New York Times and Wilson

[DrDetroit]

Considering that the NYT continues to reprint the lie that Wilson debunked the administration's assertion that Iraq sought uranium from Africa, this is not surprising --

So says Slate's media critic Jack Shafer:

A fossil hunter in search of the origin of the Valerie Plame affair would probably trace it to New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof's May 6, 2003, piece, "Missing In Action: Truth." The column cites anonymous sources to report that a former U.S. ambassador had been "dispatched to Niger" after the office of the vice president requested more information about a purported uranium deal between Iraq and Niger. Kristof writes:
In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

This passage and a following passage about how the "envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted—except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway," were enough to drive Vice President Dick Cheney within spitting distance of a fatal coronary event because several important assertions of facts in the column weren't true.

But as Shafer points out, "Wilson couldn't have debunked any documents because, as he writes, he never inspected them." In fact, the documents did not even come into the possession of the U.S. State Dept. until October of 2002 — eight months after Wilson's trip to Niger. Wilson has since told the numerous TV personalities who have lovingly interviewed him that he did not lie, but that Kristof must have been confused, because the story about the forgeries had just broken and that maybe they discussed it but he certainly never meant to imply what Kristof reported — that he had seen the documents, identified them as forgeries and reported that to the CIA. Of course, Wilson had a different story for the Senate Intelligence Committee. When they asked him about the forgeries and Kristof's column, he said that he must have "misspoken."

Whatever the case may be, Kristof's column contained a fact error. When Shafer asked Kristof whether he ever intended to correct the record, Kristof said:

Reached by phone as he prepared for a trip to Darfur, Kristof wasn't sure that a correction was in order for a number of reasons. For one, he said was sure his piece accurately reflected what his sources told him. For another, he couldn't think of an example where a Times column or article was corrected after six months. The news pages do correct "ancient errors," but Times op-ed columnists have only recently been made subject to a uniform correction policy.

Editorial page editor Gail Collins instituted that uniform policy for correcting fact errors on the op-ed page after an imbroglio involving Paul Krugman. She wrote:

We correct all errors, from heart-stoppingly egregious to sublimely insignificant, because we believe that The Times should take its reputation for accuracy seriously. It's also an important discipline. We want to cultivate the reflex that automatically fixes any inaccuracy, without whining. But mistakes of significance are much more urgent than minor ones. They need to be corrected quickly, and in a way that guarantees the fix is seen by as many people who read the original piece as possible.

The most important motive for correcting the minor glitches is history. These days, everything we publish is stored not only in the Times archives and commercially available archives, but in the files of an army of search engines. We don't want a college student of 2050 to come up with the wrong year for James Madison's death because of our error - particularly not when we have the means to amend the record. The news section of the paper publishes this kind of corrections in a separate For-the-Record listing. That seems like a good idea - particularly because it makes it easier for readers to notice the other kind of corrections, which really make a difference. Those shouldn't get lost amid the misspelled names and miscalculated dates.

Despite this emphasis on correcting the historical record, Kristof told Shafer, "I definitely think I should do something on the Web and clear the air over this." Now, Shafer reports that's exactly what he's done:

Addendum, 7 p.m.: Sometime between my morning interview with Kristof and this moment, the columnist posted to his Times Web page a clarification to his May 6, 2003. (You must be a Times Select reader to view the clarification.) So far, so good. Here's hoping that Kristof links to the clarification from the May 6, 2003, piece in the Times Web archives and adds an addendum to the Nexis copy. And, of course, a mention of the clarification in his regular column wouldn't hurt, either.

Wouldn't hurt? It's called for by the uniform corrections policy. Posting a "clarification" behind the TimesSelect subscription wall, without putting anything in the print version of the paper, is ensuring that it will be read by the fewest number of people possible. And this is not some puny misspelled name. This is a major fact error. Kristof's defense — "his piece accurately reflected what his sources told him" — is ludicrous! His source, Joseph Wilson, was lying. He has an obligation to correct the record, and personally, I cannot for the life of me understand why he is not outraged at Joseph Wilson for hijacking his column and using it to further his own vain ambitions.

If Kristof doesn't follow through and correct in print, it will be time to revisit Barney Calame's "bottom line question: Does a corrections policy not enforced damage The Times's credibility more than having no policy at all?"