The Times responds
: Dan Okrent put up a response to my complaint about Sarah Boxer's story on the Iraq The Model bloggers. I like much of what Dan says; I don't like what the arts editor of the paper says; and it's too bad this does not address the strong complaints of the subjects of the story here and here.
Dan [full disclosure: a former colleague of mine at Time Inc.] tells the story of the story and then says:
In surprisingly informal language, and with the repeated (and unaccustomed) use of the first person singular pronoun, Boxer explored both the charges and the defense signaled in her first paragraph.
The blog world erupted. Jeff Jarvis, who operates a Web site called buzzmachine.com, posted an attack on the piece (and on The Times for running it), calling it "irresponsible, sloppy, lazy, inaccurate, incomplete, exploitive, biased, and -- worst of all -- dangerous.”"Among the many readers who wrote to me, one, a Boston Globe reporter, was especially direct: “This story was, quite simply, vile. It repeats unsupported allegations that three guys in Iraq who run a pro-American blog are actually C.I.A. agents. It produces not a shred of evidence for such claims. And by giving the claims the prestige of The New York Times, the story has put a bull's eye on the heads of those bloggers. This story was beneath contempt.”
And bravo to that Boston Globe reporter for pushing the standards of his own company. That is the way it's supposed to work. Okrent asked arts editor Jonathan Landman to respond and here are my responses, in turn:
Anytime you write about somebody involved in Iraqi politics it’s going to be fraught. No question about it.
All the more reason to be careful, eh?
Iraq is a dangerous place for sure, and all kinds of innocent things can have nasty consequences. As Ali put it to Sarah, 'Here some people would kill you for just writing to an American.' When the Washington Post wrote that these guys met President Bush at The White House people got nervous and angry, saying the same thing that your Globe reporter said of us: that it put a bulls eye on their heads. Is the Washpost also vile?
The Washington Post reported a fact, sir. You did not. You are both -- we are all -- supposed to be in the business of reporting facts. I specifically asked Omar and Mohammed whether they wanted news of their visit with Bush revealed. I asked them three times. They were clear that they did. That was their choice and I have tremendous respect for the bravery of it. That has nothing to do with your reporter's unfounded speculation and if you got to where you did at The Times, then I have to believe you know the rhetorical feint that is. The feint continues:
The brothers' last name has been in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, US News, the LA Times and The New York Sun, among other places. A press release went out on PRWeb announcing the candidacy of two of the brothers for the Iraqi national assembly. In his conversation with Sarah, Ali willingly gave her his full name. So really, the notion that we are outing anybody does not hold up.
A red herring -- and one I served, too. I did make the publishing of their names an issue and I was wrong to do that because the press and my own blog and their own press release had revealed their names. But that is not the issue. Speculation in the lead about the CIA is the issue and you know it.
And it sure seems a stretch to accuse us of repeating unsupported allegations that the brothers are actually C.I.A. agents. Sarah wrote that the blog had provoked a deluge of intrigue and vitriol on the Internet. She went on, 'People posting messages on an American Web site called Martini Republic accused the three bloggers of working for the C.I.A., of being American puppets, of not being Iraqis and even of not existing at all.' Surely that isn't putting the prestige of The Times behind the proposition that the guy is a C.I.A. agent. It's saying that there are lots of wild charges flying around (vitriol), of which this is one. 'Vitriol' is even in the headline, signaling right from the start that we’re talking about nastiness, not facts.
Is The Times in the habit of spreading vitriol it finds in the rare tin-hat blog? Is that your job? Is that news? Is that worthy of the top of your lead page? You know better, sir. She spread that speculation in the lede -- and, as Dan points out below, you cannot assume that people would read on to see what is not fully shot down because it is not reported. And, yes, when you put such speculation in the lede of a story on the top of your section page you bet your butt that you "put the prestige of The Times behind the proposition." Until you did, it was merely the rantings of a ranting blog. Now it took on the attention of the world's leading news organization. Once you said it, the same speculation was repeated on the wires in your client newspapers, on the BBC, and by others. For God's sake, man, that is a heavy responsiblity and I shake to see how lightly you take it. See also my post below on
speculation, cynicism, and journalism.
Later in the column Sarah talks about one guy who challenged these bloggers based on the name of their web host, CIATech Solutions, then quickly pointed out that this stands for Complex Internet Applications, not Central Intelligence Agency.
You make it sound as if she was debunking that. That's not how I read it. She was spreading it; she was trying to justify their tin-hat paranoia. We'll both read it again.
Buzzmachine is run by the well known conservative blogger Jeff Jarvis who, Ali wrote in one of his Internet exchanges with critics, has helped set up blogs run by some of his (Ali’s) Iraqi friends. So Buzzmachine is possibly not the most dispassionate source of analysis on this subject.
First, Dan responds below that I'm not conservative. On what basis do you say that? I voted for Kerry, you know. And just because I supported the war, that doesn't make me conservative. Did you check with me before you characterized me? Is that your standard for reporting? Or did you assume that because I criticized The Times, I must be conservative. Ergo, The Times must be liberal. I can't imagine you like that equation. But that's merely a sideshow. You mischaracterized me but at least that does not jeopardize my life. So now we're too the heart of it, sir:
You bet I am passionate about this. I know these men. They have become friends online and in person. I respect them for their bravery defending their nation and building their democracy. I fear for them. I bear some responsiblity for the chain that led to them blogging and all the rest. You bet I am passionate about an attack on them.
I am also a journalist. And so you bet I am passionate about seeing shoddy, irresponsible, dangerous unjournalism, especially when it comes from a paper I respect.
Dan Okrent was sure passionate when he called out a blogger for saying threatening things to a Times reporter. The Times -- including Arthur Sulzburger and Bill Keller and the editorial page -- have sure been passionate about the threat of a reporter going to jail to protect her sources.
Dispassionate? Of course, I'm not dispassionate.
But once again, that's merely your feint. That doesn't address the reporting that did not occur in this story and the slant that built it and the judgment you and your staff exercised publishing it and playing it the way you did.
Sarah was trying to give a sense of the befuddling complexity of an Internet brouhaha, of layers of potential manipulation what with astroturfing and blogtrolling and invisible dueling backers. (It should have been labeled a 'Critic's Notebook' but the bug was inadvertently omitted.) You can’t do that without saying what the fuss was about and in the world in which we live stirring up a hornet’s nest. This we seem to have done.
Putting a bug on it would not have cured the essential problem that remains: This had no reporting (see again the subjects' responses) and was written to spread speculation and innuendo. I repeat my original headline: For shame.
Okrent now continues.
Although I accept much of Landman's argument, a few things about his response unsettle me. First off, labeling Jarvis (disclosure: he's a former colleague of mine) a “well known conservative blogger” is both inaccurate and irrelevant. Either his charges are justified or they are not. Second, I’ve been at this racket long enough to have learned that opening paragraphs vastly outweigh the impact of elaborated arguments further down in an article; the lead’s references to the C.I.A. and the Defense Department were needlessly provocative, and would have been just as interesting, and less inflammatory, if they’d been set up with a sentence or two on the nature of the controversy – an Internet shouting match. And though Landman is right that hanging the story from the label Critic’s Notebook would have helped explain what was going on, The Times still has a long way to go to explain to readers what such a phrase actually means, and how a story attached to it is different from a news story.
Here, Dan and I split off on opposite roads. He picks up the idea that appeared in comments here and elsewhere from Michael Zimmer arguing that arts stories are different. I could not disagree more and I'll just bet Bill Keller would, too. It is still The New York Times. It is still journalism. I don't buy that just because it's in a fluffier section, the story doesn't have to be reported, factual, newsworthy, and responsible. Boxer's story was none of that.
Dan: I started an entertainment magazine at our former company, Time Inc., and I certainly never believed I should hold my staff to a lower standard of journalism, fact, and fairness just because it was only entertainment. You ran the online service there and I know without a doubt that you never allowed your staff to operate on lesser standards because it was only online. It's still journalism. It's still about truth and justice.
Dan quotes Landman from a followup message:
Sarah is a critic (she's done art, photography & theater) with a new beat: Arts & ideas on the Internet. It's an experiment with fuzzy boundaries. We thought this qualified under ideas: How they are exchanged in this medium. It's a close call and I can see why somebody would argue it should be in foreign space. But the truth is, it would never get into the foreign pages. It's too foreign, you could say. So we gave it a shot.
And Dan responds:
There are revealing truths lurking in the phrases “experiment with fuzzy boundaries,” “a close call,” and “So we gave it a shot.” Experiments can blow up in your face; close calls will be endlessly disputed; and when giving something a shot, your aim had better be precise.
Well, yeah.... especially when we're talking about real shots and real explosions and real men's lives.
I see in that the faint recognition that The Times screwed up. I wish they'd just say it. And I also urge The Times to now address the complaints of Ali, Omar, and Mohammed about this story.
: LATER... I mulled more on the way to lunch and there's something fundamental I didn't say: Landman did not acknowledge any possible error in reporting, fact, or judgment. The most he did was, upon reflection, admit to living on a "fuzzy boundary." There's no discussion here, not acknowledgment that the complaints have basis, no listening. That's a damned shame.
Also note that Boxer did not respond or Dan did not reveal it. I would like to hear her justification. Her editor clearly learned no lessons and saw no new perspective. Did she?
Finally, I just want to say this: Ms. Boxer, you owe these good men an apology
: LATER STILL: A veteran journalist emailed me this: " I had the same angry reaction in bars in Central America in the 80s when drunken neophyte journalists (all too many of those in the region at that time) would speculate out loud that anyone who did not hew to their point of view was working for the CIA. People were killed then for accusations a lot less weighty."
Speculation and cynicism and journalism
: In the story of Eason Jordan's shocking allegation at Davos that the military targeted journalists in Iraq, I see a few disturbing trends in my profession about the spread of cynicism and speculation.
First, the background -- since this has not gotten no press coverage (apart from a WSJ newsletter) or much note in my fellow media or liberal blogs: Jordan, CNN's news boss, appeared in a panel at Davos and the official blog reported:
...Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.
The blogger, Rony Abovitz, said a crapstorm ensued with some troubled by what Eason alleged and others -- antiAmericans and Arabs are singled out -- grabbing onto it as if it were truth and Jordan finally pulling back:
To be fair (and balanced), Eason did backpedal and make a number of statements claiming that he really did not know if what he said was true, and that he did not himself believe it.
I didn't post on this yet because I was (a) busy and (b) thinking about the larger issues and unfortunate trends we see in this.
First, on the issue of speculation: Bloggers are accused -- sometimes justifiably -- of not exercising the standards of reporting and accuracy that professional journalists are supposed to follow.
But in just a month, I can name three appalling episodes of journalists speculating about something -- with no apparent basis in reporting or fact -- and starting what we like to call a meme (what used to call a story) based on nothing. They seem unaware of their power and unconcerned about their standards and either unaware of or unconcerned about the consequences of of saying such things as journalists, speaking from the pulpit of their profession.
Of course, we have the incident of New York Times writer Sarah Boxer glibly speculating -- with no reporting whatsoever to back up her speculation -- about the American government affiliations of Iraqi bloggers in the lede of an Arts story and putting them in danger. (More on that shortly.) And it spreads. Next we have Eric Alterman spreading the figments of their poisoned imaginations on MSNBC. And we see it spread further via wire services and blogs. Hey, I read it in the New York Times, there must be something to it. That, after all, is the value of The New York Times -- right?
It's not that they said things as if they were fact -- it's that we have led the public to believe that when we say things they are fact. To use the megaphone of journalism in print or on TV to spread mere speculation is to abuse the trust of the public and devalue what we do.
And now we have Eason speculating about U.S. troops murderering -- what else can you call it? -- journalists. I have no facts to know whether this could be true and if Eason does, he certainly should say so -- otherwise, it's not journalism, it's not reporting, it's not truth, it's merely speculation. Yes, if it is true then, damnit, report it with the facts; that's your job. But until you do that, all you've accomplished is to spread speculation. As Abovitz wrote:
Many in the crowd, especially those from Arab nations, applauded what he said and called him a "very brave man" for speaking up against the U.S. in a public way amongst a crowd ready to hear anti-US sentiments. I am quite sure that somewhere in the Middle East, right now, his remarks are being printed up in Arab language newspapers as proof that the U.S. is an evil and corrupt nation. That is a real nightmare, because the Arab world is taking something said by a credible leader of the media (CNN!) as the gospel, or koranic truth.... To me, what was said can not be put back into the genie's bottle.
: Next, to the matter of cynicism: I was always taught that it is the journalist's job to be skeptical, to ask questions, to push for the truth. I still believe that. That is why I get disappointed in reporters who do not question conventional wisdom (for example, that America is suddenly at war, red v. blue).
But what we see here is not about skepticism. It is about cynicism, about starting with the assumption of dark motives and missing morals from the people who run our government and then trying to prove that ... or not.
I fear this is the real product of Watergate and Vietnam. I came into this business in the middle of the war and before Watergate. Of course, these were to be proud moments in journalism -- and I believe they indeed were: My professional elders reported what was happening in the war and not what the government said was happening; they held a President accountable. This supposedly led to an explosion of interest in joining the trade.
But I now fear it also led to a cynical assumption that everybody's bad and it's our job to expose them. No, some people are good and some are bad (or turn down a bad road) and it's our job to keep them honest on behalf of the public they serve.
In the incidents above -- and in some much other reporting recently (read: Dan Rather), we see journalism from the wrong starting gate, from speculation and assumption, and not from facts and questions. And we see some at the wrong finish line, when they spread speculation without fact.
: FOLLOWUP: A commenter quite rightly asked whether we'd seen any reports on Jordan's comments elsewhere to verify what was reported on the blog. Rebecca MacKinnon, who was at Davos, posts this today:
The official WEF summary does not mention Eason's remarks, and there is no transcript or webcast. But I was in the room and Rony's account is consistent with what I heard.
: LATER... I just got email from the mysterious address public.information@cnn.com labeled "official statement" saying:
Many blogs have taken Mr. Jordan's remarks out of context. Eason Jordan does not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists. Mr. Jordan simply pointed out the facts: While the majority of journalists killed in Iraq have been slain at the hands of insurgents, the Pentagon has also noted that the U.S. military on occasion has killed people who turned out to be journalists. The Pentagon has apologized for those actions.
Mr. Jordan was responding to an assertion by Cong. Frank that all 63 journalist victims had been the result of "collateral damage."
First, I emailed whoever that is back asking, "Who are you?" My name is Jeff Jarvis. What's yours? Essential lesson of citizens' media: In this world, we speak citizen-to-citizen.
Second, I say this is a perfect case for getting to the source material: Let's all get the transcript and the video and judge for ourselves. If Jordan is misquoted, then that will be clear. If he's correctly quoted but didn't mean to say that, he can say so now.
Third, I would say that killing "people who turned out to be journalists" would fall under the definiton of "collateral damage." So I'm not sure exactly the point is here.
I tried to find a video at Always-On, which was webcasting some sessions at Davos, but it's impossible to find anything there without forking over money (which I'm not doing). Rebecca says there isn't a transcript up. But it appears the event was videotaped. So I suggest that Davos and CNN get a transcript out to clear this up.
: YET LATER: Jordan emailed Rebecca. I'm not sure what to make of it and still would like to see a transcript or video.
...when Congressman Franks said the 63 journalists killed in Iraq were the unfortunate victims of "collateral damage," I felt compelled to dispute that by pointing out journalists in Iraq are being targeted -- I did not say all journalists killed were targeted, but that some were shot at on purpose and were not collateral damage victims. In response to a question about whether I believed the U.S. military meant to kill journalists in Iraq, I said, no, I did not believe the U.S. military was trying to kill journalists in Iraq. Yet, unfortunately, U.S. forces have killed several people who turned out to be journalists. In several cases, the U.S. troops who killed those people aimed and fired at them, not knowing they were shooting at journalists. However tragic and, in hindsight, by Pentagon admission, a mistake, such a killing does not fall into the "collateral damage" category....
I am frankly still confused. Has it been proven or admitted that journalists were "targeted" and "shot at on purpose" by our government? That would seem to be just as serious a charge. The one case I recall was the shot at a hotel where journalists were and as I recall the soliders believed they had seen a gun. Are there other cases I don't recall?
: Here's another rendition of Jordan's statement on another blog and I still don't get his exact meaning. Go read it. I think he's trying to say that journalists were killed in cases of mistaken identity; because soldiers shot at them because they thought the victims were someone else, they were "targeted," but they weren't not targeted as journalists and that's not "collateral damage." I think that's what he's trying to say but I'm frankly not sure.
Follow the meme
: I hope some journalism/sociology/communications student is studying the birth and spread of political memes -- formerly known as party lines and spin -- in the era of citizens' media.
Case in point: After the election in Iraq, we first heard silence from the anti-war crew and the left and then, as if they'd all gotten the fax, we heard an echo of a line something like this: an election does not a democracy make.
The similarity was striking. Somebody started that line. Somebody thought it was good and picked it up. And it spread quickly, in both big media and citizens' media.
Of course, this happens on the right and the left. This is merely a current example.
I'd love to know who first said it and how it spread. How is spin spun now?
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I do not like what he says about gay marriage, stem cells, and abortion. 