The New York Times admits a false story about ISIS | to have published Internationale

The newspaper The New York Times, a worldwide journalistic reference and a regular target in Donald Trump’s swear words against the media, has a thunderous MEA culpa for not reaching its quality standards in one of its star products, the podcast Caliphate, which describes in 12 chapters the barbarism of the Islamic State (ISIS, in its acronym). The newspaper believes it has spread “a story of untruths” by the main source, an alleged ISIS member who has returned from Syria, and regrets that it has been unable to find confirmation that he [testigo] commit the atrocities described in the podcast. “He Times concludes that the episodes of Caliphate reproducing the stories of the storyteller terrorist “fell short of our standards of truthfulness.”

Besides a new frontier in the newspaper’s trajectory, Caliphate, published in 2018, it appeared to be the culmination of the professional success of reporter Rukmini Callimachi, a specialist in Islamist terrorism. Everything began to unravel in September, when the witness on whom the entire report is based, Shehroze Chaudhry – who claimed to be joining ISIS in Syria in 2016 – was arrested in Canada for false testimony and deception regarding his jihadist activities. Chaudhry’s arrest not only caused a political storm in the neighboring country, but also raised alarm in the newspaper, which launched two parallel investigations, the results of which were made public this Friday.

“[La detención de Chaudhry] It got us thinking about the possibility that we could have made a mistake, ”explains Dean Baquet, editor-in-chief of the paper, about this ambitious informational scaffold that is ultimately based on a fabrication. The newspaper defines the chain of information investigation and control errors as an “institutional failure” and protects Callimachi, “who will be transferred to another department because his credibility in covering Islamist terrorism has been damaged.”

“When The New York Times deep, great and ambitious journalism in every format, we subject it to tremendous scrutiny at the executive levels of the newsroom, ”Baquet said in an interview on a podcast published by the Times on Friday. ‘We didn’t do it this time. And I think I or someone else should have done it because it was a big and ambitious piece of journalism. I have not demanded that kind of research, and neither have my best editors, who have a lot of experience in researching research information. “

Unlike internal police investigations, which always take place behind the scenes, the investigation is conducted by the New York Times it is done with light and stenographers, much to the satisfaction of Trumpistas and conspiracies, who have not missed the opportunity to attribute a new one fake news (fake news) on your file. But the practice of self-criticism – which borders on self-punishment for some and falls short for others – couldn’t be more interesting from the point of view of journalism itself: two teams working in parallel for two months, one of them only examining all the narrator’s movements with a magnifying glass. Chaudhry before and after his alleged trip to Syria.

The conclusion of this informative auto-da-fe is blunt: the error of the Times It was not the appointment of an expert terrorism editor to oversee the series (moreover, a disgraceful mistake in Anglo-Saxon journalism, with a tradition of great editors); and the gullibility of the team Caliphate when it came time to fuel Chaudhry’s fictions, who convinced them by showing them images of ISIS atrocities that he had downloaded from the Internet. This lack of skepticism, to question methodically spoken stories that any professional with experience and knowledge should have screeched, is an inexcusable mistake for the newspaper.

The one least exposed to public scrutiny is curious Callimachi, who only spoke out in this regard in a circumspect tweet and even refused to answer his colleagues’ questions during the investigation, which they record in the article. Callimachi, who has not signed any information since the podcast review began, now has to attend the public mockery of the withdrawal of two major awards.

The reporter, who was a Pulitzer candidate, had previously been haunted by the shadow of doubt Caliphate, allegations of misrepresentation or even fabricated information, such as in the coverage of the death of photojournalist James Foley, beheaded by ISIS in Syria in 2014, according to his relatives. On Friday, the New York newspaper even added a correction to an earlier report of its own about a Syrian journalist who claimed to have seen three American hostages held by ISIS in 2013. The clarification of the newspaper indicates that the source’s report has “provided evidence” of inconsistency ”. Similar to the argument used in Caliphate. The podcast has not been withdrawn from circulation, but all chapters will include a “corrective statement” so that listeners know the context. A new episode will also be added to the series, in which Baquet explains what happened and admits, on behalf of the newspaper, the “institutional failure” in verifying facts and sources.

The fiasco of Caliphate it’s not just a blunder on the Times track record. The group had massively invested in the podcast and launch since early 2017 The daily, its star show, amid a deep systemic crisis for the traditional media. In July, the group announced the purchase of Serial Productions, the creator of the huge success of the new podcast fashion, Serial (2014), downloaded more than 600 million times. Certainly from the continuing expansion of this genre, the Times he hoped to attract an outside audience, especially young people, as a new source of subscribers.

The alleged truth revealed by the supposed returner from Syria who spoke vividly of various executions and atrocities of ISIS proved only plausible, and the whole report, an exercise in veracity that seems to have made that old saying, no doubt apocryphal, that It good exclusivity does not really have to frustrate. Callimachi’s reputation is covered without any sanction, but the doubt about that pioneering style bordering on the dramatization of the events is a warning to sailors.