Posted on 06/07/2009 12:15:28 PM PDT by Lorianne
When Dick Cheney assailed President Obama’s plan to close the prison at Guantánamo last month, he used ammunition plucked right from that morning’s [NY]Times.
The front-page headline that day, May 21, read: “1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds.” The article reported in the first paragraph that an unreleased Pentagon study had concluded that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from Guantánamo had “returned to terrorism or militant activity.”
It was big news on a morning when Obama and Cheney would deliver dueling visions of how to keep the nation safe. “One in seven cut a straight path back to their prior line of work and have conducted murderous attacks in the Middle East,” Cheney said in a speech.
But the article on which he based that statement was seriously flawed and greatly overplayed. It demonstrated again the dangers when editors run with exclusive leaked material in politically charged circumstances and fail to push back skeptically. The lapse is especially unfortunate at The Times, given its history in covering the run-up to the Iraq war.
The article seemed to adopt the Pentagon’s contention that freed prisoners had “returned” to terrorism, ignoring independent reporting by The Times and others that some of them may not have been involved in terrorism before but were radicalized at Guantánamo. It failed to distinguish between former prisoners suspected of new acts of terrorism — more than half the cases — and those supposedly confirmed to have rejoined jihad against the West. Had only confirmed cases been considered, one in seven would have changed to one in 20.
Most of the caveats about the report were deep in the article, where they could hardly offset the impact of the headline, the first paragraph and the prominent position on Page 1.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Am I the only one who’s noticed that the Times seems to issue a lot of corrections to its own stories....but only after a Republican notices that the story vindicates a GOP position?
So the Times is the newspaper of “record” except when they’re quoted by republicans.....?
Bush's Fault should be the name of the newspaper.
Scepticism is too intolerant to be tolerated.
No....but we are among the few!!
You sure as h*ll won’t find skepticism from the NYT when it comes to the big “0”.
IOW, “Don’t Believe What You Read In the NY Times: Says NY Times”.
Isn’t this an example of the “Liar Paradox”?
What Ever Happened to Skepticism?
That’s too easy; when the Democrats are in power, skepticism takes a holiday.
So, Clay, what you’re saying is that that story shouldn’t have been quoted as evidence because your editors were (are) incompetent to make sure it was at least minimally accurate before it went to press. Is that it?
Outstanding. Just outstanding.
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