“The Times was wrong…and I have been wrong in defending the paper’s phrasing.”
Even as the New York Times once again misreported the ACORN “Pimp” Hoax on its pages in a report on the community organization’s possible declaration of bankruptcy in Saturday’s paper, their Public Editor (ombudsman) Clark Hoyt finally admits in his column tonight, for tomorrow’s paper, that both he and the paper were “wrong” in their reports about rightwing dirty trickster James O’Keefe’s “pimp” costume, adding that “editors say they are considering a correction.”
Considering?! What exactly would be the hold up?
The paper and Hoyt, as The BRAD BLOG has been detailing for nearly two months now, were out and out wrong in their reports about O’Keefe, and what his highly-edited, heavily-overdubbed, secretly-taped videos misleadingly suggested to show, and in their failure to report exculpatory information, such as the refusal to release the unedited raw videos made by the rightwing propagandists, as well as the results of an investigation by MA’s former Attorney General [PDF] finding no “pattern of illegal conduct” by ACORN employees as seen in the videos as published by the rightwing media mogul and fabulist Andrew Breitbart.
More than a month and a half after the paper’s Senior Editor for Standards, Greg Brock, first attempted to defend the “paper of record’s” reporting by pointing to Fox “News” and the accused felon O’Keefe himself in support of their inaccurate reports, as we exclusively detailed here, and more than a month and a half after Hoyt himself offered similar excuses and was shown that he was absolutely wrong, as we exclusively detailed here, the Public Editor offers his extremely reluctant mea culpa tonight in “The Acorn Sting Revisited” [emphasis added]:
The Times was wrong on this point, and I have been wrong in defending the paper’s phrasing. Editors say they are considering a correction.
Hoyt also conceded in his long-overdue admission that the paper erred in failing to ever mention (until a story in today’s paper finally!) the independent findings of former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger which were released on December 7th of last year….
Hoyt’s hedged comment that “O’Keefe almost certainly did not go into the Acorn offices in the outlandish costume” is emblematic of his proclivity throughout the piece to continue supporting the Times deeply flawed reporting and their Senior Editor for Standards’ inexcusable attempts to cover-up for same when he was first contacted about it.
There is no “almost certainly” about it. Hannah Giles, the pretend “prostitute”, has now twice admitted (once on video tape) that O’Keefe never wore the pimp outfit in ACORN offices. “It was B-Roll,” she said. Breitbart has also finally admitted the same, also on video. And if one watches the first video released closely, as I’ve previously pointed out to Hoyt, O’Keefe is actually seen, briefly, walking into the Baltimore office in normal slacks and shirt. Had the New York Times bothered to do a proper investigation, they’d have noted all of those points immediately.
And had they bothered to read or report on Harshbarger investigation and its finding, released on December 7th of last year but never, until today, reported by the NYTimes they would have found the clear, not “almost certain” statement: “Although Mr. O’Keefe appeared in all videos dressed as a pimp, in fact, when he appeared at each and every office, he was dressed like a college student – in slacks and a button down shirt”.
Following what Hoyt describes as letters from “hundreds of readers,” a review of “the entire available public record” and interviews with several of the key players, including Breitbart (but not O’Keefe or his pretend girlfriend/prostitute in the videos, Hannah Giles, or any of the former ACORN employees stung on the tapes), Hoyt reluctantly admitted they’d gotten it wrong, but went on to spend much of his column defending what he believes the videos, which he now admits were “heavily edited,” accurately portray.
Hoyt’s original defense of the paper’s repeated misreporting, as seen in an extraordinary chain of emails between him and me, included the defense that [emphasis his]: “The story says O’Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on Acorn counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time.”
That jaw-dropping line brought calls for the Public Editor to step down, and his depiction “as a weasel” in a Tom Tomorrow comic strip, among other serious condemnations.
Since The BRAD BLOG’s months-long exposé of the hoax, ACORN has launched a campaign demanding accountability from the Times and other media that similarly misreported the story, and last week the media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) excoriated the paper and Hoyt for their coverage and their response to our reporting.
Last September, following pressure from rightwingers, Hoyt was quick to chide the paper in his column for being “slow off the mark” by waiting “nearly a week” after O’Keefe’s first video was released before reporting on it. The paper took measures, thereafter, to improve on its “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio,” as Hoyt wrote at the time.
Yet it has now been six months since the “paper of record” first misreported the ACORN “Pimp” Hoax, and no such changes were announced for the paper in his column tonight.
That, even though their first misreport was followed the next day by a vote in the U.S. Congress to defund the organization. That legislation was recently overturned by a federal judge who found it to be an unconstitutional bill of attainder.
But the damage is already largely done. Other than Hoyt’s too-little-too-late admissions tonight, there has been no real accountability for the Times’ errors, or for the extraordinary irresponsible defense of those errors, as we highlighted in early February, by their Senior Editor for Standards, Greg Brock.
The damage done in the wake of the NYTimes journalist malpractice is detailed by Hoyt himself tonight:
In a statement sent to The BRAD BLOG tonight, Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s CEO, said that “for ACORN as a national organization, our vindication on the facts doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.”
She went on to detail, again, the damage by the hoax that the New York Times was ultimately, knowingly or otherwise, complicit in: “ACORN has faced a series of well orchestrated, relentless, well funded right wing attacks that are unprecedented since the McCarthy era. Our effective work empowering African American and low income voters made us a target. The videos were a manufactured, sensational story that led to rush to judgment and an unconstitutional act by Congress.”
Thanks in no small part to the failure by the New York Times, ACORN’s 400,000 low-income member families in 75 different cities across the nation are now likely to find themselves without the services and support they needed most from the important community organization who often served as an indispensable life-line for many of those families in most need of those services.
As noted, Hoyt spends much of his column still defending the rather indefensible failure by the paper. He reports that, though mistakes were made, he is still inclined to trust in the hoaxsters’ own portrayal of inappropriate advice being offered by low-level ACORN workers in the edited videos (“The videos were heavily edited. The sequence of some conversations was changed,” Hoyt now admits), and in the unauthenticated text transcripts and audio released by O’Keefe (who has long lied about the videos) and his employer Breitbart (who lied in his own Washington Times column about them as well, before being forced to change his story).
For example, Hoyt still believes that describing O’Keefe as Giles’ “pimp” is an apt description. “If O’Keefe did not dress as a pimp,” he writes tonight, “he clearly presented himself as one: a fellow trying to set up a woman — sometimes along with under-age girls — in a house where they would work as prostitutes.”
But even a cursory examination of the text transcripts from the videos taped at the Brooklyn ACORN office — originally reported as among the most damaging, even as it was recently found by the New York D.A. to reveal “no criminality” and to have been a “‘highly edited’ splice job,” as reported by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, if not the Times — shows O’Keefe went out of his way to offer a different impression to those whose advice he was seeking in the videos.
O’Keefe represented himself, in all of the ACORN offices, as the conservatively dressed boyfriend of Giles hoping to help rescue her from an abusive pimp. Here, as you can see, are O’Keefe’s only references to the word “pimp” in his own unauthenticated Brooklyn transcript [PDF]:
…
James: and that is why we were in a rush you know why I am excited and I know nothing about her business I am just trying to be here to be professional because ya know she walks in and but now we have this pimp discriminating against us
…
James: I know I have to worry about the pimp but he is illegal anyway he is not going to do anything to me who what do I have to be careful of?
…
James: Sonny is the pimp
Clearly, O’Keefe did not represent himself as “the pimp,” as much as Hoyt still contends that he did. Even as Hoyt points to material in those unauthenticated transcripts which he believes suggests otherwise, reporting that O’Keefe “posed as a pimp” without noting the contradictory information is, again, journalistic malpractice. Hoyt fails to point this out.
The low-level workers — no supervisory personnel or organizers are seen in the tapes — may have failed to follow ACORN’s written protocols, as the group conceded when the employees were released following the publication of the tapes. They may also have offered inappropriate advice while being misled to believe they were helping a young girl escape the clutches of an abusive pimp who had stalked and attempted to kill her.
Hoyt and his staff have clearly spent more time reporting on this story at this point than any of the paper’s actual reporters have. While there remain plenty of points to quibble about in his column, and in his take on what happened in those ACORN offices, it’s hard to imagine the paper spending as much time and energy, and filing as many reports, on a story that should have been so easily found to have been based on a lie. I suspect it would never have seen the light of day had it been proffered by a group of known political activists on the perceived Left.
A few minutes of skeptical reporting should have tipped off the Times immediately, as well as all the other media outlets that fell for it, that this story stank to high heaven.
Former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who was finally interviewed for the first time by Hoyt for tonight’s column, is quoted this way:
Nonetheless, Hoyt goes on to write, “Acorn’s supporters appear to hope that the whole story will fall apart over the issue of what O’Keefe wore: if that was wrong, everything else must be wrong. The record does not support them.”
That “record” is one put forward still only by the hoaxsters O’Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart themselves. All three have now been shown to have out-and-out lied about this story from the very beginning. A close examination of that record and their story — here is one that we did recently, and here is another, just by way of example — quickly reveal their “record” to be full of lies in support of a hard rightwing partisan political agenda.
As the New York Daily News noted recently, but not the New York Times, quoting a law enforcement official involved in the Brooklyn D.A.’s investigation: “They edited the tape to meet their agenda.” The NYTimes should have noted that “agenda” immediately, and taken precautions not to have been hoaxed by it. They didn’t.
We don’t “hope that the whole story will fall apart,” as Hoyt suggests. What we hope is that our mainstream media will begin doing their job responsibly, by reporting facts skeptically, and independently verifying everything before they determine what constitutes “all the news that’s fit to print,” as the once-great New York Times’ slogan used to claim. We also hope that when they are caught not having done so, they do the right thing by issuing an immediate and transparent correction, rather than making repeated and outrageous excuses for blatant and demonstrable misreporting.
Throughout all of this, the New York Times has failed to do the right thing. Until and unless the paper does, you can bet your bottom dollar it will make all of the same damaging mistakes again in the future.
Finally, earlier today, as coincidence would have it, I had sent another note to Clark Hoyt and Sr. Editor for Standards Greg Brock after a story by Ian Urbina in today’s paper had once again misreported the facts of the ACORN “Pimp” Hoax by again misleadingly describing O’Keefe as “posing as a…pimp” and inaccurately reporting that ACORN workers advised how to “avoid taxes.”
Another reporter, Andy Newman, had done so in the paper recently as well, as I note in my email.
While I don’t know Newman, I have had occasion to speak with Urbina over the years, and have found him to be a generally very good and responsible reporter. His editors should have caught his errors, particularly given the months-long hoopla about the paper’s disastrous and controversial coverage of ACORN, but they didn’t.
Urbina has not yet returned an email seeking comment on his story today. Neither Hoyt nor Brock have responded yet either to the note below, posted in full here, formatting and typos, etc. in the original…
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2010 1:24 PM
To: ‘Public/NYT/NYTIMES’ [Public@NYTimes.com] Cc: ‘NYTimes, Senioreditor’ [SeniorEditor@NYTimes.com] Subject: CLARK – ACORN Followup
Clark –
I was disappointed to see the Times’ Ian Urbina reporting today, inaccurately yet again, that O’Keefe was “posing as a…pimp” in the ACORN videos, particularly after you had written to me that you would be recommending that “Times editors …avoid language that says or suggests that O’Keefe was dressed as a pimp when he captured the ACORN employees on camera.”
That wasn’t the only Times coverage which seems to have ignored your directive. On March 1, Andy Newman wrote in “Advice to Fake Pimp Was No Crime, Prosecutors Say”: “Acorn employees in Brooklyn who were captured on a hidden camera seeming to offer conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute” who would “funnel her earnings to her ‘pimp.’”
Newman used the exact same language in a “City Room Blog” item earlier that day as well.
Moreover, Urbina’s article today also misreports that ACORN workers advised to “avoid taxes,” when they did just the opposite, in fact. All the workers seen on tape, according to the text transcripts, advised the “couple posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend” (as the AP has now correctly reported, in a story that was even reprinted at NYTimes.com last week!) that they must declare their income and pay their taxes, even on ill-gotten gains!
I’m just flummoxed that the NYTimes continues to so grossly misreport this entire story, particularly as you had written to me that:
I still don’t see that a correction is in order, because that would require conclusive evidence that The Times was wrong, which I haven’t seen.
Well surely you have now seen “conclusive evidence that The Times was wrong”, since the “prostitute” Hannah Giles has now twice admitted (here and on video here) that the pimp footage was all fake, and even publisher Andrew Breitbart has admitted same (see Breitbart’s admissions on video right here).
The only reason I can possibly fathom for this type of continued misreporting to be repeated yet again, after all this time, is a contention you made in one of your emails to me, which I thought I had already spoken to, alleging that “O’Keefe…clearly presented himself to the ACORN employees in a pimp relationship with Hannah Giles.”
But he clearly didn’t as any thorough analysis of O’Keefe/Breitbart’s own text transcripts reveals as we detailed in our analyses of those transcripts here and here.
As I’m sure you even know by now, the Brooklyn DA’s office has confirmed the hoax by concluding a 5-month investigation finding “no criminality”, and telling media (as reported by the NYPost and NYDailyNews, but not the NYTimes, unfortunately!), that the pair “edited the tape to meet their agenda“; that it was “a ‘heavily edited’ splice job that only made it appear as though the organization’s workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage”; and that “Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister.”
As I previously noted in one of our emails, it sounds as if you did NOT review the text transcripts published by O’Keefe and Breitbart. I don’t know whether you have finally done so or not, as doing so — or at least reviewing the analyses of them that I’ve linked above — would likely inform what has been your apparent misperceptions about this entire fair. But given the Times continued misreporting, that even the AP has shown the correct journalistic practices by changing the language they used, it seems as though nothing has been learned here, and the Times is dead set on continuing to sully its reputation vis a vis continued journalistic malpractice.
I’m sure you’ve seen FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)’s coverage of your responses and of the Times’ reporting by now, and I’m surprised you haven’t finally clarified to all how things went terribly wrong at the “paper of record” by now.
I continue to hope, as I have from day one, that you will advise the paper to correct, retract, apologize and examine how they got the story so damagingly incorrect, so they can explain to readers how they will keep such disturbing errors from occurring in the future.
Brad
Brad Friedman
Publisher/Editor, The BRAD BLOG
http://www.BradBlog.com
Twitter: @TheBradBlog.com
Hoyt acknowledges the Times incorrectly described O’Keefe’s wardrobe, but after a thorough investigation implies Brad is a perseverating moron for believing that that minor mistake discredits the entire sordid story concerning ACORN’s behavior in the videos.
Didn’t bother to read the story again didja, Daley? Keep up the bad work, amigo! Glad to see you wingnuts fighting to defend the NYT though, along with their indefensibly inaccurate reporting.
Guess they’re only the “liberal media” when you don’t like what they report, eh?
I would say kudo for Brad’s perseverance and finally getting Hoyt to acknowledge that NYT had errored in their coverage. Hoyt still apparently has not yet gone for enough.
As for Daleyrocks me thinks the rocks are in your head!
Cheers Brad,
Thank you getting the NYT slimeballs to finally own up to their complicity in Breitbart’s unjust smear-campaign.
They should be entirely ashamed, and it’s high time the record was set straight!!!
Breitbart, O’keefe and Giles have been lying through their teeth from the get-go, and have maligned innocent people in the process.
Even worse, they have callously cut away at what meagre supports there are for the poor, all for the sake of their bs partisan “war” (a word they use far too casually to actually undertand what it means)…
O’keefe and Breitbart will sink into hell under the weight of all those homeless families that they consigned to the cold.
I hope Andy and James remain haunted by the poor for the rest of their useless lives. I hope they never go to sleep without feeling the sheer misery they have caused to so many innocent people.
And even as they rob from those that dont have anything, they hob-nob with wealthy, blood-thirsty monsters like Karl Rove, and sip champagne in the company of the very same people who have gutted the national coffers…
…and through all this, they have the audacity to claim that ACORN is a drain on national funds… what about the cash Hannah’s trying to scam off her own tea-party boneheads?
The girl’s bs preacher dad has enough money to cough out idiotic publications like “Raising Boys Feminists Will Hate”, and bankroll his own meat-head “church”… but even with Peter Thiel in her pocket, Hannah goes begging from the very people who’s money she acts so protective of. What a tool!!!
Shame on the NYT for their thoughtless accomodation of the BigGov.com lies. And shame on BigGov for their lying propaganda and their heartless seizures from the poor.
Now NYT is being exposed, and bonehead Breitbart’s next in line!
Thank you Brad. You have made a difference.
I appreciate you discernment as to what is important in US politics. Rare.
In the this morning’s piece, Clark Hoyt very selectively chooses bits and pieces of information and arranges said information to the sole benefit of himself and the New York Times. It’s purely cosmetic.
His intention here is not to get to the truth, but to get out of the shitter.
He makes no effort to build on the ACORN story. There is no independent fact checking. No examination of journalistic standards. And certainly no accountability.
Instead, Hoyt surgically takes Scott Harshburger’s work out of context (or puts it into the most favorable context) in an effort to do a rewrite of the thoroughly discredited work of Andrew Breitbart.
But here’s the beauty of the thing: Because Clark Hoyt so carefully navigates this thing without doing any actual reporting of his own, he can’t be called on it. So he thinks.
Good job Brad….
It seems the next logical step is for ACORN to sue for libel or slander…..
This was a pure hit job on ACORN’s image and credibility that’s irreparably damaged it’s public trust…I’m not an attorney but I think even I could argue for ACORN’s case in a court of law.
Two or three more steps to reporting the truth and then I may consider the ny times to be acting in good faith…as per that admission, I’d say it’s still CYA mode. Thanks Brad for getting them halfway there though!
I know I’ve posted this one here before, but I just love it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...eature=related
A few more pushes and nytimes just might get all the way on to the life boat! They gotta come completely clean before being trusted again. Halfway measures still leave lies and distrust floating around continuing to damage ACORN. I believe they understand that quite well,which again displays their bad faith motives.
Oh yeah, Happy Spring. 🙂
Could the NYT not be successfully prosecuted for damages, in view of Acorn’s financial losses, arising from the NYT’s slander?
I’m in between–
–giddy with delight that we(especially Brad)made such a difference. And as halfway house as this is it really is quite a distance Hoy-Dee-Hoy travelled from his original position..
and…
…completely exhausted from trying to pull teeth from a Paleolothic glue factory and with so many apparently yet to pull.
Ahhh, the paradoxical nature of reality.
SreeBee – Thanks for posting those comments. You speak for many.
All – Please DIGG, REDDIT and RE-TWEET this story to help counter the powerful rightwing noise/hate/slime/propaganda/media machine!
Yes, those clicks to post this story on those sites DO make a huge difference in getting this story out. Thanks in advance!
Brad, since the NY Times is loathe to correct their willingly erroneous reportage, maybe it’s time up the ante a bit, because you know they’ll print any “correction” in the classifieds or style sections so no one will see it or pay any attention to it.
how about taking up a fund to take out full-page smack down ads setting the record straight? Do you think a campaign like that would be effective in correcting the record and shaming the NY Times into doing an HONEST apology / retraction / setting the record straight series?
Because right now, they’ve been given ample time and info to correct their narrative, and have refused repeatedly to even address their behavior, and continue to push the same demonstrably false storyline.
Sukabi #12, where would the full-page ad be placed and would it get more exposure than publishing it on bradblog?
I’d like to see benefit concerts to raise funds for ACORN. Don’t expect Oprah to bring up the issue(She’s too cozy with the corporate powers-that-be).
Adam Fulford, I’m thinking that placing an ad in either the WaPo, or NY Post, or WSJ would be a good starting point… but would be hilarious if one could be placed in the NY Times itself (I know the likelihood of that happening are slim to none, Times would reject it)
I know it would be EXPENSIVE, but might be worth a try..
I think a major lawsuit would be in order.
The defendants:
Andrew Breitbart
James O’Keefe
Clark Hoyt
and the NYT.
Yoo-Hoo! Patterico! Where are you? How do you feel now?
I read another article that suggested the “left wing” should “invest more in media”, as if putting the truth out there would be as profitable as spewing the sensationalistic bullshit they conjure on Fox [not] News and the like.
The media has failed, and it is because it has to be “profitable” to live. When war contractors own news channels, nothing good for the public will ever come from it. The Congress needs to step in and limit what corporations can cross-own; if you build tanks, you have no reason to own TV stations, period.
Which goes back to the core issue in all of this (including the NYT not being willing to “damage” their reputation with a full on admission of their abject failures as a news organization); a for-profit world is an anti-human world. Profits, like drugs, need to be monitored and not taken to excess or death ensues.
Well done, Brad. You have given me hope. I will help, what little I can, with either an ad or lawsuit.
BTW, daley-. “perseverating” does not apply. Can’t you “r” s pick up a Thesaurus?
Brad,
Take a bow. Here’s a heaping banana split with gobs of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla doused with hot fudge and caramel and marshmallow and liberally sprinkled with walnuts, rainbow sprinkles and pieces of kit-kat bars. Oh, and just scads of real whipped cream from the local organic dairy. With a cherry on top.
Oh, and here’s another gem from the redoubtable Billy (#6) re: Clark Hoyt:
“His intention here is not to get to the truth, but to get out of the shitter.”
Billy, you’re awesome!
Totally off topic I know, Brad, but I was wondering if the BradBlog might be interested in that Mumbai terrorist suspect in Chicago who pleaded guilty, Coleman Headly. There are comments floating around the blogs that he is CIA, and of course, part of his plea agreement is that he will not be extradited.
Hoyt is clearly intent on justifying their reporting, while giving an non-admitting admittance of NYT times incompetence reporting the ACORN pimp hoax as if it were reliable. Straying off-topic, I’ve kind of lost touch with the Blackwater story. Has the government pulled the plug on taxpayer-paid contracts with Blackwater (now known as Xe Services), an organization which really has been involved in pimping out little girls, as well as an extensive array of other serious criminal abuses? As I understand it, ACORN is an organization that helps empower economically disadvantaged people. Sure, some ACORN employees who might say odd things in Candid-camera type situations. What would media reaction be if the same game was played with members of Congress, with videos and audios reedited to give it a certain slant?
You know what your mother told you about letting egg dry on the plate, its always hard to scrape off. I guess that’s true when the egg is on your face, eh Mr. Hoyt
Not sure the WaPo would accept an ad either. In an article today titled, “ACORN Reportedly on verge of bankruptcy” (pg A4 hardcopy) the only mention of the nefarious pimposter charade is:
“… a video sting that showed ACORN housing counselors advising two young conservative activists – posing as a pimp and prostitute – how to conceal their criminal business.”
Thats it. CONTINUING to plant the false meme of huggy-bear jr. playing dress-up INSIDE any office anywhere when it never happened. Just disgusting. We have our work cut out for us.
Ancient, digging the blue grass. Never knew NGDB could approach JerryG era Old-n-in-the way.
WOW. NYT’s readers are slamming Hoyt in comments over there for his tepid mea culpa.
Tons of must read comments there!
Also my thanks to Eric Boehlert for his very kind words at Media Matters today.
And to Dave Johnson at Seeing The Forest for his kind too-kind “Blog Hero” award.
More on all of the above (and more beyond that) on Monday at The BRAD BLOG of course…
Brad, thanks for your thorough, disciplined and professional work, a quality sadly lacking in the NYT over the last many years.
On Thursday CNN’s Griffin showed the Pimp footage and repeated the story line while covering the financial problems and the Wisconsin AG’s pursuit of submission of phony voter registrations.
Thanks to the NYT and the STUPIDITY of reporters like Griffin this story will never be straight in the mind of the general public.
I’m not a lawyer but unfortunately have experience with media misreporting and can tell you that for the Times to be libel ACORN would have to PROVE they willfully and knowingly printed false claims. In others words the Times has the perfect defense, incompetence!
A full page ad would only be effective if the electronic media covered it too. Without prime time news coverage only the readers of the times and political junkies would see it.
A word search fails to turn up the words Friedman, Brad, or even blog in Hoyt’s article.
Disgusting omissions, but typical of the paper which failed to even cover the theft of the 2000 election, except to confuse the subject like they’re doing here. What country is this paper the record of?
Time for another great Peter B. Collins radio interview like the one at podcast number 102!
Well done!
Brad, check out Christopher R. Martin’s comment (#62) at http://bit.ly/bYhLlb
I wonder if you might get him to guest blog on bradblog?
It’ll be easier to find the Christopher R. Martin comment I’m referring to at this link: http://bit.ly/cXcyXa
I think the Times is looking for Murdock to buy them out, that’s the only explanation I can come up with.
Either that, or Hoyt is looking for his next career opening over at one of Ruperts other media buy-outs.
That was the most pathetic non apology-apology I have ever heard.
There is no political balance when it comes to the truth of a story.
Just read the comments at the NYT website. I apparently cannot post my comments there-crapberry does have its limits. So here is what I’ve got to say to those miscreants who purport themselves to be ‘journalists’ at ‘the paper of record’:
Striking how most comments in support of a strong front page retraction are full of actual information & facts, while comments asserting the ‘echo chamber’ talking points (massive voter fraud, liberal bias, et al.) are glaring in their lack of factual support.
This is as it is in our day and age-hurl an accusation, fail to support it, and you’ll STILL get published.
On that basis, old grey lady, you are lockstepping in line with ‘the times’.
But with regard to your now-tattered reputation, I can only say that one of the saddest days in MY life was informing my 70+ year old parents that their certainty that they know what’s been going on in our country/world, solely based on the contents of the NYT, is lately so full of holes they might as well be reading Pravda.
We are in a sad, no, terrible, era-when comedians like Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert tell a more accurate tale of the status quo than ‘the paper of record’. Can we be living in a more ironic conundrum than this?
Mr. Hoyt: SHAME ON YOU! You know better! Facilitate a full retraction, support a complete accounting of the failure of the NYT to attend to the facts of this story, or resign!
NYT employees: When you are gone from your comfy corporate-news-regurgitating perch, as is now inevitable–when the end game has played out, and ALL OF US are suffering from cold, hunger, and the terror of wondering when the next attack on our well-being will occur–will those of you whose job it was to protect & defend the TRUTH wonder where you went wrong? It’s been a while since the Times died as an actual news reporting body, but I’d say the carcass is fairly stinking up the joint by now. I hope the memories of your past glory keeps you warm-meanwhile, the rest of us are already shivering in the cold dawn of end of Empire… Perhaps one day you’ll miraculously rediscover your courage, or at least recall the REASON you went into journalism. Surely not for the paycheck alone?! Oh well, a conscience doesn’t pay the rent very well these days-in fact, it’s just the opposite. Sad, sad, sad day.
The ACORN study that Adam mentions from Chris Martins comment is pretty damned accurate also.
http://www.uni.edu/martinc/acornstudy.html
too-shay sophia, nicely put.
NYTimes “considering making a correction” reminds me of the Pentagon/military denying/delaying admitting to killing civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, …., “no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” pre-attack on, etc etc. Deny, then delay as long as possible without actually admitting “guilt”.
The New York Times, as a source of accurate news is a cruel joke. I suggest closure of the paper and the sale of their assets to fund ACORN.
You’re title to this post should say:
“We regret that we’re considering telling the truth…”
Amazing work, Brad. Way to go (and thanks gadfolds to the honorable Bob F.) I echo Lora’s sentiment for wishing you some Chocolate Sundae Cherry-Topped Respite Best. I’d throw in some expensive Bourbon and one additional wish: that Hoyt had sourced you – even just once. What A Fecken’ Toolie.
Still, just reading so many of these fantastic NYT reader comments is a truckload off my Bradblogged-saturated, fact-polished, sad sad psyche.
MK from L.A.:
This is no small dent, Brad and Bradbuddies.
It’s a nice, magungous gut-punch with repercussions rippling steady; with plenty more to flabby unfold ’round the fist of Friedman, still.
…cuz Hoyt just made it worse.
Be it not for you Brad, this would have remained buried like so many other things stay buried. You are a true champion of democracy!!
Kudos Brad!
Tell the NYT you’d like a free full page ad for your efforts, then donate the space back for their use – with one stipulation…
They must use the entire page to print their retraction/correction.
FYI – this diary resulted in over 200 comments
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/36246
Anyone want to take bets on how much “time” O’Keefe will spend in jail for his (alleged) phone tapping “prank”?
Hey there CAMUSREBEL #24, thanks. Ya know, I found this you might like too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ5Jl3zxabo
Its quite the download, 20 minutes, but damn what a find on ole utube!
An no shit, I heard on public radio The Band is doing a new gig. Whooo Hooooooo!
Flo # 33, you know I posted about the times’s financial troubles a while back being possibly bought out by some drug connected south american over a year ago I think. Its somewhere back in this site’s conversation’s record. I’d have to do a search to find.:-(
Now, if we can just get 99 to comment again! 🙂
I you 99!
“heart” I heart you. That’s what it was supposed to say. Just luring you back into the fray 99…
Ancient and Chris Hooten…
Go give 99 a shout at her site….link here
I’m sure she would appreciate the love….
Clark Hoyt missed the point of my email to him, and made it sound like the comments he was receiving were nothing but reactions goaded by FAIR. Ignoring not only Brad’s role in keeping the story alive, but also those of us that knew that a great injustice was being done once more to a public-service organization.
The full context to the one sentence he quoted would have stood in stark contrast to what he actually wrote.
The sentence quoted was introducing the meat of the issue: Journalistic integrity requires that journalists be skeptical, do their research, and report the truth. If they are found to have been misled, to quickly retract and correct the reporting.
I wrote:
A groundswell of public indignation is gathering strength in calling for the retraction and correction of the reporting of this story by the NYT. What is difficult to understand is the Editor who is supposed to be the advocate for the public, instead becomes the apologist for the misleading story. The very same sentence you used in your column in September should have been written differently, and you need to do so immediately:
“Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like the Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.”
Should now say:
“Some stories, upon further investigation, never should catch fire because of the journalistic integrity of news organizations reveals them for what they are, hoaxes. This time the Times was not alert, did not exercise due diligence, nor quickly retract when it became obvious the story was a hoax, instead it wound up looking clueless, and worse, partisan itself.”
How many times must the Times continue to fail to adhere to basic journalistic integrity before it will lost all credibility to the American people. Trust not only must be earned, it must continue to be proven by standing up to scrutiny. In this instance, that trust was and continues to be betrayed.