Archive for December 18th, 2020

Today in journalism fraud.

Friday, December 18th, 2020

The New York Times has retracted the core of its hit 2018 podcast series Caliphate after an internal review found the paper failed to heed red flags indicating that the man it relied upon for its narrative about the allure of terrorism could not be trusted to tell the truth.

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“We fell in love with the fact that we had gotten a member of ISIS who would describe his life in the caliphate and would describe his crimes,” New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet tells NPR in an interview on Thursday. “I think we were so in love with it that when we saw evidence that maybe he was a fabulist, when we saw evidence that he was making some of it up, we didn’t listen hard enough.”
The highly produced series was announced to much fanfare in March 2018 at the South By Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas, as a worthy complement to the paper’s hit news podcast, The Daily.

NYT statement:

In September — two and a half years after the podcast was released — the Canadian police arrested Huzayfah, whose real name is Shehroze Chaudhry, and charged him with perpetrating a terrorist hoax. Canadian officials say they believe that Mr. Chaudhry’s account of supposed terrorist activity is completely fabricated. The hoax charge led The Times to investigate what Canadian officials had discovered, and to re-examine Mr. Chaudhry’s account and the earlier efforts to determine its validity. This new examination found a history of misrepresentations by Mr. Chaudhry and no corroboration that he committed the atrocities he described in the “Caliphate” podcast.

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From the outset, “Caliphate” should have had the regular participation of an editor experienced in the subject matter. In addition, The Times should have pressed harder to verify Mr. Chaudhry’s claims before deciding to place so much emphasis on one individual’s account. For example, reporters and editors could have vetted more thoroughly materials Mr. Chaudhry provided for evidence that he had traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State, and pushed harder and earlier to determine what the authorities knew about him. It is also clear that elements of the original fact-checking process were not sufficiently rigorous: Times journalists were too credulous about the verification steps that were undertaken and dismissive of the lack of corroboration of essential aspects of Mr. Chaudhry’s account.

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The newspaper has reassigned its star terrorism reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, who hosted the series.

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 263

Friday, December 18th, 2020

A little long today. I thought it might be fun to continue with the Christmas theme, and ran across these two:

“The Judy Garland Christmas Show” from 1963.

And as a bonus (“…in color!”), the “Dean Martin Christmas Show” from 1968.

Tragically, while there are short clips on the ‘Tube, I am unable to find a complete version of any of Kathy Lee Gifford’s Christmas specials.

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Merry Christmas!

Friday, December 18th, 2020

Old meme is best meme.

(Inspired by this, which I commend to your attention.)

Posted in Christmas, Guns, History | Comments Closed