Monday, September 26, 2005
NY Times Abdicates Basic Principals of Journalism
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions; rational people are not entitled to their own facts.
Unless, of course, you work for the New York Times.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/opinion/25public.html?pagewanted=1
Here's the story: NY Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley wrote a column in which she says that Geraldo Rivera "nudged" an Air Force rescuer out of the way during the rescue of an elderly woman.
She writes this based entirely on her own viewing of a videotape first aired on September 4th. The videotape, as NY Times Public Editor Bryan Calame confirms, shows no such thing. Fox and Geraldo are calling on the New York Times to publish a correction.
Stanley and her first-line supervisors inexpicably refused, and so the matter went all the way up to the NY Times chief editor, Bill Keller.
The problem: According to Calame, Keller likewise confirms that the tape shows no "nudge." Stanley invented the nudge out of whole cloth. Keller, though, refuses to publish a correction, because he says that the nudge happened off camera.
But if it did happen off camera, Stanley could not have seen it, and could not have reported it. If someone else who WAS there told her Geraldo had nudged a rescuer out of the way, Stanley could have attributed the allegation to a witness. She did not. She asserted it on her own byline. She also refused to make her case to the public editor, declining an invitation to sit and watch the tape with him side by side, and even frame-by-frame.
Well, if she won't talk to the public editor, then by extention she won't talk to me, you, or any of the other readers.
If Keller is not going to stand up for factual accuracy at the Times, then who is?
Splash, out
Jason
Unless, of course, you work for the New York Times.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/opinion/25public.html?pagewanted=1
Here's the story: NY Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley wrote a column in which she says that Geraldo Rivera "nudged" an Air Force rescuer out of the way during the rescue of an elderly woman.
She writes this based entirely on her own viewing of a videotape first aired on September 4th. The videotape, as NY Times Public Editor Bryan Calame confirms, shows no such thing. Fox and Geraldo are calling on the New York Times to publish a correction.
Stanley and her first-line supervisors inexpicably refused, and so the matter went all the way up to the NY Times chief editor, Bill Keller.
The problem: According to Calame, Keller likewise confirms that the tape shows no "nudge." Stanley invented the nudge out of whole cloth. Keller, though, refuses to publish a correction, because he says that the nudge happened off camera.
But if it did happen off camera, Stanley could not have seen it, and could not have reported it. If someone else who WAS there told her Geraldo had nudged a rescuer out of the way, Stanley could have attributed the allegation to a witness. She did not. She asserted it on her own byline. She also refused to make her case to the public editor, declining an invitation to sit and watch the tape with him side by side, and even frame-by-frame.
Well, if she won't talk to the public editor, then by extention she won't talk to me, you, or any of the other readers.
If Keller is not going to stand up for factual accuracy at the Times, then who is?
Splash, out
Jason
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