More bad reporting of the Times

While there are still some great journalists left there, the latest case of flagrant misreporting at the New York Times reveals how far that paper has slid great journalistic standards.

Two weeks ago, The New York Times Magazine’s cover story told the tale of six-year Navy veteran, Amorita Randall. Randall told Sara Corbett, a contributing writer for the Magazine, that she had been raped twice in the Navy, and that while stationed in Iraq in 2004 she was the victim of an improvised explosive device attack that left her with a brain injury.

The trouble is that according to an editor’s note in this past Sunday’s Times Magazine, Navy records report that in 2004 Randall was in Guam, not Iraq. And, by the way, she was she never in Iraq. Further, there are no records that back up Randall’s claims she was raped. While lots of traumatized women don’t report rapes, unfortunately her claim that she was in Iraq certainly casts doubt on everything Randall says.

For their part, according to an article in the Navy Times, the Navy is understandably “annoyed,” particularly because a Times Magazine fact-checker didn’t contact them until three days before the story went to press — not enough time to verify much of the article.

The tone of the original article doesn’t help much either — even the writer seemed to be hedging her bets as to the veracity of her subject. As Randall recalls her fictional IED attack, Times Magazine writer Corbett cautioned: “It was difficult to know what had traumatized Randall: whether she had in fact been in combat or whether she was reacting to some more generalized recollection of powerlessness.” Now here’s a fun experiment: Corral the nearest veteran and ask them if they’re sympathetic to a “generalized recollection of powerlessness” from a person who lied about a brain injury as a result of a nonexistent combat record.

Can you believe this? No. That’s the problem. And it’s a serial one.

This comes on the heels of another, criminally ignored scandal at The New York Times Magazine last year. Jack Hitt’s cover story on April 9, 2006, centered on abortion restrictions in El Salvador…

Besides this NRO article, you can learn more about that here and here.

Now aside from the breathtaking failure of The New York Times Magazine to enforce any sort of journalistic standards in either of these cases, you might ask yourself what both of these stories have in common. It’s admittedly something of a tenuous link, but perhaps worth mentioning if only to make a point.

After I read the about the Times Magazine’s problem over the weekend I immediately Googled “Sara Corbett” in conjunction with “Mother Jones.” Sure enough, Corbett has written for the ballyhooed liberal bimonthly. As had Jack Hitt. Further, while there were no problems found with the article per se, another recent Times Magazine article on abortion rankled quite a few people; Emily Bazelon questioned whether women who’ve had abortions suffer as a result, titled “Is There a Post Abortion Syndrome?”

(More on that here.)

Bazelon is, not improbably, Betty Friedan’s cousin and previously had written a skeptical article about the group Feminists for Life for — you guessed it — Mother Jones.

Now, I’m not advocating a political-neutrality litmus test for magazine writers, nor do I even think that because you’ve written for Mother Jones you necessarily must subscribe to whatever brand of watered-down socialism the magazine is currently selling. Further, there’s plenty of good journalism to be had at Mother Jones, which is why it’s an incubator for The New York Times Magazine which, accuracy-issues aside, is usually full of good writing.

But clearly there’s a pattern here with the Times Magazine. From the outside looking in, it seems as if the Times Magazine is fond of hiring writers normally aligned with liberal publications and foundations. They then are given a long leash to write on contentious issues and end up making major distortions of the truth that would seem to reflect a strong liberal bias.

As I’ve said before, if strong ideological beliefs were stated clearly and not deceptively woven into what’s supposed to be objective reporting/writing/teaching, people would be well served in the public square with the exchange of ideas across the spectrum. But it doesn’t work that way, yet. And the Times continues to practice media misfeasance.