Saturday, March 18, 2006

New York Times. 'Nuf said.

My Way News: "The New York Times said on Saturday it had identified the wrong man as the hooded prisoner standing on a box in a photograph that came to symbolize U.S. military abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
...
'The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph,' The Times said in an editor's note accompanying a front page story on the misidentification.

'A more thorough examination of previous articles in The Times and other newspapers would have shown that in 2004 military investigators named another man as the one on the box, raising suspicions about Mr. Qaissi's claim,' it said.

The Times, one of the most respected U.S. newspapers, was stung in 2003 when former reporter Jayson Blair was found to have fabricated and plagiarized dozens of articles. Last year, the resignation of star reporter Judith Miller amid questions about her reporting in the run-up to the Iraq war further damaged the paper's standing."

And to add isult to injury, this today:
""An article in The Metro Section on March 8 profiled Donna Fenton, identifying her as a 37-year-old victim of Hurricane Katrina who had fled Biloxi, Miss., and who was frustrated in efforts to get federal aid as she and her children remained as emergency residents of a hotel in Queens.

"Yesterday, the New York police arrested Ms. Fenton, charging her with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny. Prosecutors in Brooklyn say she was not a Katrina victim, never lived in Biloxi and had improperly received thousands of dollars in government aid. Ms. Fenton has pleaded not guilty.

"For its profile, The Times did not conduct adequate interviews or public record checks to verify Ms. Fenton's account, including her claim that she had lived in Biloxi. Such checks would have uncovered a fraud conviction and raised serious questions about the truthfulness of her account.""

An excellent display of proper journalism, to be sure.

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