do with the day to day running of the paper. The other is one of the top people who runs the stuff that gets printed every day. Guess which one failed at her job?
@ martinslett: I have a feeling this is one of those “bring out the…comfy chair” moments in the disciplinary process.
Your main headline really should say “public editor.” A very very big difference from the NYT editor who has shown over and over again how awful he (Dean Baquet) is! The PUBLIC editor statement is great. The editor’s (Dean) response is terrible as usual. He should never have been hired in the first place, now he should be fired!
The problem of course is that the damage is already done. Even if they gave the retraction equal space on the front page, the original story is already out there and being quoted throughout the RWNJ noise machine. It has become part of the indisputable “truth” of the conservative bubble, and no contradictory evidence will be permitted to seep through.
More’s the pity. That statement in and of itself is a condemnation of the state of US journalism. The Times shouldn’t be unparalleled. It should be one of several papers of equal stature, competing in the marketplace with the quality of it’s reporting. Instead, no matter how often they screw up like this, everyone has to suck it up and say, “oh,well, what can we do, they’re still the best we’ve got.”
2 Likes
… Jeff Gerth … Howell Raines
This seems to be the 2nd major fuck-up by these two. At some point heads are going to roll.
I thought the New York Times promised us “Systemic Change” after Judith Miller was cheer leading for the War with Bush talking points.
“apparently did not know the difference between public and private messages on social media.”
Many people believe the term “social media” means social only.