With all it's faults and failures, The New York Times is an institution that I hold in the highest esteem. I spent close to a half century in N.Y. City, starting when the daily paper cost a nickel, (now it's two bucks) and would read it avidly. I felt a part of it, friends with employees from press operators to a Pulitzer prize winning reporter. When they printed my letters, a dozen of them, they would call to verify my identity, and if they suggested changes, it always requiring my acceptance.
I recently wrote this guest editorial, Darrell E. Issa, our new Congressman, printed in a weekly paper in Southern California where I now live. The theme is a devious politician trying to stonewall, and then defame, the exemplar of press integrity, The New York Times. It was easy for me to write since I really believe it-or had believed it until now.
So, when the Times prints something that is patently inaccurate, whether meaningful or not, it disturbs me that they don't seem to care enough to acknowledge it. The Times has employed a Public Editor, an Ombudsman, whose sole purpose is to keep the paper honest, so he was the first one who I emailed.
This unfolded when I wrote a diary about a Times article in that appeared last Wednesday on the indictment of Rezwan Ferdaus, FBI at it again, Drone or Model Plane? Let me summarize it, as you can get lost in the details. Since I had not seen the story on TV, which describe the FBI foiling a plot using model airplanes, the use of the phrase "military drones" in the Times article meant those the size of Predator or Global Hawk. It turns out that drones come in all sizes, from minute to full size planes, as described in this excellent reference.
The Times article described the foiled plot as, " using three remote-controlled planes, similar to military drones, guided by GPS equipment." It continued:
.......undercover F.B.I. agents who had been talking to Mr. Ferdaus for months provided him with some of the necessary components for his planned attack, including six assault rifles, three grenades, 25 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives and even an F-86 remote-controlled aircraft.
An F-86 is a full size Korean war era fighter that had been adapted for remote controlled target vehicles in the past, so the Times statement was plausible.
The following is the only mention procuring the plane in the DOJ report, available on this site on page three:
Between May and September 2011, Ferdaus researched, ordered and aquired the necessary components for his attack, including one remote controlled aircraft (F-86 Sabre)
While the FBI could potentially have the ability to procure a remote controlled F-86, and individual could not. Unlike the Times article which never indicated that this was a model plane, the DOJ report did so many times. Rather than enhance and add information to a press release, the Times distorted it and added information that happened to be false.
The clincher was a photo of a model plane. The picture was supplied by the FBI but the caption was from the Times.
U.S. Department of Justice, via Reuters
A model of an F-86 drone, a real version of which was reportedly given to the suspect.
This was not an article in my metropolitan newspaper, The San Diego Union Tribune, which was sold to a venture capital firm and cut their staff to the bone. In fact, when I pointed out some errors to the editor there, he described how overworked the reporter was with the words, "We're not the New York Times." The importance of getting this story right is important was best expressed in this comment by user, G2Geek, who is an expert in this field:
It would seem that NYT just shot itself in the foot in terms of credibility with people who know anything about the subject matter. And here I'm not talking about SMEs (subject-matter experts), but anyone who knows anything about this stuff.
If that story isn't retracted or updated or something new published that admits the error, then one or both of two things:
a) Some part of the low-information public becomes convinced that this guy was going to fly a full-sized aircraft into a building by remote control.
b) Some part of the low-information public gets hyped about the case and then when they get the actual news, they get all "disappointed" or whatever you call it, and get a tendency to dismiss further such cases as crying wolf.
Neither of those is a good outcome.
What we want the public to understand is that this is a significant type of threat, but by no means the size of threat that would be involved if real aircraft were being used.
That said, a real aircraft can be outfitted with remote control equipment and flown remotely. And if you were to load that up with any decent explosive, yes it would be a large mass-casualty attack, on the order of hundreds of fatalities depending on targeting. For example aim for the glass dome over a large shopping mall the day after Thanksgiving. And hitting a shopping mall on that day would also kill the Holiday Shopping Season and plunge the retail sector into a recession, with ripple effects throughout the economy.
I have already written to the reporter and the top editorial management. Their lack of response shows an arrogance, a "circle the wagon mentality," that existed when reporter Jason Blair was fabricating articles, and more tragically when they uncritically transcribed the Bush administration's case for going to war with Iraq.
I'll close with this last letter to the executive editor:
I write as a half century long reader and defender of the N.Y. Times.
I'm disturbed about an error, potentially serious, made in a news article about the indictment of an accused terrorist. I've not heard back from the public editor, to whom I wrote twice.
This was, at the most generous, unacceptably confusing reporting. At worst, it was a gross error by the reporter and editor who misconstrued and then embellished the DOJ report. A correction of the article and an explanations are owed to your readers.
I feel an obligation to the N.Y. Times, not to the current corporation, but to an institution built on the efforts of many past generations of journalists. The Times is too valuable a resource to entrust solely to those who, based on tacitly denying this error, appear to lack the appropriate concern for maintaining a legitimacy that rests on consistent accurate reporting.
Errors are excusable, but ignoring it, is not.
The N.Y.Times lists contacts for all of their executives. Perhaps a few more emails are needed to get their attention.