Posted on 03/26/2006 10:10:32 PM PST by neverdem
The Public Editor
BAD mistakes happen even at the best newspapers, and public editors should usually watch for patterns rather than single out a specific incident. But when a Times front-page article highlighting the sensitive detainee-abuse aspect of the Iraq war turned out to be fatally flawed, it seemed to me that a closer look at the journalistic practices involved was warranted.
The March 11 article profiled a man who said he was the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner famously photographed about two years ago, standing on a box with wires attached to his extended hands. The article included an interview with the man, Ali Shalal Qaissi, a one-time neighborhood mayor under the government of Saddam Hussein and now a self-styled activist for prisoners' rights in Iraq. He had been invoking that symbol of the torture at Abu Ghraib in helping to push lawsuits on behalf of the prisoners.
It turned out that The Times had the wrong man. And clear evidence of the error had existed in an unnoticed 2004 Times story.
To the credit of The Times — and to the benefit of readers — editors did not allow the embarrassment to impede a timely and very open exploration of the mistake. When the online magazine Salon quickly disputed Mr. Qaissi's story after the article ran in The Times, the paper immediately reported on the challenge on March 14 and promised its own investigation. In a front-page story published a week after the original article, The Times reviewed the mistaken identity and Mr. Qaissi's life in recent years. And an extensive Editors' Note the same day acknowledged the original article's shortcomings.
This openness, however, didn't involve fully exploring some journalistic practices that raised questions in my mind about the handling of the story.
Searching out what has already been...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The NYT just gets more pathetic with each passing day.
Of course, so do most newspapers, but the Times is outstanding in its lapses and failures.
The NY Times lied, newspapers died.
"...when a Times front-page article highlighting the sensitive detainee-abuse aspect of the Iraq war turned out to be fatally flawed..."
This is news? They do this sort of thing all quite frequently.
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