I ask this simply question because of two recent stories.
First, there was this story about Rod Rosenstein in theory proposing secretly recording the President pursuant to trying to get the 25th Amendment invoked. Here is how the sourcing for that article is described:
The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Mr. Rosenstein’s actions and comments.
Then there is the response to the blockbuster in The New Yorker by Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer, taking the take of knocking down that story in this piece with a primary focus on Dr. Blasey Ford’s attorneys and the Senate Judiciary reaching an agreement on her testifying. Here is the relevant paragraph:
The Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.
Note that despite the President regularly describing the Times as “failing” and including it in is opprobriums about “fake news,” apparently the White House wants to rely on this paragraph to totally ignore the New Yorker story, and I suspect the likes of Lindsey Graham and other Republican senators pushing for Kavanaugh will do likewise.
So let us compare the standards offered in the two differing stories.
On Rosenstein: people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials and this was considered sufficient to go with a story that potentially can inflame the President with catastrophic results.
On Dr. Ramirez: could find no one with firsthand knowledge although the story in The New Yorker does not claim it relies on anyone else in the room when the incident occurred, but offers statements that were contemporaneous with the actual event.
I would think a good public editor would point out the discrepancy between the two standards used.
But then again, does the Times have a functioning public editor any more?
Why the different standards, Dean Baquet? Are you going down the dangerous path followed with Judith Miller when it suits either the White House or gains your organization more attention versus being very rigorous in knocking down a story that your reporters were not good enough to get?
I wonder about the thoughts of others on this.