The fallout over the
New York Times's atrocious story on Hillary Clinton's emails continues, and the
Washington Post's Erik Wemple goes hard on several of the most embarrassing aspects of the
Times's response. The
many errors and the
Times's reliance on questionable sources are major issues, of course, but the newspaper has
compounded the problems with its failure to issue the needed corrections and explain how the hell this happened and what editors are doing to ensure it never happens again.
For one thing, Wemple notes:
The story carries two corrections but still needs another: Whereas only one IG made the referral, the Times story still says that referrals came from two IGs. [...]
The irony here is that this error has sat uncorrected for 11 days on an article that Times editors apologized for being slow to correct. “We should have explained to our readers right away what happened here, as soon as we knew it,” said Baquet to New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan.
Don't you think that The Paper of Record should be able to at least correct its high-profile stories within, oh, say, 10 days of publication? But that's not all. When the Clinton campaign went public with its response to the
Times piece, we learned just how irresponsible
the rush to publish had been:
It was not until late Thursday night – at 8:36 pm – that your paper hurriedly followed up with our staff to explain that it had received a separate tip that the Inspectors General had additionally made a criminal referral to the Justice Department concerning Clinton's email use. Our staff indicated that we had no knowledge of any such referral – understandably, of course, since none actually existed – and further indicated that, for a variety of reasons, the reporter's allegation seemed implausible. Our campaign declined any immediate comment, but asked for additional time to attempt to investigate the allegation raised. In response, it was indicated that the campaign "had time," suggesting the publication of the report was not imminent.
Despite the late hour, our campaign quickly conferred and confirmed that we had no knowledge whatsoever of any criminal referral involving the Secretary. At 10:36 pm, our staff attempted to reach your reporters on the phone to reiterate this fact and ensure the paper would not be going forward with any such report. There was no answer. At 10:54 pm, our staff again attempted calling. Again, no answer. Minutes later, we received a call back. We sought to confirm that no story was imminent and were shocked at the reply: the story had just published on the Times' website.
Head below the fold for more on this story.
Wemple faults Times public editor Margaret Sullivan for failing to publish the Clinton campaign's response, concluding that:
From the looks of things, then, the New York Times decided it was going to give its version of events to Sullivan, write up an editor’s note and then move on. That setup places a great deal of pressure on Sullivan to digest everything and then deliver precisely the right level of condemnation.
That didn’t happen — Sullivan’s roundup was critical though not nearly tough enough, which left an accountability void into which the Clinton campaign jumped with the release of its July 28 letter.
The morning after the story's release, before we even knew all the errors it contained,
I asked if this would be "the story that finally embarrasses the
New York Times out of its never-mind-the-facts approach to Hillary Clinton." The verdict is in: The
Times is not worried about getting things right or about correcting the record, at least when it comes to Hillary Clinton.