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LIKELY STORY. I'd like to second everything Matt has to say here about the appalling brow-beating the conservative press has been giving The New Republic over its controversial "Baghdad Diarist." But let's not neglect the role of The New York Times in fomenting doubts, either. An additional reason people have huffed and puffed about whether or not author Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a.k.a. "Scott Thomas," was really a member of the armed forces is because Times reporter Louise Story inaccurately reported on Tuesday that there was some question on the matter -- despite the fact that she had been assured he was a member of the military. She tried to make it look as though TNR editor Frank Foer was being shifty or perhaps even lying, ending her story on the controversy:
The magazine granted anonymity to the writer to keep him from being punished by his military superiors and to allow him to write candidly, Mr. Foer said. He said that he had met the writer and that he knows with "near certainty" that he is, in fact, a soldier.Later, she added a new final sentence, according to close Times watchers on the right:
After this article appeared, Mr. Foer said he was "absolutely certain" that the author is a soldier.But that's not a proper correction and the chronology in the story that's online consequently is a mess. Based on the antecedent, it reads as if Story had interviewed Frank about the Diarist (the most probable "this" in "this story") before it was published, which doesn't make any sense. And look at the prejudicial language Story used early on:
several readers and a spokesman for the base where the soldier is supposedly based have written in, raising more questions.Supposedly? Why couldn't she just say "where The New Republic says the soldier is based"? That "supposedly" is an editorial taking of sides on the part of the writer, inserted into what should be a straight news piece to signal readers to question the veracity of The New Republic's statements. TNR editors were quick to correct the false impression her article created, writing at The Plank: "Scott Thomas is a soldier in Iraq... we know this with absolute certainty." Why the Times thought the best reporter for a charged and messy media accuracy story was someone whose own skills have been the subject of tremendous controversy in the past is a mystery to me. Close readers of The Times will recall this Jack Shafer column from 2005, "Weasel-Words Rip My Flesh! Spotting a bogus trend story on Page One of today's New York Times," about Story's piece on young women who think they don't want to work once they have children. The piece was so "bogus" Shafer opined: "She deserves a week in the stockades. And her editor deserves a month." I rebutted her "facts" here at The Prospect, Shafer wrote a follow-up piece, and the blogs went into overdrive documenting her outrageous over-writing. Now that we have an answer to the question she led with on Tuesday -- "Just who is the “Baghdad Diarist”?" -- it's clear that on the question of whether Thomas is who he said he was, at least, it is TNR's accusers who have been the fabulists.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
