[HN Gopher] New York Times retracts core of podcast series 'Cali...
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New York Times retracts core of podcast series 'Caliphate'
Author : RickJWagner
Score : 274 points
Date : 2020-12-19 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| padseeker wrote:
| I'm fine with calling out the NYT for making a mistake or worse
| enabling substandard journalism. There has been a review of this
| content, a large organization that has a lot of reporters
| generating content. The NYT could have done a better job on this.
| Kudos for the NYT for admitting its mistake. It's not the first,
| it won't be the last.
|
| I just have one problem with some of the commentary here - I'm
| willing to wager a sizable portion of the commenters on this
| board who are experiencing schadenfreude because they hate the
| NYT most likely get their news from a significantly less
| reputable news source that would never admit to making a mistake
| or perform a correction.
|
| Maybe you hate the NYT because it's too liberal and you
| listen/watch/read the WSJ or Fox News or Breitbart. Maybe it's
| because you think the NYT isn't 'liberal' enough, and you read
| Jacobin or Common Dreams or watch MSNBC. This isn't about your
| concern over adherence to the truth. Many of these comments is
| about your joy when you point a finger and laugh like Nelson from
| the Simpsons when the news source that doesn't completely and
| consistently deliver the information that fits your exact and
| already hardened world view has anything that diminishes it's
| credibility.
|
| This is like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald accusing the
| media of covering up the Hunter Biden laptop story. Both want to
| destroy the same political contingent but for completely
| different reasons.
|
| If you are holding the NYT to a standard that your own news
| source does not adhere to you are the problem.
| rriepe wrote:
| Perhaps we'll get a series called 'Media Empire' which explains
| _this_ allure?
| garyrob wrote:
| 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| Then when more facts came out, it was retracted.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.
|
| [Edited for a missing period.]
| fastball wrote:
| The problem with Fauci saying we shouldn't wear masks is that
| there was not some initial data which indicated that this was
| the right choice, it was just an incorrect assumption based on
| nothing (or worse an outright lie based on a desire to
| "preserve supply", as this was known to be a respiratory virus
| well before his statement).
|
| Saying nothing when you have no data is fine, asserting /
| prescribing something ("you don't need to wear masks") when you
| have no data is not. Err on the side of caution, hedge against
| risk. This is basic stuff and top public health officials need
| to be held to a (much) better standard.
| simonh wrote:
| I don't think that's a reasonable expectation of someone in
| Fauci's position. Wearing a mask or not is a binary decision,
| when people ask if they should wear masks of someone in that
| role they reasonably expect a binary answer of what they
| should do and at any given time he took his best shot at
| answering that question.
|
| What he said in March was that he didn't believe there was
| any reason for most fo the public to wear a mask, that's
| because he didn't have any evidence that it was effective at
| that time. Evidence is a reason, absence of evidence is not a
| reason for action. This is very simple. I happen to have
| thought even at the time that we should be wearing masks, but
| that was just an opinion and at that time the opposite
| opinion was also reasonable. We were still working things
| out.
|
| Accusing him of lying in service of some conspiracy theory
| really is going too far.
| whiddershins wrote:
| He literally said in a later interview that he lied. It
| doesn't require a conspiracy for someone to lie. People
| sometimes just lie.
| ummonk wrote:
| We knew all along how viral respiratory diseases including
| corona viruses are transmitted, and that masks have some
| effectiveness in preventing spread for such viruses. In the
| absence of direct evidence one way or another for masking
| effectiveness COVID itself, the reasonable assumption would
| have been that masks are indeed effective until proven
| otherwise.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| This reasoning is nonsense. The early days of the pandemic
| aren't going to have a high-N RCT, so reasoning from
| higher-uncertainty sources of knowledge is important. An
| obvious prior for a fucking _respiratory_ disease is that
| masks reduce population spread, and the no-cost
| recommendation to wear masks in the early pandemic is one
| of the few policy levers that would have actually saved
| lives.
| seventytwo wrote:
| This isn't accurate.
|
| The reason Fauci (and others) said not to wear masks early on
| is because there was a shortage and they wanted to be sure
| medical professionals could have access to masks.
|
| Medical professionals have known for a century that masks
| help prevent the spread of disease - particularly an airborne
| or aerosolized.
| rtx wrote:
| Yes,they misled. Even a scarf over the face would have
| helped.
|
| Fauci should be tried at Hague.
| tertius wrote:
| No, scarfs don't work.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Other countries told everyone to wear pieces of cloth
| around their face in the early days of the pandemic hitting
| their country. There was no cloth shortage, and this was a
| basic precaution that could (and should) have been taken
| without badly affecting the supply of respirators for
| medical personnel. This is to say nothing of the lies[1]
| told in service of this policy: principally that masks
| aren't effective for controlling spread among the general
| public when there was no contrary evidence and the prudent
| prior would've been to use masks (for a fucking respiratory
| disease!) until proven ineffective.
|
| Policymaking and public health guidance is complex. There
| are details of the population's behavior that can't be
| fully controlled, but can be influenced, and maintaining
| credibility is crucially important here. Burning public
| trust with lies (or worse, basic inability to think
| critically under conditions of uncertainty) early on in the
| pandemic was a lot more damaging than the incidental effect
| of a cloth-mask recommendation on early N95 supply would
| have been.
|
| [1] Worse than and more plausible than lies is simply
| incompetence. The medical industry is famously bad at
| critical thinking: I've known people who came out of (top-
| ranked) med school _less_ able to reason under uncertainty
| and deal with statistics, because of the culture of
| oversimplification they're indoctrinated with. I have no
| opinion on whether this is wise for the field overall, but
| it's an especially poor fit for a fast-moving, low-
| information environment like the early days of a pandemic.
| listenallyall wrote:
| If this was a valid reason for lying, or misleading the
| public, why wouldn't they continue doing it with the
| vaccine? Why not have Fauci say, "no, the vaccine is
| ineffective" or "people don't need a vaccine" right now,
| when the vaccine is in short supply, in order to ensure all
| medical professionals have access to the vaccine without
| additional demand from the public?
| tertius wrote:
| I am appalled that he lied and owned up to it later.
|
| But from his perspective (and it may have been not just his
| choice) what were the alternatives if his goal was to
| preserve frontline medical workers? (Regardless if this
| policy actually saved anyone).
|
| I can see why it was done and at the same time feel lied to
| and that that is wrong.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I don't think he "lied", he just weighed the pros and cons
| and gave an advice, which may not have been the best. Later
| as the pros and cons changed, he updated his advice. Did he
| even claim that "masks don't help stop the virus"? That
| would've been a lie but I don't think he said anything like
| that.
| tertius wrote:
| https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-
| dire...
|
| Discussion: https://youtu.be/_2MmX2U2V3c
|
| He did lie. He gave advice with ulterior motives.
| ehsankia wrote:
| You can call it "ulterior motives", I called it "weighing
| the pros and cons". While the host in your video claims
| "he lied to us", again he only said "you don't need to
| wear masks for now", he never claimed they don't work or
| that they wouldn't help, just that you don't need them
| yet.
| tertius wrote:
| His reason for recommending not wearing masks was "to
| save PPE capacity for frontline medical workers". Not any
| of reasons he gave at the time.
|
| This is a definition of ulterior motive.
|
| I'm not making a judgement whether he was right/wrong by
| giving that advice (which the WHO did as well for the
| same reasons). Just pointing out that he did lie.
|
| I personally don't like being lied to by people that
| represent a lot of power (doesn't matter what they're
| motives are. Lying is used to deceive for ulterior
| motives). That is just an indicator that I can't trust
| public facing scientists because the truth is not a
| priority, rather only the outcome that they desire
| (whether personally or as a group.) But that's not new.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You should take a second to read the essay "On Bullshit."
| What he said there was bullshit, written to cause an
| outcome, not to tell the truth.
| late2part wrote:
| ^- this +1
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Substitute "crystal healing", or "hydroxychloroquin" for
| "population-wide mask usage to contain a viral disease". To
| the medical sciences, these three are (were) more alike than
| they are different: they all are _interventions_ that may or
| may not achieve a desired outcome, and may or may not have
| some unwanted side effects.
|
| In January/February 2020, there was about as much evidence
| for either of those propositions. The evidence on masks was
| thin, and limited to use by professionals in a medical
| setting. Existing studies of their use as practiced in parts
| of Asia were inconclusive.
|
| Yes, I know: Masks seem like a really good idea. The whole
| concept makes sense. There's a theory as to how they work.
|
| But medicine stopped believing _any_ theory as to what may or
| may not be useful around a hundred years ago, after killing
| countless people with bloodletting, mercury, vapour-vaping,
| whatever... All those interventions may seem ridiculous to
| you, but they all followed some entirely believable logic
| that accounted for all the known facts as long as one did not
| actually run a double-blind trial.
|
| It's instructive to look at the fate of two of those
| interventions: masks and that quinine. We now know the former
| works and the latter does not. And I'll be immodest and
| mention that I considered masks to be effective from day one,
| while spending only about a week drinking Gin Tonics for
| health reasons, until the full extend of the seediness of
| that French doctor pushing it became public (and I had to go
| back to a different set of reasons for the drinks).
|
| But at about the same time along each treatment's timeline,
| there really was more actual, or at least _claimed_ to be
| factual, evidence for the Malaria-malarky than there was for
| masks. And while I 'm supremely excellent at
| predictioneering, I utterly fail when trying to distill some
| set of specific rules to follow.
|
| Maybe there's wisdom in numbers? Do a survey in the US _right
| now_ , and you'll probably get 55 % to advocate for masks, 42
| % believing in the insect-repellant. And that's about four
| months _after_ the science on those questions has been
| settled.
| drtillberg wrote:
| Actually, there's no reasonable pathway for crystal healing
| to help here. On the other hand, it's entirely plausible
| and there's real-world experience to support (1) masks
| filtering harmful particles and (2) hydroxychloroquin being
| useful against an immune system run amuck, which is the way
| 'flu' often injures patients. So, no, only two of the three
| were similar.
|
| Zero credit to those who would equate all three or who
| would dismiss either of the latter two without diligent,
| unbiased investigation and solid empirical evidence.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Yes, I don't disagree. I chose crystal healing because
| it's silly. I supported masks because it seems to make
| sense.
|
| But none of that is _evidence_ in the double-blind trials
| sense of the word. And you 're actually making my case:
| there was a plausible mechanism for hydroxychloroquine,
| as well as for masks. But only one of them works, while
| the other probably killed a few people, and wasted a
| whole lot of time.
| tertius wrote:
| HCQ is a very safe medicine.
| tertius wrote:
| Nope, but for masks, overwhelming evidence exists prior
| to 2020.
|
| Just because you don't understand how this virus spreads
| does not mean that we need a new trial before we can make
| a recommendation.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| This reasoning is implicit in the apologists for our early
| pandemic public health incompetence, but it's incredible to
| see it concretely articulated.
|
| How do you add absence of high-quality, narrow evidence for
| effectiveness + strong prior for effectiveness + ~zero-cost
| intervention and land at "don't recommend cloth face
| covering"?
|
| All the other examples you gave fail one of these criteria:
| there's no prior suggesting that Crystal healing is
| valuable, HCQ has side effects and presents costs/supply
| chain challenges that _cloth_ doesn't, etc.
|
| An example from the other side is vitamin D: there's been
| enough weak evidence that anyone scientifically literate
| has been keeping an eye on their vitamin D since the early
| pandemic, given that: there's moderate evidence it's
| protective + there's a high chance you're deficient anyway
| + D toxicity is pretty hard to achieve.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| One side effect that was mentioned at the time was people
| engaging in risky behaviour thinking they'll be protected
| by the mask.
|
| Medicine also isn't in the "we recommend it because there
| aren't many reasons against it" business. They neither
| recommended masks nor warned against them, but laid out
| the facts: "we don't (didn't) know. We're scrambling to
| get data. We'll let you know"
|
| I'm honestly baffled that the concept of a trial is so
| alien to people, and that nobody seems to be capable of
| the tiny transference of recognising that masks are no
| different than a pill. I could come up with a possible
| reason Aspirin might work: maybe it's the fever that
| kills, Aspirin lowers it. The risk is known and rather
| small. Should medical science recommend everyone to take
| Aspirin? Does it seem entirely implausible that a
| significant number of people would say/think "It's not
| the best time for a wedding, but everyone has taken
| triple doses of Aspirin so it should be fine"
| tertius wrote:
| Masks and the way this virus spreads isn't new.
|
| New medicines, requiring trials are novel.
|
| Golden eggs and apples shouldn't be compared.
|
| What new data has finally come in that has shown that
| masks do not slow the spread or that they do? And new we
| have guidance?
|
| The problem here is that the medical community, when they
| have skin in the game wear and recommended masks, from
| day 1.
|
| Again, the virus is novel, how it spreads is not.
| screye wrote:
| I think your analogy perfectly captures why we must criticize
| it.
|
| Both Fauci and the Times made an elementary
| mistake/miscalculations that reflects terribly on trust
| people place with them.
|
| The media then lambasts anyone who uses this to sow
| scepticism about these institutions, calling them conspiracy
| theorists instead.(which is true for certain cohorts, but
| wielded as a blanket statement)
|
| My trust in various academic institutions has gone down by
| orders of magnitude since the UCL/NE Journal and many of the
| other covid fiascos. The statistical and scientific rigor
| employed by experts and epidemiologist seems to be massively
| lacking.
|
| Similarly, a series of missteps by the NYT has led me to (a
| much larger degree than the previous analogy) lose trust in
| its reporting. Sadly, there do not seem to be any alternative
| sources outside of either reading the papers directly or
| finding specific individuals I place high amount of trust in.
|
| Both are all too time consuming for someone with a full time
| job.
| Technically wrote:
| > Both Fauci and the Times made an elementary
| mistake/miscalculations that reflects terribly on trust
| people place with them.
|
| Well, that's your mistake. Never trust a single editorial
| board.
|
| I don't personally think Fauci advocating people leave N95
| masks to front line health workers reduced trust in him.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| That isn't at all true. If you took 5 minutes to actually
| read the detailed rationale published by CDC, you would see
| why they opposed masks.
|
| People tend to use mask wearing as a replacement for social
| distancing. They aren't. They are a risk mitigation method
| for cases where social distance is unavoidable. CDC opposed
| mask wearing specifically because people would interpret it
| as a less-effective security blanket. They only reversed
| their stance when it became apparent that the US public
| weren't willing to use social distancing effectively.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| > They only reversed their stance when it became apparent
| that the US public weren't willing to use social distancing
| effectively.
|
| Do you have citations for any of this stuff? Because I have
| seen places where Fauci and the CDC admitted that their
| main reason for discouraging masks was to prevent a run on
| PPE, and I've never seen one where they have explained that
| it was part of some broader strategy like this. In fact, my
| memory of the time where they were advising against masks
| is that social distancing was much less emphasized in the
| public health messaging than hand washing and avoiding face
| touching.
| blub wrote:
| Western governments recommending against masks is one of
| the biggest government fuck-ups I've ever witnessed and now
| there's no lack of people trying to cover it up and find
| excuses for it.
|
| The quote below is from "Professional and Home-Made Face
| Masks Reduce Exposure to Respiratory Infections among the
| General Population". There's enough studies looking at this
| for SARS and influenza- including for the general
| population - that it is highly irresponsible to err on the
| side of not using masks even if there's no clear evidence
| for population usage for SARS-2.
|
| "Opportunistic data collected during the SARS epidemic in
| Asia suggested that population-wide use of face masks may
| significantly decrease transmission of not only SARS but
| also influenza [3,4,5,6,7]. As part of pandemic
| preparedness, many are contemplating the contribution wide-
| spread use of masks could have [8,9]."
|
| 3. Lau JTF, Tsui H, Lau M, Yang X (2004) SARS transmission,
| risk factors and prevention in Hong Kong. Emerging
| Infectious Diseases 10: 587-92.
|
| 4. Lo JYC, Tsang THF, Leung Y, Yeung EYH, Wu T, et al.
| (2005) Respiratory infections during SARS outbreak, Hong
| Kong, 2003. Emerging Infectious Diseases 15: 1738-41.
|
| 5. Wilder-Smith A, Low JGH (2005) Risk of respiratory
| infections in health care workers: lesson on infection
| control emerge from the SARS outbreak. Southeast Asian
| Journal of Tropical Medicine and Public Health 36: 481-488.
|
| 6. Wu J, Xu F, Zhou W, Feikin DR, Lin C-Y, et al. (2004)
| Risk factors for SARS among persons without known contact
| with SARS patients, Beijing, China. Emerging Infectious
| Diseases 10: 210-16.
|
| 7. Tang CS, Wong CY (2004) Factors influencing the wearing
| of facemasks to prevent the severe acute respiratory
| syndrome among adult Chinese in Hong Kong. Preventive
| Medicine 39: 1187-93.
|
| 8. World Health Organisation Writing Group (2006)
| Nonpharmaceutical Inter- ventions for Pandemic Influenza,
| International Measures. Emerging Infectious Diseases 12:
| 81-87.
|
| 9. World Health Organisation Writing Group (2006) Non-
| pharmaceutical Interventions for Pandemic Influenza,
| National and Community Measures. Emerging Infectious
| Diseases 12: 88-94.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Most of the people in the USA denying mask use are right
| wingers who choose to listen to politicians rather than
| scientists, that's the 90% problem, not what you're
| pointing out. Their leaders tell them masks don't work
| and they listen. Others listened to scientists and we're
| better for it but if half the country is ignoring it, it
| greatly reduces the effectiveness of masks. The CDC
| backtracked within a month or two that masks could be a
| good idea even homemade ones to limit the aerosols. To
| say anything else is nitpicking, we've have 6 months and
| people still deny it. Nothing you pointed out would have
| changed it since Trump double downed on not wearing a
| mask and his luddites followed behind him.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| It's absolutely insane (or a transparent deception) to
| make the argument that CDC in March saying "don't wear
| masks" is the problem here for eroding trust, when the
| right political wing was opposed to scientific voices
| even before that, and 9 months later so many people are
| opposing mask wearing now? How can one say out of one
| side of their mouth that the CDC was wrong then, and out
| the other side day that the CDC advice is wrong now? If
| CDC was wrong about masks in March, why are people who
| say that still opposed to wearing masks?
| fastball wrote:
| It's insane to hold the people who claim to be scientists
| to a higher standard than the people who don't?
|
| With regards to our lovely two-party system, both sides
| (yes I know) typically only cite "science" when it suits
| them. In the defense of "the left" (sorry I hate talking
| about politics as if it's one-dimensional), it does seem
| like data supports their policies more often than it does
| the right, but again, a false dichotomy is the wrong way
| of looking at this.
|
| Remove politics from the discussion and science is still
| facing a crisis: reproducibility crisis, proposing
| unfalsifiable theories, spending more time worrying about
| positive results than finding the truth, politics
| influencing science (not just the other way around as it
| should be), the profit-driven concerns of higher learning
| institutions, etc, etc.
| tertius wrote:
| The CDC is not the man on the street. The man on the
| street can distrust an institution that suggests
| something unscientific when they are requesting trust
| from the public.
|
| Doesn't matter if said man on the street thinks the earth
| is flat, has a mental disorder or likes tennis more than
| soccer.
|
| An institution should not be judged on the merits of the
| people judging them.
|
| Also, people not wanting the government to force them
| what to do with their bodies is not quite the same as
| them not believing that there is a health risk when not
| wearing masks. Stop conflating the two. Engage the
| argument instead of the strawmen (or don't, but be honest
| about it.)
| blub wrote:
| US politics are irrelevant. As I've said, this was
| happening universally outside of Asia.
| [deleted]
| bumby wrote:
| > _CDC opposed mask wearing specifically because people
| would interpret it as a less-effective security blanket._
|
| At the very least, they did a poor job of communicating
| this in the public sphere. The sound bites many Americans
| got was to not wear masks, which is quite different than
| "wearing masks is not a suitable substitute for social
| distancing". For better or worse, most Americans probably
| aren't going to search out CDC publications as their
| primary source for detailed information.
|
| He has indicated PPE was part of the rationale:
|
| "I don't regret anything I said then because in the context
| of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were
| told in our task force meetings that we have a serious
| problem with the lack of PPEs,"
|
| To be fair, he's been in a very difficult situation and I
| can only imagine the number of verbal miscues I would have
| made if placed in a similar scenario.
| pbourke wrote:
| The real solution would have been to tell people to wear
| masks and invoke the Defense Production Act with 3M and
| other manufacturers so that medical-grade masks were
| directed to the right place. People were screaming at the
| administration to do this at the time (Jan/Feb).
| worker767424 wrote:
| > I don't regret anything I said then because in the
| context of the time in which I said it, it was correct.
| We were told in our task force meetings that we have a
| serious problem with the lack of PPEs
|
| I don't trust Fauci because of this. He lied, he doesn't
| see it that way, he he doesn't seem to acknowledge how it
| undermined trust.
|
| I also don't like his _approach_. It 's very preachy.
| That's not what we need right now. We need someone saying
| "please stay home, but we know some of you are going to
| see loved ones for the holidays, so we added testing
| capacity and locations so it's super easy to get tested."
| maxerickson wrote:
| Getting tested prior to gatherings isn't enough to stop
| the spread.
|
| You need tests and periods of isolation, with the periods
| of isolation being the more important component (that
| many people don't have much ability to choose right now).
|
| What happens a lot is that people get tested, think they
| are safe, then after becoming infectious spend a bunch of
| time with people.
|
| So advertising expanded testing isn't really a viable
| public health message.
| worker767424 wrote:
| I need to see a citation for that. My gut tells be that
| if people had mostly accurate at-home tests they took
| ~daily, it would actually reduce spread massively,
| especially when it can be asymptomatic.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I'm sure that would have impact, but it isn't what you
| described above, you described advertising more locations
| and capacity to make people feel better about visits and
| gatherings.
|
| I also expect that compliance wouldn't be all that high
| for at home testing (people skipping tests, deciding they
| still feel good enough, etc). It doesn't mean we
| shouldn't try to establish that access for people that
| would use it well though.
|
| Also, there's a difference between working to increase
| testing so that more people do get tested before a
| holiday and making that the center of your message. They
| need to be careful to not mislead or give the impression
| that they are misleading, but they could limit the
| messaging to a statement about working to expand testing.
| saagarjha wrote:
| We can't just spin up testing capability, though.
| Normalizing violations of social distancing, then
| claiming that we will have a safety net for all the
| people who will hear that and think "oh, staying home?
| That's for other people to do" when we can't actually
| support everyone doing that is not helpful at all.
| worker767424 wrote:
| > We can't just spin up testing capability, though.
|
| Back in March and April, I'd agree. It's December now, so
| there's no excuses for this. There's also no excuses for
| the problems with the vaccine rollout.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Fauci would LOVE to add testing capacity. You're blaming
| Fauci for Team Trump's self-serving undermining of
| Fauci's work.
| tertius wrote:
| We have immense testing capacity in the U.S. where's the
| lack?
| worker767424 wrote:
| Try to book one in the coming pre-Christmas week or look
| at lines for drive-thru testing.
| rhizome wrote:
| > _At the very least, they did a poor job of
| communicating this in the public sphere. The sound bites
| many Americans got was to not wear masks, which is quite
| different than "wearing masks is not a suitable
| substitute for social distancing"._
|
| CDC isn't to blame for this. At this point there was a
| TON of political interference and bureaucratic
| restrictions on what they were allowed to say, and they
| were reined in very early. There were lots of _entire
| careers_ and stuff some people call "my life's work"
| held in the lurch there.
| bumby wrote:
| A very good point. It was what I was dancing around in my
| statement about Fauci being in a difficult situation.
|
| I may be being too critical, but I think certain
| professions of public trust need to be held to higher
| standards in this regard. Meaning, while I can
| commiserate with the idea that careers hang in the
| balance, they owe it to the public to be honest. It's why
| certain roles are "professions" and not "jobs" (there is
| generally a professed oath to serve the public good).
| This is where I would hold them deficient in their
| communication and, unfortunately, a threat to a career
| isn't sufficient to avoid one's professed ethics.
| Misspeaking is one thing, misleading is another.
| pbourke wrote:
| How many public appearances has Dr. Fauci made since
| January? So much shade being thrown in this thread for a
| few missteps during a complicated situation. Meanwhile
| the President of the United States, with access to the
| world's best intelligence and expert recommendations on
| the subject, denied the severity of the pandemic for
| _months_ after it became an international crisis. He did
| it for his own perceived political benefit.
| bumby wrote:
| I've tried to give the benefit of the doubt in my higher
| comments about how difficult the situation was/is.
|
| What I don't think is excusable is lying to the public as
| a public health official. The PPE part seems to show "We
| can't trust the public, so we should lie to them." It's
| an ends-justify-the-means position, which is a dangerous
| mindset in someone who influences public policy.
|
| If it were just "a few missteps" that's one thing. Making
| the wrong call under uncertainty in a dynamically
| changing situation is excusable. Having the (lack of)
| ethics to think the appropriate response is to lie to the
| public is much less so.
| fastball wrote:
| What made them believe the US public was willing to
| socially distance in the first place? Was that backed up
| with data or was it another baseless assumption?
|
| Stating your rationale doesn't mean your rationale is
| backed up with evidence.
|
| Again, top public health officials need to be held to a
| higher standard. That means understanding how populations
| behave, not just understanding the medicine. That means
| consistent messaging. The message throughout should've
| been:
|
| > This is a dangerous virus, and the best way not to get it
| is to avoid contact with any other people _at all_.
| However, if you absolutely need to come into contact with
| other individuals, risk can be reduced if everyone is
| wearing a mask. Masks are not anywhere near 100% effective,
| but they do help, which is why you should be avoiding human
| contact and only be going out _with a mask_ if absolutely
| necessary.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| This was what they said!
|
| Do you not remember the March lockdowns?
|
| Everyone was saying that except Trump and the people in
| the Administration whose mouths he taped shut, next
| thought he'd look bad if a pandemic existed so he said
| things like "there's a dozen cases now, they'll be none
| soon; this will be over by Easter". Then when he was
| briefly reined in, we had a belated national effort to
| lockdown with "30 days to stop the spread".
| brandmeyer wrote:
| > What made them believe the US public was willing to
| socially distance in the first place? Was that backed up
| with data or was it another baseless assumption?
|
| Maybe all of the other examples of Americans coming
| together against a common threat from the last couple of
| centuries?
|
| The messaging wasn't consistent. The POTUS ranted and
| raved on Twitter ad nausium about how its all a hoax.
| meroes wrote:
| Like the 3 waves of the Spanish Flu?
| simonh wrote:
| In the early months of the outbreak there was almost no
| evidence, and yet we reasonably expected the experts to
| give their best shot at an answer. They looked at the
| probabilities as best they could estimate them from the
| characteristics of similar diseases, that's all the
| evidence they had at the time, and updated their guidance
| as they got more data.
|
| The problem has always been that this disease is very
| unusual in many different ways. This has quite
| understandably caused many best efforts at estimating
| it's behaviour to turn out to be wrong.
| fastball wrote:
| It's really not enough though. Populations (and arguably
| esp. the American population) are not automatons that you
| can just direct and they will follow orders when you
| first tell them to go left and then soon after tell
| "oops, actually you should've gone right".
|
| Messaging needs to be consistent and err on the side of
| caution... this was the exact opposite of both of those
| things.
|
| SARS-CoV-2 is actually not that unusual - the mRNA COVID
| vaccines that have been developed are based on the spike
| protein that is common to all "coronaviruses" (hence the
| name) and was previously isolated from SARS-CoV-1 (i.e.
| SARS). At the very least we knew it was a coronavirus
| early on, so there is no reason you _wouldn 't_ assume it
| was respiratory in nature, just like SARS was.
| simonh wrote:
| We knew it was respiratory right from the start, but that
| doesn't mean the virus load on small droplets is enough
| to cause transmission. There's an awful lot more to it
| than that. As for credibility, suppose they had
| recommended everyone wear masks and it turned out to have
| no appreciable effect. What consequences would that have
| had, especially amongst those claiming the whole thing
| was a scare?
| tertius wrote:
| PPE was recommended for people dealing with Covid
| positive.
|
| Fauci lied (and admitted to it) that masks weren't
| effective and suggested that the average person should
| not wear them.
|
| To be fair, I heard the whole medical community here (I'm
| in one of the largest medical centers in the world) laugh
| and scoff at normal people wearing masks (because they
| weren't trained and it isn't effective).
|
| And now we have no N95 for the general public and idiotic
| cloth masks (that don't work).
|
| So it turns out they weren't far off I their scoffing...
| But for the wrong reasons.
|
| Now we see them (and other anto-science) normals flip and
| ignore the data on bad masks. "Something is better than
| nothing". False sense of security and just more lies and
| moral superiority.
| varjag wrote:
| No, masks were mandated for health personnel dealing with
| COVID from day one. It was simply a lot of bad
| faith/ascientific messaging by WHO and national
| authorities early on.
|
| This also to a large extent fuelled the anti-makser
| movement you have trouble reigning in now. Absolutely
| moronic.
| pell wrote:
| The anti-masker movement would have happened anyway.
| There's no logical consistency there which is very
| apparent when you listen to their "arguments".
| varjag wrote:
| It would have certainly happened. It could also never
| have reached such a magnitude had health authorities not
| proclaimed for 3 months that masks are the new
| facehuggers.
| tertius wrote:
| Yes, except Fauci was against masks because of fake
| science, I mean because of supply. I.e He lied. (And has
| admitted it was because of supply).
|
| https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-
| dire...
|
| And most anti-maskers are against it because of
| government overreach. Unrelated to science.
|
| A third party has emerged. The "we'll believe and parrot
| anything because it's what we're told".
|
| They act in the following realm (whether they are aware
| or not): Cotton/cloth masks don't work. But it qualifies
| as a mask so checkbox! Moral superiority is on my side
| whether science is or not doesn't matter.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > it was just an incorrect assumption based on nothing (or
| worse an outright lie based on a desire to "preserve supply",
| as this was known to be a respiratory virus well before his
| statement)
|
| Do you have have any evidence of this?
| tertius wrote:
| Here: https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-
| changing-dire...
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Fauci was obviously lying. Masks are and were well
| understood to be useful in mitigating the spread of
| airborne contagions. There is lots of public research
| confirming this. Here are a couple examples:
|
| 1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24229526/ - this is a
| paper from 2013 testing the efficacy of homemade masks
| versus surgical masks finding that both have some effect
| but surgical masks are better. If you look under "similar
| articles" you'll find 4 there about masks reducing the
| spread of airborne viruses from before 2020.
|
| 2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20584862/ - demonstrates
| 2010 study showing the strong effect of N95s against small
| particles in the breath (on which the virus is borne) and
| comparing it to homemade masks. Concludes homemade masks
| would offer marginal protection. Again, in similar articles
| you'll see another three from before 2020 on the efficacy
| of masks.
|
| Masks were well and widely known to be useful at slowing
| the spread of airborne contagions - especially N95 masks.
| People knew homemade masks had some effect too.
|
| There was probably good reason to want to save N95's for
| medical professionals. There was no reason to say masks
| weren't helpful for the general public though, that was an
| absolute lie. Fauci and others had all the information they
| needed at the start of the pandemic and could have said
| "Masks are useful, that's why we need the best masks for
| our medical workers. We've put together information on how
| you can make homemade masks that are X% effective and what
| you can buy and use."
| whiddershins wrote:
| Fauci said plainly in an interview that he lied about masks, in
| an attempt to save them for front line workers, so that's a
| questionable analogy.
| somebeaver wrote:
| Integrity starts by verifying your sources before publishing
| things as facts to millions of listeners.
| DaniloDias wrote:
| The New York Times has thoroughly established their bona fides
| as an unreliable waste of time. I love it when people tell me
| they read the times. This saves me time evaluating their
| skepticism and attachment to reason.
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _This is akin to Fauci saying he didn 't think we should be
| wearing masks, and changing his mind as more data came in._
|
| This is technically true, but doesn't convey well that it was
| quite clear that N95 masks worked well, and he suggested they
| didn't work because they were in short supply and he wanted to
| preserve the ability of medical personnel to use them, not
| because there wasn't data that they worked. The data that came
| in were about cloth masks also being largely effective, thereby
| alleviating worries about a lasting shortage. Before that
| became apparent, Fauci was forced to choose between an
| immediate shortage of masks for hospital workers, and long-term
| credibility if such a situation arises again.
| bumby wrote:
| If that's the case, I think he miscalculated. The damage from
| losing trust in the government has the potential for causing
| more damage than a temporary shortage of N95 masks
| seventytwo wrote:
| It IS the case, and to be clear, it wasn't just Fauci. It
| was the entire government and CDC.
|
| Because, for some reason, the US didn't take the threat of
| COVID seriously until three months after it was discovered.
| rtx wrote:
| CDC is respected worldwide. Their recommendations had far
| reaching effect.
| dmosley wrote:
| "This is akin to Fauci saying he didn't think we should be
| wearing masks, and changing his mind as more data came in."
|
| Only that's not what happened. This is a bad analogy, or a good
| one depending on how you view the overt false narrative-
| creation of much of today's media. Fauci didn't "change his
| mind" with more evidence. He readily admits to overtly lying
| because he made a determination that some lives were more
| valuable than others. That. Is. Frightening.
|
| This isn't intended to be a political statement, simply a fact
| that you are memory-holing.
| [deleted]
| benzible wrote:
| Bad analogy. From all indications, Fauci said what he said in
| good faith whereas Callimachi seems to have been desperate to
| confirm that her source was credible in the face of a
| preponderance of evidence that he was not [1]:
|
| > The assignment, Mr. Flood recalled thinking, was both
| hopeless and quite strange in its specificity [...] Ms.
| Callimachi was singularly focused. "She only wanted things that
| very narrowly supported this kid in Canada's wild stories," he
| told me in a phone interview.
|
| > Mr. Flood didn't know it at the time, but he was part of a
| frantic effort at The New York Times to salvage the high-
| profile project the paper had just announced.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/business/media/new-
| york-t...
| Defenestresque wrote:
| The story (by a fellow Times writer) you linked is not only
| fascinating but provides a lot of context for Callimachi's
| investigation.
|
| I think it does lend some credence to the claims that she was
| a reporter trying to massage the facts to fit a preconceived
| narrative.
| slg wrote:
| >Wanting people to never make [errors] 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.
|
| This isn't specific to this story, but it is truly bizarre that
| changing your opinions or beliefs based on new information is
| viewed as a negative trait by modern American society,
| especially in politics.
| disown wrote:
| > We should be praising the Times for having the courage and
| integrity for alling out their own errors
|
| Hilarious. I predicted "we should be praising them for
| 'admitting' their mistakes" was going to be the top comment.
| And here we are.
|
| I bet you don't feel the same way about fox news or alex jones.
|
| > This is akin to Fauci saying he didn't think we should be
| wearing masks, and changing his mind as more data came in.
|
| It wasn't more data. It was politic pressure.
|
| > Wanting people to never make them is impossible
|
| Stop building up a straw man. Nobody is criticizing the NYTimes
| for not being perfect. People criticize NYTimes for being state
| propaganda. You know they spread pro-war propaganda and then
| "oops, we were wrong". Now praise us for admitting we were
| wrong bullshit. "Oops, our intentional lies/propaganda led to
| millions of dead men, women and children. But at least we are
| man enough to admit it" schtick that the dumb masses love.
| Clubber wrote:
| >This is akin to Fauci saying he didn't think we should be
| wearing masks, and changing his mind as more data came in.
|
| From what I understand he intentionally lied to the public
| because he wanted front line workers to get them first. This
| was doing the toilet paper panic. I believe he expressed this
| himself in an interview.
|
| https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...
|
| "He also acknowledged that masks were initially not recommended
| to the general public so that first responders wouldn't feel
| the strain of a shortage of PPE."
| garyrob wrote:
| Some people here are saying they shouldn't be praised for the
| retraction because retracting an error is merely doing what a
| publication should do. This is wrongheaded, because it ignores
| the fact that in the actual world in which we actually live,
| rather than a fantasy world that we would all like to live in,
| it's a rarity. We need much more of it than we have. Punishing
| the Times at the moment they do good by issuing a retraction
| will just encourage more publications to be in the camp that do
| not admit error. The cost of admitting error will be seen as
| too high.
|
| That isn't to say that the Times shouldn't be held to account
| when errors are found by others. It should, and so should every
| other publication. But when they find and retract their own
| errors, it is absolutely wrong to punish them at that moment.
| julianmarq wrote:
| > That isn't to say that the Times shouldn't be held to
| account when errors are found by others. It should
|
| But that's exactly what happened here. It wasn't the NYT who
| found the errors, unless I misread TFA.
|
| So, in your "not to say"... That's exactly what you seem to
| be saying.
| vl wrote:
| > Some people here are saying they shouldn't be praised for
| the retraction because retracting an error is merely doing
| what a publication should do.
|
| We should be praising five-year-olds for brushing their
| teeth, but from adults we expect it by default. And while NYT
| went down in quality in the last few years, let's not treat
| it as if it is a five-year-old.
| kergonath wrote:
| They are still better than most of their competition, even
| the non-lunatic ones like Bloomberg or Forbes. We should
| praise the system when it works, when you have a systemic
| failure it's too late.
| [deleted]
| kenjackson wrote:
| 100% agree. We are in this cultural state that it is better to
| dig in your heels on something wrong than to say, hey, I made a
| mistake. This is my new take based on new data."
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| >This is akin to Fauci saying he didn't think we should be
| wearing masks, and changing his mind as more data came in.
|
| Dr. Fauci works for a public health organization and nytimes is
| a for profit exchange listed company. So this comparison not
| fair.
|
| The way I remember the mask debate is in March 2020 there was a
| shortage of PPE and health workers were in great need of masks.
| To avoid a mad rush of people hoarding masks just like they
| hoarded toilet paper, the Coronavirus Task Force was
| emphasising social distancing, hand washing more than wearing
| masks.
|
| Now, the Caliphate story was outed as a lie by Canadian
| authorities. The nytimes did not verify their sources, they
| were caught lying which is why they had to retract their story.
|
| This is a big difference.
| rtx wrote:
| Do imagine number of deaths Fauci caused. We wouldn't have
| been in this situation with promotion of masks. Even a cloth
| over the face helps.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _We should be praising the Times for having the courage and
| integrity for calling out their own errors, which many
| publications wouldn 't do_
|
| It's always fun to watch the tech bubble jump ugly on
| traditional media when it falters. Meanwhile, the front page of
| HN is full of Microsoft getting hacked by the Russians and
| Facebook pretending it exists to benefit society and democracy.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Oh come on. You can't just hide behind "narrative tension" and
| problematizing the story when you're putting out false
| information that _should_ have been fact checked more
| aggressively.
|
| When it first began to come to light that the subject was
| likely lying, the creator of the podcast actually said that he
| was likely telling the truth and it was instead the Canadian
| police that were incompetent because they couldn't "prove he'd
| gone to Syria" [0].
|
| They were pretty clear they thought it was a true story. I
| don't think adding some mild disclaimers once it starts coming
| to light that the story is not true abdicates them from
| responsibility for what they put out there.
|
| Even at the time, NYT bureau chiefs (ie. experienced war
| reporters) were uneasy about the nature of the podcast.
| Absolutely the Times should be praised for calling out their
| own errors, but it is definitely embarrassing and (in my
| opinion) should be career-ending or damaging for the architect
| of the podcast. She _wanted_ it to be true, so she didn 't dig.
|
| [0]: https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1309620500176556032
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > This is akin to Fauci saying he didn't think we should be
| wearing masks, and changing his mind as more data came in.
|
| Fauci has said that he deliberately lied to people because he
| was afraid masks would be in short supply.
| benzible wrote:
| Show me where he's admitted to "deliberately lying". In every
| interview I've seen he's said the opposite, e.g. [1]
|
| > "I don't regret anything I said then because in the context
| of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told
| in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem
| with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who
| are putting themselves in harm's way every day to take care
| of sick people," Fauci told O'Donnell.
|
| > "When it became clear that the infection could be spread by
| asymptomatic carriers who don't know they're infected, that
| made it very clear that we had to strongly recommend masks,"
| he said.
|
| > "And also, it soon became clear that we had enough
| protective equipment and that cloth masks and homemade masks
| were as good as masks that you would buy from surgical supply
| stores," Fauci added. "So in the context of when we were not
| strongly recommending it, it was the correct thing."
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-doesnt-regret-
| advising...
| fsagx wrote:
| I think this may be the interview where people in the "he
| lied" camp may be referencing:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XHC5Kxxv_w
|
| "...when people were saying you don't really need to wear a
| mask well the reason for that is that we were concerned the
| public health community and many people were saying this
| were concerned that it was at a time when personal
| protective equipment including the N95 masks and the
| surgical masks were in very short supply and we wanted to
| make sure that the people namely the health care workers
| who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm ways to
| take care of people who you know are infected with the
| corona virus and the danger of them getting infected we did
| not want them to be without the equipment that they needed
| so there was not enthusiasm about going out and everybody
| buying a mask or getting a mask we were afraid that that
| would deter away and the people who really needed it"
| rhizome wrote:
| This explains it clearly:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/10/20/is-
| trum...
| themgt wrote:
| It's frankly worse because he won't even admit he was
| lying. We knew about asymptomatic spread back in January
| and he's mischaracterizing his own "masks don't work"
| message. It just further erodes any reason to trust him.
|
| _" Right now in the United States, people should not be
| walking around with masks"
|
| "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When
| you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might
| make people feel a little bit better and it might even
| block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect
| protection that people think that it is. And, often, there
| are unintended consequences -- people keep fiddling with
| the mask and they keep touching their face."_ - Dr Fauci,
| March 8th 2020
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI
| rhizome wrote:
| > _It 's frankly worse because he won't even admit he was
| lying_
|
| Ah, the old classic. Should we start by cutting off a
| pinky? Or maybe bamboo splinters, for an international
| flavor?
|
| He has been clear that he was speaking before
| transmissibility was known. First there was "no reason,"
| then there was a reason. It's not hard, if you're not
| trying to intentionally misrepresent his words for some
| reason.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| That's my biggest issue with stories like these.
|
| Some news sources call out when they make mistakes and own up
| to them. And they get piled on for being wrong.
|
| Other news sources (ahem...) say misleading stuff frequently
| and never correct it, never retract it and continue to mislead
| their audience.
|
| This whole concept of pile one because someone admitted their
| wrong has to be the least healthy event I've ever seen. And yet
| instead of it going down as upholding editorial standards, it
| will be a case of "see they're wrong, don't trust them".
|
| As an example, a significant portion of an American political
| party spent years believing (still believe last I checked) a
| former US president was born in Kenya.
| kergonath wrote:
| Yes, it takes courage to admit you were wrong in front of a
| global audience. I blame them for not having the proper fact-
| checking procedures in place for the podcast, but I applaud
| them for owning this and for their apparent willingness to
| learn from this.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I remember this, too, and it's the second part I take issue
| with. A judgment call of "likely enough true" when the reality
| is "entirely fictional" points, in my opinion, to either a lack
| of judgment, or a lack of journalistic ethics. As others have
| pointed out, very basic fact-checking was all that was needed
| to figure out this guy was a complete fraud.
|
| We should not be praising the New York Times for letting its
| standards slip because the story was so cool, then eventually -
| years later! - realizing they'd let them slip _a little too
| much_ and half-heartedly apologizing.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| What was half hearted about the apology?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Callimachi's apology on Twitter[1] is itself okay, I think.
| It's the NYT article[2] that I read as weirdly
| congratulatory/"look how committed to journalism we are!"
| while discussing a fairly massive journalistic failure.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1339956839082037250
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/business/media/new-
| york-t...
| bumby wrote:
| What's your opinion on their incentives for letting that
| quality control slip? The need for sexy digital content to
| remain relevant? Cost-cutting to remain competitive? A change
| in identity from "news" to "entertainment"? Something else?
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| Callimachi was an absolute rockstar at the paper. She had
| been nominated for multiple Pulitzer Prizes and this,
| amongst other things, would lead to another nom. I suspect
| there was a deference to a veteran reporter at the top of
| her game, a feeling of sunk cost and risk analysis that
| said "this is so good that we have to publish it".
|
| I think it was a case of the NYT quite openly deluding
| themselves.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| I don't know exactly what combination of factors have led
| to the decline in reliability of the NY Times, but it's
| been very noticeable, particularly since Trump was elected.
|
| A year ago, Slate published a transcript of an all-hands
| meeting, which gives some insight into the thinking of
| people at the paper.[1] One of the things the executive
| editor, Dean Baquet, says in the transcript is that the NY
| Times is going to try to find a racial angle to as much of
| its coverage as possible. To me, it looks like the NY Times
| is trying to rebrand itself.
|
| Other people here have mentioned the 1619 Project, which is
| a good example of how brand has undermined reliability. The
| project made some sweeping claims about American history
| that were clearly wrong on a basic factual level. Some of
| the most famous historians who study the periods in
| question objected, but were more or less brushed off by the
| Times. This includes historians whom, not so long ago, the
| NY Times lavished praise upon in its book reviews. But just
| a few years later, the NY Times is dismissing them and
| backing its own shoddy - but heavily advertised (they even
| made an Academy Awards commercial for it [2]) - historical
| articles.
|
| 1. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/new-york-
| times-m...
|
| 2. https://youtu.be/G1imfEXKaeM
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Reading the slate article, I cannot imagine what
| contortions your mind goes through to arrive at the
| characterisation you're offering here.
|
| First of all, the whole article is about the editor-in-
| chief explaining why they cannot and will not consider
| themselves as the "Anti-Trump" paper, and how they'll
| teach their readers to live with the fact that Trump was
| elected (once).
|
| As to "find a racial angle to as much as possible", I
| believe you're referring to the following:
|
| _As Audra Burch said when I talked to her this weekend,
| this one is a story about what it means to be an American
| in 2019. It is a story that requires deep investigation
| into people who peddle hatred, but it is also a story
| that requires imaginative use of all our muscles to write
| about race and class in a deeper way than we have in
| years. In the coming weeks, we'll be assigning some new
| people to politics who can offer different ways of
| looking at the world. We'll also ask reporters to write
| more deeply about the country, race, and other divisions.
| I really want your help in navigating this story._
|
| To interpret "Us[ing] all our muscle" as "doing nothing
| else" or "pushing it into everything:" takes a strong
| mixture of motivated reasoning and bad faith.
|
| First, he mentions _class_ along with _race_ , so the
| focus is already split in two.
|
| Then, he specifies what is meant by "all our muscle":
| reassigning some talent with different perspectives to
| the politics beat, and asking others to "write more
| deeply" about not just race but _country, race, and other
| divisions_.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| It doesn't take any contortions to see. Just read what
| Baquet said:
|
| > And I do think that race and understanding of race
| should be a part of how we cover the American story.
| Sometimes news organizations sort of forget that in the
| moment. But of course it should be. I mean, one reason we
| all signed off on the 1619 Project and made it so
| ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think
| a little bit more like that. Race in the next year--and I
| think this is, to be frank, what I would hope you come
| away from this discussion with--race in the next year is
| going to be a huge part of the American story. And I
| mean, race in terms of not only African Americans and
| their relationship with Donald Trump, but Latinos and
| immigration. And I think that one of the things I would
| love to come out of this with is for people to feel very
| comfortable coming to me and saying, here's how I would
| like you to consider telling that story.
|
| Anyone who's read the NY Times regularly over the years
| has noticed this shift. Zach Goldberg has put numbers to
| the phenomenon,[1] but the trends are so large that you
| don't need a detailed statistical analysis to notice
| them, as a casual reader of the newspaper.
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/ZachG932/status/113344094520106188
| 8?s=20
| medium_burrito wrote:
| I would say there's been a decline in American media
| since Bush the younger. As a kid the NYT and WSJ were
| both quite good. The WSJ sucks off the Republican party
| and the NYT publishes a bunch of crap. Neither really
| gets to the root of problems in the country.
|
| For an internal publication the economist has definitely
| slipped. FT under Japanese ownership meanwhile is still
| quite solid.
| paganel wrote:
| > For an internal publication the economist has
| definitely slipped. FT under Japanese ownership meanwhile
| is still quite solid.
|
| Glad that some other HN-er has also noticed that. I've
| been an Economist reader for about 15 years now, and
| lately (the last 3-4 years, maybe?) I've started to
| notice that slippage you mention.
|
| Among the most obvious cases for me was that "Corbyn as
| Lenin" front-page [1], which was absolutely disgraceful
| (if it matters I'm not an UK citizen and I don't
| particularly fancy Corbyn nor his policies), plus many of
| their Trump articles have been also pretty disgraceful,
| at least according to the Economist standards (the comic
| from one of the latest issues sends Trump directly to the
| garbage bin? like, what the hell is that?).
|
| For comparison, I find the FT quite unchanged, and that's
| good.
|
| [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CPHN3Z5WIAANXkw.png
| tertius wrote:
| As a kid I couldn't see the political motivations and BS
| the media was peddling. Rose-tinted corneas slowly fading
| over time the more I could argue and see nuance.
| markdown wrote:
| That's interesting. Which historical fact from the 1619
| Project do you dispute?
| rayiner wrote:
| The 1619 project has walked back the central claim of the
| lead essay: https://quillette.com/2020/09/19/down-
| the-1619-projects-memo...
|
| The original version of the lead essay said:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-
| to-th...
|
| > one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to
| declare their independence from Britain was because they
| wanted to protect the institution of slavery
|
| The current version adds two key words that totally
| change the meaning: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2
| 019/08/14/magazine/blac...
|
| > _one of_ the primary reasons _some of_ the colonists
| decided to declare their independence from Britain was
| because they wanted to protect the institution of
| slavery.
|
| These two statements are totally different. "One of the
| primary things the Democrats want is to defund the
| police" is obviously not true. "One of the primary things
| _some of_ the Democrats want is to defund the police" is
| obviously true, but means something totally different.
|
| The 1619 Project's hit piece on capitalism was so bad
| that Jacobin had to step in with a correction piece:
| https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-
| american-c...
|
| > Desmond begins his article by drawing on the Harvard
| historian Sven Beckert who argues that "it was on the
| back of cotton, and thus on the backs of slaves, that the
| U.S. economy ascended in the world." Yet Desmond neglects
| to mention that this claim has been widely rejected by
| specialists in the economic history of slavery.
|
| The Jacobin piece even discusses better arguments the NYT
| could have made, such as slavery being a reason for the
| US's particularly strong protection of private property.
| That's debatable, but at least it's within the realm of
| the mainstream thought among historians.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| The central claim of the lead essay seems to be that
| "[The US's] founding ideals were false when they were
| written". Perhaps you mean "a" central claim?
| rayiner wrote:
| Maybe the "central novel claim" of the essay. All
| schoolchildren know Jefferson was being a hypocrite in
| declaring "all men are created equal" while owning other
| people. That was taught to us when I was in school in
| Virginia, a curriculum that otherwise venerated
| Jefferson. The idea that the founders were primarily
| motivated to break from Britain to protect slavery is
| what attracted so much attention, because it was novel.
| Unfortunately, it was novel because most historians don't
| think that's true.
|
| The 1619 Project is an important exercise that suffers
| for making bombastic claims it can't prove. For example:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/magazine/1619-project-
| liv...
|
| > The goal of the project is to deepen understanding of
| American history (and the American present) by proposing
| a new point of origin for our national story. In the days
| and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating
| that _nearly everything that has made America exceptional
| grew out of slavery._
|
| Deepening the understanding of American history is good.
| But claiming that "nearly everything that has made
| America exceptional grew out of slavery" is demagoguery.
| America didn't rebuild Europe after WWII because of
| slavery. It didn't become the most successful immigrant
| country in the world because of slavery. Silicon Valley,
| the moon landing, and our raft of Nobel Laureates didn't
| grow out of slavery.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The claim that got them the most in trouble with
| historians was this:
|
| > one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to
| declare their independence from Britain was because they
| wanted to protect the institution of slavery
|
| Gordon Wood responded,
|
| > "I don't know of any colonist who said that they wanted
| independence in order to preserve their slaves."
|
| Gordon Wood is known as _the_ expert on colonial
| pamphlets and ideology more generally during the
| Revolutionary era, so him saying this carries a lot of
| weight. Gordon Wood and a bunch of other very well known
| historians wrote to the NY Times to ask for corrections.
| The editor of the magazine, Jake Silverstein, published
| their letter next to his rebuttal, in which he argued
| that defending slavery was indeed a cause of the
| revolution.[1] What he didn 't say was that the NY Time's
| own fact checker had objected to the claim. That only
| came out later.[2] The embarrassment of that revelation
| finally caused the NY Times to slightly weaken - but not
| entirely drop - its claim about the revolution.
|
| The claim about the revolution caused the most
| controversy, because it has huge consequences for how one
| interprets American history, but it was hardly the only
| false or highly questionable claim. A few others:
|
| * The US has worse labor protections than Brazil because
| of the US' history of slavery (Brazil was the largest
| slave nation in modern history, and abolished slavery
| well after the US did).
|
| * Presenting New Orleans as the financial capital of the
| antebellum US (NY city alone had nearly as much banking
| capital as the entire South, and far more than New
| Orleans).
|
| * Claiming that double-entry bookkeeping was invented on
| Southern plantations (that would be a surprise to Luca
| Pacioli, the 15th-Century Florentine mathematician who
| wrote a treatise on double-entry bookkeeping).
|
| Just fundamentally, I would tell anyone who doesn't
| already know the history well not to try to learn it from
| the 1619 Project, because you really can't trust any of
| the factual claims in the project. People would be much
| better served by reading more standard historical works
| (including some of the very accessible works written by
| critics of the 1619 Project that deal with slavery -
| James Oakes and James McPherson come to mind).
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-
| respond-to-th...
|
| 2. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619
| -proje...
| camelite wrote:
| The fact-checker the Times hired zeroed in[1] on this
| claim (though there were others of import):
|
| >At one point, she sent me this assertion: "One critical
| reason that the colonists declared their independence
| from Britain was because they wanted to protect the
| institution of slavery in the colonies, which had
| produced tremendous wealth. At the time there were
| growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British
| Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of
| colonies in both North and South."
|
| >I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was
| certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the
| protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the
| 13 Colonies went to war.
|
| [1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/161
| 9-proje...
| bumby wrote:
| (It's odd to me that your post simply requesting
| clarification is being downvoted)
|
| I'm not the OP and just starting to dig into the 1619
| project so take this with a grain of salt. There's a few
| parts that seem to extrapolate too far, or view
| everything from a pre-determined lens of race to chose
| their narrative.
|
| One example is the claim that the U.S.'s lack of
| universal healthcare is the result of racism. The project
| goes on to detail how the Freedman's Bureau (which
| provided healthcare to former slaves) was prematurely
| closed, making the case it was because "legislators
| argued that free assistance of any kind would breed
| dependence and that when it came to black infirmity, hard
| labor was a better salve than white medicine."
|
| I'm sure there were legislators that took that view, but
| other sources point out the organization was only
| intended to last for one year after the Civil War. When
| an extension was proposed, the main objections were that
| it was too expensive and would infringe on States rights.
| (Unironically, some of the same arguments used today).
|
| Race is certainly part of the fabric of the nation's
| history and colors many of the problems faced, but I'm
| not sure race can be used as the root cause of every
| malaise as the project seems to allude.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yep I think the project suffers from their own focus on
| racism has made them as biased as their competition. It's
| one thing to point out the influence and connections to
| racism/slavery/people of color on American history and
| society but it's incorrect to include it at the top of
| the food chain as the primary motivator of everything
| down through American history. That's just a naive and
| lazy argument. I love when people point out the hypocrisy
| of those who want to sweep such topics under the rug, but
| to consider them as the primary reason this country
| exists and why we are the way we are is ludicrous.
| fastball wrote:
| All of the above? Throw in corrupted management that
| doesn't realize you can't coast on an old reputation
| forever, and if you keep letting quality slide eventually
| there will be a watershed moment.
|
| As an aside, I think you can see this happening in
| California right now. California (and more specifically SF)
| has been winning for so long that now public officials have
| drunk their own cool-aid and seem to think Cali/SF is some
| sort of magic place and it's all the things they've done
| which have made it tech mecca. Except probably it's not,
| and that will become obvious as everyone slowly wakes up to
| that.
| kergonath wrote:
| The podcast was an experiment at the time, and the people
| making it were outside the structure in which the print
| journalists were operating. The story was sexy, guard rails
| were not entirely in place, and everyone was enthusiastic
| about making the podcast so they overlook details they
| shouldn't have. They touch upon this here:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/world/middleeast/calipha
| t...
| alisonkisk wrote:
| A podcast has a written script just like a story in the
| paper. NYT has editors and fact checkers.
|
| There's no excuse for this; the organization failed to
| justify its claim to be the "paper of record".
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, but from what I heard from my parents (who are ex-
| editor of major publications) there was a _lot_ of
| skepticism from bureau chiefs on the war beat. The NYT is
| a diverse organization and there are factions.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I don't think it needs that much explanation. The New York
| Times and other institutional press have often done this
| same thing. Which is, they report from "credible" sources
| without physical evidence of any kind. A source is
| considered credible by how much clout it carries with other
| major institutions or because of a history of trust. i.e.
| Even though intelligence and the military get things wrong
| all the time even to the point of outright lying, they are
| "credible".
|
| This has lead them astray many times in much more
| significant matters. Once reported, they treat contrary
| evidence as innuendo in all but the most severe cases of
| contrary evidence. I think they only bothered with a
| significant retraction effort here because the evidence of
| their error was so compelling and public.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| I noticed a sort of almost prurient interest in salacious
| details about ISIS among liberals around the time the
| podcast came out, so I think that was part of it, they just
| knew something along these lines would be popular and sell.
| (Conservatives may have had much the same interest, I don't
| know, but if they did they weren't going to the NYT to get
| their fix.)
|
| The "ISIS as unconscionable bogeyman" story also helped
| sell the U.S. intervention in Syria, which was an ongoing
| objective on the NYT's part.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| NYT has been a war hawk for both D and R administration
| going back at least to 2000.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Well before 2000, since at least the Gulf War
| balfirevic wrote:
| > A judgment call of "likely enough true" when the reality is
| "entirely fictional" points, in my opinion, to either a lack
| of judgment
|
| Completely justified and reasonable judgement that something
| is "likely to be true" can be sometimes be incorrect because
| that's what the word "likely" means.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I disagree. "Likely" is a probability statement, not an
| escape valve. If I say "it is likely the sky will be purple
| tomorrow", and then it is not, I still must answer: Why did
| I think it was likely? That's a judgment call.
| hitekker wrote:
| > "Likely" is a probability statement, not an escape
| valve.
|
| This is a good warning that we ought to be more mindful
| of.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I would agree if it was a NYT column entirely about him, but
| this was a podcast talking about the ins and out of ISIS and
| exploring the process of investigation. I would argue that
| Chaudhry was just one part of the story, and his purpose was
| actually to show how hard it is to verify facts when it comes
| to ISIS.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _We should be praising the Times for having the courage and
| integrity for calling out their own errors..._
|
| Absolutely -- this is just basic "how humans work". Anyone
| complaining about this positive action (performed with the
| understanding of the PR cost) doesn't understand how to get
| what they purport to want in the world.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| The Times isn't a child in need of operant conditioning;
| you've anthropomorphized a newspaper. But even if we admit
| the logical leap from an organization to the humans which
| collectively direct that organization, we must still contend
| with the fact that _unqualified_ praise will be associated
| with the entire sequence of actions that led to it, rather
| than (perhaps) a single action that was only undertaken after
| making lots of unpraiseworthy actions.
|
| I'm of the opinion that, when it comes to journalism, courage
| and integrity are table stakes. They need not be praised
| because they are expected, and their absence should be
| ruthlessly punished. Even with this premise, one can tolerate
| mistakes and errors without needing to praise non-mistakes
| and non-errors.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I mostly agree, since I think the heart of your statement here
| is the times admitted they made a mistake, and that is good
| behavior. That's dead on.
|
| I disagree a little bit, because I don't think they should be
| praised for acknowledging their mistake and correcting it: I
| think that's the minimum expectation we should have for
| journalists. I agree that it's a sign of integrity
| (professional integrity, specifically) to own your errors, but
| I don't think it's particularly courageous to do it; more that
| the opposite would be cowardly.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| We can do both, praise and criticize. While I agree with your
| statements, they NYT also have another job: Report the news
| accurately. That's why they exist and it's critical to our
| society.
|
| We shouldn't overreact to one error and I think the NY Times is
| generally more reliable than most. A metric for overall
| reliability would be very valuable, especially in the
| disinformation age. That would be an interesting project for a
| leading journalism school. But how to measure it? Omissions,
| including context, are just as significant inaccuracies as
| misstatements (imagine the story 'The U.S. declares war on
| Japan!' without context). How could the study objectively set a
| standard for what facts and context should be included?
| jlarocco wrote:
| > This is akin to Fauci saying he didn't think we should be
| wearing masks, and changing his mind as more data came in.
|
| Those aren't similar situations at all.
|
| Fauci's comments are based on the data that's available at a
| particular time, about an ongoing, evolving situation, so it
| makes sense that his advice will change as the situation
| evolves.
|
| On the other hand, this news story was was about a series of
| events that already happened and were no longer on going. All
| of the facts were out there but the journalists just didn't do
| their research.
|
| So it's great that they're retracting the story, but they never
| should have published it in the first place.
| seventytwo wrote:
| 100% agree.
|
| Wont stop the bad faith actors who love to erode trust in
| reliable media so their own (flawed and dubious) views become
| more credible by comparison.
| dlkinney wrote:
| No, they shouldn't be praised for calling out their own errors
| --let alone be aligned with "courage"--just as one shouldn't
| praise an encyclopedia or scientific journal for correcting
| errors: it's supposed to be de facto matter of course.
|
| The criticisms, however, are against their politically loaded
| decisions to run certain content in the absence of legitimate
| sources of truth. If this were an occasional thing, sure,
| accidents happen. But this has become the modus operandi of
| what once was the paper of record.
|
| Between the absolute backpedaling of the 1619 Project, copious
| amounts of Russian influence narrative, and countless
| "anonymous sources" that turn out to be nobodies or absent
| integrity, the NYT is an embarrassment to journalism.
|
| They do what you described, though: they build in back doors
| into their reporting so they can legitimately claim that they
| weren't "wrong" on a purely logical--but functionally bullsh*t
| --standing.
|
| No, I don't believe they deserve "praise" for "courage and
| integrity", because they've left those--and other markers of
| high character--in the past as they cry their death throes in
| the changing media landscape.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > likely enough true
|
| Is this the standard we want for journalism though? There is so
| much that goes on in the world that doesn't get reported in the
| NYT which is backed by concrete evidence why do we need a
| speculative journalism?
| OneGuy123 wrote:
| I'm suprised why people are still suprised by this.
|
| Has no-one learned by now that you cannot trust _ANYTHING_ that
| the media produces?
| konjin wrote:
| I don't, but I do trust the web of media, once there are
| multiple corroborating reports of the same thing it is vastly
| more likely to be true.
|
| Few people do this because the comforting lies you tell
| yourself fall away rather quickly.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I don't know why you're calling out the media specifically. Are
| the anonymous commentariat, politicians, and random youtubers
| somehow more reliablie?
| kmonsen wrote:
| I don't think this is true at all. I would guess 95% of what is
| in nytimes is true.
|
| Are they always right and never have a political slant , of
| course not.
|
| It is interesting to see that when nytimes do print something
| that is obviously false for political purposes it is usually
| leaving right not left. The most obvious example being the
| build up to the Iraq war.
| vntok wrote:
| > I would guess 95% of what is in nytimes is true.
|
| This is even worse. The most dangerous lie is a lie wrapped
| around a core of truth that entices readers to trust the
| whole package.
| gspr wrote:
| Are you mixing up "it happens that the media is untrustworthy"
| with "nothing the media produces is trustworthy"? If so, may I
| suggest a logic course before venturing forward?
| gotem wrote:
| Could've been avoided if the people in charge knew it was false
| from the beginning.
| ttul wrote:
| Isn't that sort of the whole idea here?
| gthtjtkt wrote:
| That's the point. They had numerous reasons to believe he was
| lying and they chose to ignore them.
|
| Sadly it no longer surprises me to see the NY Times reporting
| _what they want to be true_ rather than reporting the actual
| truth.
| [deleted]
| oftenwrong wrote:
| Text-only version of this article: https://text.npr.org/944594193
| tech-historian wrote:
| Rukmini Callimachi, the "journalist" at the center of this
| podcast series, is essentially Scott Templeton from The Wire.
|
| https://thewire.fandom.com/wiki/Scott_Templeton
| chris_wot wrote:
| The NYT wrote the following about the series:
|
| _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 wrote:
| 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.
| panabee wrote:
| good journalism is not unlike good science. both seek to unearth
| truths.
|
| 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.
| bosswipe wrote:
| Why are some people so obsessed with every little thing that NYT
| gets wrong? It's the same with California, any bit of bad news
| out of California is blown up into a national story.
|
| To me this obsession with NYT and California is obvious
| propaganda. It's what 1984 would call "two minutes hate".
| macinjosh wrote:
| Possibly, and I am just spit ballin' here, it is because to
| some people the ideas brought forth by the NYT and California's
| government generally come with an air of them knowing what is
| best for everyone else, what you should and shouldn't believe,
| and what is and isn't a problem. To many, right or wrong, it
| comes across as judgmental or condemning so they are eager to
| point out any faults.
| ppod wrote:
| 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?
| smabie wrote:
| What kind of obligation? Certainly not a legal obligation,
| which is the only obligation that actually matters.
| salimmadjd wrote:
| Is retracting enough?
|
| 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
| franklampard wrote:
| > they can claim the highest standards of journalism
|
| Just keep these failures in mind any time in the future NYT is
| quoted. They don't deserve
| muglug wrote:
| One reporter's mistakes don't invalidate a whole newsroom.
|
| 99.9% of the time the NYT's scoops are subsequently verified
| by other news organisations in short order.
| sampo wrote:
| Here's a recent example that NYT ended up getting pretty
| wrong: _Finland, 'Prepper Nation of the Nordics,' Isn't
| Worried About Masks_
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/world/europe/coronavirus
| -...
|
| When we (Finland) actually opened the famed stockpiles, we
| found we had protective gear for about next 3 weeks. The
| cited chief executive of Finland's National Emergency
| Supply Agency, Mr. Lounema ended up promptly resigning, and
| the whole case was a big scandal in Finnish news for
| several weeks:
|
| https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/stockpile_boss_resigns_a
| f...
|
| https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000006469197.html
|
| https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11302248
|
| https://suomenkuvalehti.fi/jutut/kotimaa/mielipide-
| kotimaa/v...
| ardit33 wrote:
| They have been doing this over and over a lot about tech
| reporting. Borderline malicious reporting by omitting key
| details to paint whatever narrative they want.
|
| Why? They see tech as a direct competitor and want as much
| smearing as they can.
|
| So, it is not a isolated incident.
| muglug wrote:
| > Why? They see tech as a direct competitor and want as
| much smearing as they can.
|
| That's absolute nonsense. How in the world does the NY
| Times compete directly with Facebook, Google, Spotify
| etc? There's a bit of indirect competition (ad revenue,
| podcast viewership) but nothing direct.
| tehjoker wrote:
| 99.9% of domestic stories that are easier to verify. NYT
| has plenty of wiggle room abroad, especially when the
| domestic audience can't understand the language of the
| region covered.
| elsjaako wrote:
| They put the retraction in the podcast feed, which I'm guessing
| most people who listened to the series are still subscribed to.
| xondono wrote:
| If the podcast stopped posting new episodes, a lot of people
| will miss a new one.
| dmix wrote:
| Most podcast apps stop auto-downloading dead feeds.
| ehsankia wrote:
| They also advertised it in The Daily, one of the most
| popular podcasts around, which is how I heard about it
| since I unsubbed from the Caliphate feed (as it was
| finished).
|
| EDIT: Most charts put it at #2 in US [0].
|
| [0] https://chartable.com/charts/itunes/us-all-podcasts-
| podcasts
|
| EDIT2: They also wrote a full column in the NYT itself.
| disown wrote:
| > Is retracting enough?
|
| 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.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I oftentimes wonder why people want to defend the NYT and the
| only conclusion I can come up with is that they mistakenly
| believe they're part of the elite.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Simple defense mechanism. They were raised in educated
| households where its reporting was considered on
| practically its own epistemological plane of journalism,
| its writing standards a model around which to improve their
| own, and it's just really hard to face the fact that an
| institution you idolized has flaws, because it means you
| have to admit you were fooled.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You wrap yourself up in your conspiracy theories and your
| "real truths" and judge the entirety of journalism to be a
| bad faith operation, that their is no nuance, no good
| individual actors in the system. That's why I downvote
| rants and nonsense.
| cambalache wrote:
| The fact that you are being down-voted just by acknowledging
| something that is not controversial at all, illustrates
| clearly how the elites are winning heavily the battle on the
| narrative of current affairs. The media should not be
| trusted, AT ALL.They have their own interests and agendas ,
| very different, from the ones of a common citizen.Never
| forget that.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| You are right, but what the hell is one to do? There are no
| credible media organizations with the resources of the NYT.
| galimaufry wrote:
| Here's what's on nytimes.come right now:
|
| - UK imposes harsher crackdown in London
|
| - Moderna's vaccine will be shipped next week across the US
|
| - Pompeo says Russia was behind the SolarWinds hack
|
| I'm not going to conclude from this that the UK relaxed its
| lockdown, the vaccine will not be shipped, and Pompeo said
| Russia was not behind the hack.
|
| The happy medium is: know when a newspaper was in a position
| to know the truth and trust them if they were, or if the
| article explains its evidentiary basis in convincing detail.
| 8note wrote:
| I found this to be a good description of what to watch out
| for https://youtu.be/v-8t0EfLzQo
|
| It's not even whether they're telling you a true thing,
| it's the story they tell around it
| seventytwo wrote:
| So you link to Tim Pool?!
|
| Holy agenda pushing...
| tomcam wrote:
| > Holy agenda pushing...
|
| Mind explaining that?
| muglug wrote:
| Tim Pool is a fringe right-wing media figure who has little
| interest in seeking out the truth.
| whitexn--g28h wrote:
| Tim frequently shared stories with no truth to them, eg.
| 2020 Election fraud. He also frequently tells his listeners
| to distrust the "Democrat Media". His arguments would
| typically be considered in bad faith on HN. Linking to
| Timcast from and article about the NYT is definitely
| pushing an agenda.
| cowpig wrote:
| 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.
| danso wrote:
| But generally, news orgs don't commit to doing huge year-long
| projects/investigations into something they know to be fake.
| Or, if they do, the story is about the fakery (and the
| psychology/personality of the person behind it) - it doesn't
| attempt to pass it off as "maybe true".
|
| The average investigative reporter receives tons of bullshit
| or otherwise overhyped leads. It benefits no one to elevate
| each of those into a prestige project.
| cowpig wrote:
| But the reporter believed it was most likely that part of
| the story was true. There was corroboration from sources in
| US and Canadian intelligence saying they believed he was a
| member of ISIS, and the photo he had on his phone that was
| taken in Syria.
|
| In retrospect, they are saying the needle moved from "more
| likely true" to "more likely fabricated."
|
| In any case the story he was telling was believable, and
| painted a realistic picture of what was happening in the
| region.
|
| So it's not nearly so black and white
| will4274 wrote:
| I haven't listened to the podcast.
|
| Can I ask, how would you feel about conspiracy videos doing
| the same thing? Those that present a conspiracy and then show
| a reporter trying to verify the theory that ends with the
| reporter indicating they believe "part of [the] story is
| probably true, but never expresses certainty." I just can't
| help think that if the topic was aliens or 9/11 instead of
| the Caliphate and the author was fox news or reason magazine,
| you'd consider it drivel.
| didibus wrote:
| I can't remember what it was, but I feel I've seen such
| documentaries or podcasts before. As long as it's done in
| good faith, I'm happy about it. Like if you don't get the
| impression they're actually trying to convince you of
| anything, but are more just welcoming you through their own
| process of learning about something and then ending with a
| bit of an ambiguous, well I still don't know for sure one
| way or another, but maybe there is more substance than I
| thought at first.
|
| Edit: I didn't actually listen to Caliphate though, so I
| don't know if it appears done in good faith or not.
| will4274 wrote:
| Well, that's certainly not the way I feel. If aliens
| haven't been visiting humans for years, I don't want to
| watch a video going through the process of learning about
| the possibility that they might have been visiting humans
| for years and then ending a bit ambiguous.
| [deleted]
| rrdharan wrote:
| 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 c __ _f_ *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 wrote:
| 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.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Same here, I'm a paying NYT subscriber, never heard the
| podcast, but I did see the multiple stories of the retraction
| on the front page. I would argue far MORE people heard of the
| retraction than ever listened to the original podcast.
| claudeganon wrote:
| Wait until you hear about what the Times did with their
| reporting on the Iraq War...
| catacombs wrote:
| > Is retracting enough?
|
| No. They need to fire Rukmini. Just because she is considered a
| "superstar" in the newsroom doesn't mean she gets off the hook
| for embarrassing the company with a debunked project.
| didibus wrote:
| That seem ridiculous and unfair. Feels akin to fixing a
| security breach by firing the dev who introduced the
| vulnerability. What they need to do is adopt better processes
| and put mechanism in place for things like that not to happen
| again, no matter who the journalist would be.
| 8note wrote:
| I'm not sure that's the thing they need to do.
|
| What i want is a post mortem. What went wrong in their
| organization that let it through, and what changes are they
| going to make to ensure it doesn't happen again?
| admiralspoo wrote:
| There also ought to be an economic incentive, for example
| refunds to paying readers.
| elliekelly wrote:
| It is interesting to me that (for a podcast at least) there's
| presumably more than enough data available _somewhere_ to
| send a notification of the retraction if NYT was so inclined.
| Surely iTunes, Spotify, etc. could identify the vast majority
| of people who downloaded and listened to these episodes. How
| come my data is only used to target me when it's beneficial
| to these major companies and not when it's beneficial to me?
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| > How come my data is only used to target me when it's
| beneficial to these major companies and not when it's
| beneficial to me?
|
| This is a glib answer, but it's because there's no
| incentive (financial or otherwise) for these companies to
| do that
| meowface wrote:
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| 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.
| DaedPsyker wrote:
| 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.
| TillE wrote:
| "Baquet says the Times did not have evidence Chaudhry had ever
| been to Syria"
|
| How do you fail to do even the most basic fact checking? They've
| clearly learned nothing since Judith Miller.
| Simulacra wrote:
| 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.
| briefcomment wrote:
| The NYT is compromising on comprehensive, un-opinionated,
| fact discovery, and is instead catering to an audience. The
| former makes a news org, and the latter (under the guise of
| reporting) makes for a tabloid. It's hard because there are
| some pieces that are unbiased and thorough, and NYT and their
| supporters can point to those in its defense. But a news org
| should be required to do that with almost 100% consistency.
| Anything less is an entertainment org that is taking
| advantage of being considered a news org.
| ehsankia wrote:
| What do you consider a real newspaper?
| briefcomment wrote:
| I would contend that there aren't really any at the moment.
| There's an opening for comprehensive fact-based reporting
| with a reputation for not taking a side.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| How do the AP and Reuters differ from your description?
| briefcomment wrote:
| I think they're closer, but I believe they leave they're
| not completely comprehensive, meaning some things are
| under investigated.
| jumelles wrote:
| Here's their Corrections section, there are multiple articles
| corrected daily: https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections
| Shivetya wrote:
| 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.
| jakevoytko wrote:
| 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.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| 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.
| spamizbad wrote:
| 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.
| macinjosh wrote:
| But their war reporting staff needs _something_ to do! /s
| admiralspoo wrote:
| 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.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| It does matter. The NY has actually grown its subscriber base
| during the Trump years and remains a major cultural force.
| Witness the immediate take down of Pornhub after a single
| article in the NYT, after conservative activists had spent
| years railing the exact same issue. For better of for worst,
| mostly for worst, the NYT remains a powerful force, long
| after it lost any semblance of journalistic integrity.
| rgovostes wrote:
| > any semblance of journalistic integrity
|
| First sentence of the article:
|
| > The New York Times has retracted the core of its hit 2018
| podcast series Caliphate after an internal review found the
| paper failed to heed red flags
|
| Clearly it would have been better for them to have done
| their jobs correctly in the first place, but in what way
| are they not displaying journalistic integrity in this
| instance? Their retraction of a 2-year-old story was on
| their homepage (below the fold) yesterday.
|
| Mistakes are inevitable (though in this case avoidable).
| Owning up to publishing something erroneous is the way you
| display journalistic integrity. I'll trust what you tell me
| today, if I can trust you to tell me the details you got
| wrong tomorrow.
| vntok wrote:
| > an internal review
|
| Yeah that's their spin on the story, the reality is that
| they got busted though.
| rgovostes wrote:
| Several years ago, Rolling Stone published story about a
| rape that allegedly occurred at a University of Virginia
| fraternity.
|
| It was the Washington Post and not Rolling Stone
| themselves that discovered holes in the story. But
| Rolling Stone owned up to it and engaged the Columbia
| School of Journalism to investigate the lapses in their
| reporting and fact-checking processes, resulting in a
| damning report which RS published in a subsequent issue.
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-
| news/rolling-st...
|
| I don't expect NYT to be perpetually fact checking
| stories after publication, but when they "get busted," I
| absolutely expect them to re-investigate and publish
| their findings.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Rolling Stone absolutely did not "own up to it," they
| repeatedly tried to minimize the damage the article had
| done to the individuals and groups portrayed in it, and
| further, even after the Columbia report, stood by all its
| editors, fact-checkers, and even the writer herself!
|
| A good summary: https://web.archive.org/web/2015041009442
| 9/http://www.bloomb...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Their retraction of a 2-year-old story was on their
| homepage (below the fold) yesterday.
|
| Ultimately, whether she stays on their payroll is the
| decider for me as to whether they have journalistic
| integrity.
|
| I was discussing this with my parents (both former
| editors of major publications) who have had to fire
| people for creating composite characters like this. The
| lack of basic fact checking, followed up by attacking the
| Canadian authorities [0] once it started to come to light
| that the story was untrue is very unsavory. I think this
| should be career-ending.
|
| [0]: https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1309620500176
| 556032
| bigyikes wrote:
| I'm not sure if that take down says more about the NYT or
| the current levels of political polarization.
| jumelles wrote:
| The Times is still pretty much THE newspaper in the US, if
| not the English-speaking world.
| macinjosh wrote:
| I would emphasize NEWSPAPER instead of the 'the'. Not many
| folks reading newspapers these days.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| The NYT is good for crosswords and that's about it.
| dalbasal wrote:
| 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.
| tabbott wrote:
| 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.
| taway21 wrote:
| >> 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
| dalbasal wrote:
| I don't mean "naively" in the "the author is neutral" sense.
|
| I mean that it is not framed like an encyclopedia or
| conventional investigative journalism print. It is framed as
| the story of the investigation. It isn't " _my conclusions
| after investigating this for 2 years_. " This frames has a
| lot of room for shades of uncertainty than conventional ones.
|
| In that sense, this is actually a better
|
| Meanwhile, I don't think she has any obligation to
| investigate terrorism in other religious communities at all.
| The editor might have an obligation similar to do that,
| depending on newsworthiness. But I don't see how it applies
| here anyway. Once ISIS/L established territory in Syria they
| became the most newsworthy topic of the decade. Ot's normal
| that careers are made on the biggest story of a decade.
|
| I'm not saying she has no biases. Journalists have biases.
| Political biases, biases to certain archetypal narratives,
| the importance or truth of their own story, etc. But, moreso
| than most, Caliphate did portray a detail rich picture. You
| can make your own judgements with facts she provides, even if
| they are different to hers. That's honest journalism.
|
| >>Her association with the NYT is also shameful, because she
| is more Fox News quality w/r/t balance
|
| I guess this is the reason I wrote the comment originally.
| It's disingenuous to portray this as a low watermark for NYT
| (or most other big newsorgs). There are many worse offences.
|
| Since you are comparing to fox news and balance, I assume you
| are comparing to "opinion reporting," and such. If we include
| that, then half the ship is under water. Opinion writing is
| outside of the journalistic standards allegedly violated
| here. But by layman standards, Callimachi is _far_ more
| honest and balanced than any opinion at NYT... and obviously
| cable news stuff.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [0]: https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1309620500176556032
| ehsankia wrote:
| > The fact that they kept going after this (and didn't
| investigate further) is when you start having serious issues
|
| Honestly, the biggest error they mentioned in the correction
| in my opinion was with the photos. Turns out they ended up
| reverse image searching some of the photos he had posted, and
| many of them were stolen from other sources. That right there
| would've been another huge red flag.
| ghaff wrote:
| Just by it happening, it's already career-limiting. I'm not
| sure every even serious screw up needs to result in a firing
| squad. That said, this is certainly in the category of things
| that can certainly end up that way at a major news org. See
| also Rathergate.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Just by it happening, it's already career-limiting
|
| Oh absolutely - and I don't think she shouldn't necessarily
| be a journalist/storyteller anymore (clearly has somewhat
| of a knack for it) but not at a NYT/Wapo/WSJ.
| ghaff wrote:
| For all the heat those pubs get, my personal experience
| with them is that they're pretty meticulous with their
| reporting. (Which of course doesn't mean they don't
| sometimes miss the bigger picture even if their facts as
| reported are correct.)
|
| I had a total nothingburger quote in the WSJ a bit back
| and the whole process took 2 phone discussions, some back
| and forth messaging, and a fact check on email
| (presumably to put on record). For something that was
| completely banal.
| paganel wrote:
| As other people have said, she'll probably fail upwards.
| Others in the past have tried to stop her from, well, lying,
| and have failed, even more so, those people have seen their
| career negatively affected by that. Via /r/syriancivilwar/
| I've come across this article from 2018 [1] which detailed
| how the former NYTimes Baghdad correspondent Margaret Coker
| lost her job because she had tried to stop Callimachi.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-
| wemple/wp/2018/10/...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Ah yes, my parents (who are former national editors) had
| told me about this sort of discontent among bureau chiefs
| around her, although they didn't name the particular names.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Maybe I came off as more definitive than I intended. I agree
| with the retraction. It was required, but it's really more of
| a follow-on than a retraction. An apology to Canadian police
| is more necessary, probably. That's a no-fault too though, in
| my estimation. They had to keep quiet while investigating,
| and temporarily absorb criticism. That's a hazard of the job
| though.
|
| I see nothing wrong with this tweet, never mind "career-
| ending."
|
| _" 1. Big news out of Canada: Abu Huzayfah has been arrested
| on a terrorist "hoax" charge. The narrative tension of our
| podcast "Caliphate" is the question of whether his account is
| true. In Chapter 6 we explain the conflicting strands of his
| story, and what we can and can't confirm"_
|
| Shades of uncertainty. This is honest journalism. Whether or
| not she felt overconfident in any given detail or narrative,
| the we got to hear the account, suspicions, reasons to
| dismiss or believe the source (chaudhry). I don't think
| anyone reasonably concludes that his account is mostly honest
| or accurate, just that it may _contain_ truth. He literally
| gets outed and confronted about being a liar.
|
| I am not a journalist. I can tell from that podcast that
| there are reasons for the strong reaction that look different
| from a journalistic perspective and a layman's one. I think
| the difference (to me) is frame.
|
| If in episode 3, she totally believes his account and by
| episode 6 she's dubious... that's the nature of doing
| investigative journalism as a temporal series.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > he we got to hear the account, suspicions, reasons to
| dismiss or believe the source (chaudhry). I don't think
| anyone reasonably concludes that his account is mostly
| honest or accurate, just that it may contain truth. He
| literally gets outed and confronted about being a liar.
|
| They might "complicate the narrative" but they're putting
| it out there as being at least partially true when it was
| actually entirely false. It isn't "honest" journalism to
| keep putting out your sensationalized stories with just a
| little added "narrative tension."
|
| > I see nothing wrong with this tweet
|
| Read the entire thread - she is basically suggesting that
| the reason they didn't charge him is because they are
| incompetent.
|
| Both of my parents are former editors at major national
| publications. My mom has had to fire people for stuff like
| this. They think that this was a breach of journalistic
| integrity and pretty much career-ending.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >>they're putting it out there as being at least
| partially true when it was actually entirely false.
|
| We _know_ now that it was entirely false. She didn 't at
| the time. The flak at Canadian police had to take is
| regrettable. They were investigating, had to keep quiet,
| and couldn't "clear their name" for several months. She
| owes an apology, but that's somewhat outside of "The
| Caliphate" itself.
|
| Look... I realize that my take on this is contradictory
| to journalistic norms. Maybe there is actual tension
| between practicable "journalistic integrity" and my
| layman's definition of "honest" journalism.
|
| Frame matters a lot. If you are printing a single column
| article summarizing the Chaudery saga, standard
| "journalist integrity" makes a lot of sense. Not verified
| enough. The primary source is lying about some stuff at
| least. Don't print.
|
| If you are making an audio series that follows a
| journalist on investigation... This allows for shades of
| uncertainty. Callimachi is very confident in the source
| at first. Later, she catches him on some lies. By the
| end, he's clearly a dubious source at best. I don't think
| you can summarize this as "putting it out there." This
| isn't a Reuters wire. You can have ambiguity.
|
| She should not have jumped to the conclusion that
| Canadian police were inept. That was bad instincts, and
| an investigative failure resulted.
|
| In any case, I'm not saying it's journalistically
| perfect. I'm just shocked that it is being treated as a
| low watermark. I feel like a lot of reporting can and
| does clear a "journalistic integrity" hurdle, but scores
| much lower than Callimachi in _my_ estimation of "honest
| journalism." I guess we value different things.
|
| Tangent: something about this thread is making me think
| of "The Wire," All the lines about "good police work."
| olivermarks wrote:
| 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...
| ttesttom wrote:
| I think we do have those organizations with trust.
|
| If you want facts only news, go to apnews or reuters. They are
| the mastheads of impartiality, or at least as much as possible
| with humans.
|
| However, the NYT is what I consider as investigative journalism
| that includes informed speculation. A lot of stories that
| otherwise never would have seen the light of day were broken by
| the NYT, however _at the time of publishing_ there was a degree
| of uncertainty given the nature of the story. The uncertainty
| means they could be wrong, even if the odds are high at 90%
| correct. However, I would argue both are valuable, just
| understand which you are reading.
| olivermarks wrote:
| I'd suggest apnews & reuters have lost much impartiality
| credibility, resulting in the rise of populism. We have Trump
| & Sanders as a result over the last ten years and a vacuum
| where a reliable trusted and impartial media should be.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think that these "impartial organizations" have always had
| some credibility issues (although it has accelerated with
| journalism's decline).
|
| The democratization of information brought by social media has
| led to the "fake news" epidemic, but has also allowed smart
| people to coordinate and discover instances where these
| organizations are lying, whereas in the past it would take
| years to come to light.
| IndySun wrote:
| 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.
| draw_down wrote:
| Ignominious.
| blhack wrote:
| > "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.
| cheezymoogle wrote:
| 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.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _Good on NYT for coming clean_
|
| 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.
| ttesttom wrote:
| Even if you are busted not all 'news' orgs would come clean,
| admitting the mistake and detailing out what went wrong.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2017/09/15/551163406/fox-news-has-yet-
| to...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Good on NYT for coming clean
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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".
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Ombudsmen are typically hired for this reason.
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course, the NYT got rid of their public editor--i.e. their
| ombudsman. But I disagree a bit, an ombudsman is more
| reactive; it's not reasonable for them to vet every story
| before it's printed. That's the job of the editors and their
| editors.
|
| This seems a pretty major failing. Of course, they always
| seem that way after the fact. And TBH a lot of stories run
| that can't be verified beyond the tiniest shade of a doubt
| that are substantially accurate.
| cheezymoogle wrote:
| My only experience with ombudsmen is ignored emails until top
| stakeholders face the pain, then immediate action to resolve
| their and only their issues.
| starkd wrote:
| They came clean too late for any congratulations.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| 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.
| fortran77 wrote:
| But they won't fire Rukmini Callimachi? Why not?
| [deleted]
| gnarbarian wrote:
| 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.
| robgibbons wrote:
| I don't think that's true, there are just a scant few
| publications that actually value real, classic journalism these
| days.
|
| One example is Reuters. They report facts, stated exactly as
| things happened, without editorializing and injecting their own
| opinions on top of every other sentence.
|
| In other words, they let you form your own opinions, instead of
| giving you theirs. That's called journalistic integrity, and
| it's the reason they're the only news source I actually pay
| for.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| Even if you only report facts as they happen bias is injected
| by what facts are reported and what stories are covered or
| omitted. The reporter will naturally be drawn to stories that
| match up with their perspective on the world. It's very
| difficult for us to actively and constantly challenge our own
| assumptions and seek out evidence that contradicts them.
|
| I've thought about this a lot. I think that if an outlet is
| reporting on some statistical fact. Like the frequency of
| mass shooting deaths for example they should also place that
| in perspective against car accidents, cancer, heart disease
| etc. Contrast that with crime and murder trends over a large
| swath of time etc. This way people can properly contextualize
| and rank the real risk in the situation and separate it from
| the sensationalism.
|
| But even if all of that is carried out. There is still bias
| from what the reporter chose to write a story about.
|
| I think the worst offenders of situations like this are the
| investigative NPR style stories where a reporter seeks out an
| individual's story as a means to emotionally manipulate the
| reader into a particular policy position. It's far better to
| look at the larger statistical picture. You can find a sob
| story to emotionally manipulate people towards quite
| literally any policy position imaginable.
| SoSoRoCoCo wrote:
| > that's called journalistic integrity
|
| OP is deploying the "everyone is biased so why does it
| matter" falsehood/trope/myth pushed by the right wing since
| the Fairness Doctrine was repealed (which directly led to the
| rise of the Fox disinformation channel). It is a nefarious
| argument that goes deep because any nitwit can preface an
| outrageous claim with it and sound "fair".
| gnarbarian wrote:
| Negative. I'm saying that you should be extremely skeptical
| of everything. Notice how you are attempting to dismiss my
| premise by categorizing me as a "right wing nitwit"
| Rexxar wrote:
| > Notice how you are attempting to dismiss my premise by
| categorizing me as a "right wing nitwit"
|
| He didn't say that, he say your argument _will_ be used
| by those people to justify anything.
| [deleted]
| umvi wrote:
| Not related directly to this podcast, but speaking first hand
| about radicalization - last year this muslim IT guy I knew at
| work somehow got radicalized by ISIS online and decided to go
| AWOL and steal a uhaul in order to try to commit a truck attack
| at national harbor[0]. The FBI caught him before he carried out
| the attack. The weird thing was he had a wife and kid totally in
| the dark about his radicalization. You probably didn't hear about
| it on national news because nothing came of it, but me and a lot
| of my coworkers were shaken that someone so close was being
| radicalized privately while acting normally at work.
|
| [0] https://patch.com/maryland/germantown/man-indicted-terror-
| ch...
| [deleted]
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > "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."
|
| Deifying people is unlikely to go well.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> In posting real-time analyses on social media about unfolding
| terrorism attacks, Callimachi has helped to cement her reputation
| as a leading source on terrorism.
|
| Seek karma for too long and eventually karma will seek you
| enriquto wrote:
| Offtopic, but the NPR is one of the few sites that I cannot read
| at all with cookies and javascript disabled.
| dxdm wrote:
| They have a text-only version of their site. For single
| articles, just replace the 'www' subdomain with 'text':
|
| https://text.npr.org/944594193
| tzs wrote:
| Try changing 'www' to 'text' in the URL to get the plainer
| version of the site. That might help. Here is the modified
| link:
|
| https://text.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-ret...
| enriquto wrote:
| Thanks! I love NPR but always had trouble with the
| unbreakable cookie barrier.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| 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.
| cheezymoogle wrote:
| 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.
|
| ---
|
| 1 - https://vimeo.com/ondemand/jihadists
| ehsankia wrote:
| 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.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| It absolutely did have a lot of other information in it.
| However, the mistake here was so substantial that it's hard
| for me to feel like I can trust the rest of its reporting.
| Remember, it was not presented as true crime - it was
| presented as investigative journalism. I don't hold average
| true crime podcasts, which are usually non-experts quoting
| secondary sources in an obviously non-expert context, to the
| same standard.
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's the NYT. If the Judith Miller nonsense didn't reveal to you
| what they're like, and you're still listening, you deserve the
| crap information you get.
| lucidone wrote:
| 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.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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.)
| [deleted]
| solumos wrote:
| At least they had the decency to retract. I get the sense that
| other news sites these days would leave it up with its
| "alternative facts".
| dwighttk wrote:
| E.g. Bloomberg's The Big Hack
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
| chance_state wrote:
| Here's another classic: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2018/nov/27/manafort-hel...
| weakfish wrote:
| Could you elaborate on the problems with this article? I
| couldn't find any info online.
| dwighttk wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomber
| g...
| CharlesW wrote:
| Yeah, I don't get the hate here. You don't complain about
| companies doing the right thing if you want them to do it more
| and better.
|
| Also, every day Facebook does 10,000 times the damage that this
| has done. Perspective, people.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| If they were ever doing their jobs this never would have seen
| the light of day. Even the most basic amount of research
| showed it was unsubstantiated.
|
| Same with 1619 which is "problematic".
|
| Their desire to push a narrative outweighed their desire to
| be factually correct.
|
| The scandal here isn't they removed something quietly. It's
| that if they failed their jobs here, where else are they
| failing and just haven't been exposed yet? This isn't the
| first time they lied to you, it's just a time they were
| caught.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _If they were ever doing their jobs this never would have
| seen the light of day._
|
| Yes, it could not be more obvious that people fucked up.
|
| Now you have an opportunity to decide whether you're more
| interested in nurturing your retroactive rage and inciting
| it in others, or if it might make more sense to reinforce
| the responsible media behavior that you say you want. In my
| experience, the latter is more effective and better for
| mental health.
| hitekker wrote:
| > This fall, as Canadian authorities were wrapping up an
| investigation on Chaudhry, Callimachi similarly championed
| her series. On Twitter, she raised questions about the
| competence of Canadian intelligence officials in the Chaudhry
| case. The Times defended her piece to The Washington Post and
| others, saying the reporting proved to be true and that
| doubts about Chaudhry's account were central to the podcast's
| narrative.
|
| This isn't "coming clean", it's getting busted. They had a
| chance at the former several months ago, and they forwent it.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Just curious, my understanding is that Canada's case is
| only getting started. Yes, they charged him for "hoax", but
| it could very well be a trap: Chaudhry has to either
| provide proof that he is an ISIS fighter, or admit it was
| all a hoax.
|
| Either way, we won't know for sure until the case is over.
| So far it's just alleged.
| ohhhhhh wrote:
| this is some abusive relationship type of mentality
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