Monday, March 26, 2007
The New York Times Screws the Pooch
http://www.regrettheerror.com/2007/03/source_deludes_.html
If you think the previous examples I have written on where massive displays of media bias, you have not read anything yet. The New York Times, "the paper of record" wrote a story in its March 18, 2007 edition about Amorita Randall, a former Navy Seabee(for those of you who do not know these are the Navy's construction battalions). The following is from the regrettheerror blog.
"The New York Times published a lengthy editor's note yesterday. Actually, it published two of them; both are on this site today. This one involves a former naval construction worker who told the Times magazine that she served in Iraq, was in a Humvee that blew up, and was raped twice while serving in the Navy.
In fact, she never served in Iraq and a medal she received for service, which appeared to bolster her Iraq story, was awarded in error. The larger issue seems to be that the Navy wasn't able to come up with the correct information about her prior to publication. But were they given enough time? The editor's note says a "researcher" (fact checker) contacted the Navy "three days before the story went to press." Not exactly a lot of time to gather and evaluate the information, especially if some discrepancies emerge, which they did. A report in Air force Times (spotted by Gawker) quotes the Navy official as saying they weren't given enough time."
Do you think their was a massive retraction by the Times for doing a hatchet job on our brave sailors? Of course not! Did someone loose their jobs for screwing this up? No! As for researching this story it seems they did about as much as Dan Rather did on the Bush National Guard story.
What are your thoughts? email me or post them to my blog.
If you think the previous examples I have written on where massive displays of media bias, you have not read anything yet. The New York Times, "the paper of record" wrote a story in its March 18, 2007 edition about Amorita Randall, a former Navy Seabee(for those of you who do not know these are the Navy's construction battalions). The following is from the regrettheerror blog.
"The New York Times published a lengthy editor's note yesterday. Actually, it published two of them; both are on this site today. This one involves a former naval construction worker who told the Times magazine that she served in Iraq, was in a Humvee that blew up, and was raped twice while serving in the Navy.
In fact, she never served in Iraq and a medal she received for service, which appeared to bolster her Iraq story, was awarded in error. The larger issue seems to be that the Navy wasn't able to come up with the correct information about her prior to publication. But were they given enough time? The editor's note says a "researcher" (fact checker) contacted the Navy "three days before the story went to press." Not exactly a lot of time to gather and evaluate the information, especially if some discrepancies emerge, which they did. A report in Air force Times (spotted by Gawker) quotes the Navy official as saying they weren't given enough time."
Do you think their was a massive retraction by the Times for doing a hatchet job on our brave sailors? Of course not! Did someone loose their jobs for screwing this up? No! As for researching this story it seems they did about as much as Dan Rather did on the Bush National Guard story.
What are your thoughts? email me or post them to my blog.
