A Hitt Job for the Times

It went wrong, very publicly wrong, and now they’re trying to clean up in the aftermath. This is unbelievable. Literally.

The New York Times will only admit to a mistake when they’re caught, and they’ve been caught…again. Public Editor Byron Calame wrote this piece for today’s Times aptly titled “Truth, Justice, Abortion and the Times Magazine.” One wonders at first glance what in the world they might say to bring those topics together honestly.

Honesty is what it’s all about.

THE cover story on abortion in El Salvador in The New York Times Magazine on April 9 contained prominent references to an attention-grabbing fact. “A few” women, the first paragraph indicated, were serving 30-year jail terms for having had abortions. That reference included a young woman named Carmen Climaco. The article concluded with a dramatic account of how Ms. Climaco received the sentence after her pregnancy had been aborted after 18 weeks.

It turns out, however, that trial testimony convinced a court in 2002 that Ms. Climaco’s pregnancy had resulted in a full-term live birth, and that she had strangled the “recently born.” A three-judge panel found her guilty of “aggravated homicide,” a fact the article noted. But without bothering to check the court document containing the panel’s findings and ruling, the article’s author, Jack Hitt, a freelancer, suggested that the “truth” was different.

The issues surrounding the article raise two points worth noting, both beyond another reminder to double-check information that seems especially striking.

Another reminder to double-check information that seems especially striking? Journalism requires double-checking information always, not only the “especially striking” stuff. The profession has grown lax.

Articles on topics as sensitive as abortion need an extra level of diligence and scrutiny — “bulletproofing,” in newsroom jargon. And this case illustrates how important it is for top editors to carefully assess the complaints they receive. A response drafted by top editors for the use of the office of the publisher in replying to complaints about the Hitt story asserted that there was “no reason to doubt the accuracy of the facts as reported.”

How do “top editors” get that far if they let slip such irresponsible reporting in the first place? Where’s the chain of checkpointing in the hierarchy of such a big news provider? Here’s the anatomy of that breakdown:

Complaints about the article began arriving at the paper after an anti-abortion Web site, LifeSiteNews.com, reported on Nov. 27 that the court had found that Ms. Climaco’s pregnancy ended with a full-term live birth. The headline: “New York Times Caught in Abortion-Promoting Whopper — Infanticide Portrayed as Abortion.”

Notice that in the Times’ style book, they’ve changed the designation ‘pro-life’ to ‘anti-abortion.’ It works to cue the reader to think negatively about the designee.

When LifeSite’s reporting came out, the Times got a lot of mail from readers. That’s what prompted the review of Hitt’s piece, which should have been done before it was published.

The care taken in the reporting and editing of this example didn’t meet the magazine’s normal standards. Although Sarah H. Smith, the magazine’s editorial manager, told me that relevant court documents are “normally” reviewed, Mr. Hitt never checked the 7,600-word ruling in the Climaco case while preparing his story. And Mr. Hitt told me that no editor or fact checker ever asked him if he had checked the court document containing the panel’s decision.

That boggles my mind, having worked for a major news weekly magazine that checked and double checked all of our reporting. So Jack Hitt never checked the court ruling.

Mr. Hitt said Ms. Climaco had been brought to his attention by the magistrate who decided four years ago that the case warranted a trial, so he had asked the magistrate for the court record. “When she told me that the case had been archived, I accepted that to mean that I would have to rely upon the judge who had been directly involved in the case and who heard the evidence” in the trial stage of the judicial process, Mr. Hitt wrote in an e-mail to me. So he didn’t pursue the document.

‘Archived’ means it’s stored. You just have to go get it. Hitt decided he didn’t need to.

But obtaining the public document isn’t difficult. At my request, a stringer for The Times in El Salvador walked into the court building without making any prior arrangements a few days ago, and minutes later had an official copy of the court ruling.

Look at what the court ruling found.

When Times Magazine editors provided me with an English-language version of the court findings on Dec. 8, just after the translation had been completed, there was little ambiguity in the court’s findings. “We have an already-formed and independent life here,” the court said. “Therefore we are not dealing with an abortion here, as the defense has attempted to claim in the present case.”

The physician who had performed the autopsy on the “recently born” testified that it represented a “full-term” birth, which he defined as a pregnancy with a duration of “between 38 and 42 weeks,” the ruling noted.

So the findings didn’t work for Mr. Hitt’s story. Mr. Calame seems to have a number of qualifiers in that sentence. But this has become a dicey issue for the Times, it appears.

Exceptional care must be taken in the reporting process on sensitive articles such as this one to avoid the slightest perception of bias.

Too late. The Times is known for far more than slight bias, and so many people perceive that, whole blogs are dedicated to pointing out the paper’s errors, and television news pundits continually talk about it.

Now look at this…

Paul Tough, the editor on the article, acknowledged in an e-mail to me that in reporting this story, Mr. Hitt used an unpaid translator who has done consulting work for Ipas, an abortion rights advocacy group, for his interviews with Ms. Climaco and D.C.

So, Hitt, the freelance writer who did this major cover story for the New York Times magazine, went to a translator who works for “an abortion rights advocacy group” (note the language of that description, cue reader again). Yet they want to “avoid the slightest perception of bias.” It just doesn’t hold up.

Ipas used The Times’s account of Ms. Climaco’s sentence to seek donations on its Web site for “identifying lawyers who could appeal her case” and to help the organization “continue critical advocacy work” across Central America. “A gift from you toward our goal of $30,000 will help Carmen and other Central American women who are suffering under extreme abortion laws,” states the Web appeal, which Ipas said it took down after I first contacted the organization on Dec. 14. An Ipas spokeswoman called the appeal “moderately successful.”

This is collusion between big media and the abortion industry.

The magazine’s failure to check the court ruling was then compounded for me by the handling of reader complaints about the issue. The initial complaints triggered a public defense of the article by two assistant managing editors before the court ruling had even been translated into English or Mr. Hitt had finished checking various sources in El Salvador. After being queried by the office of the publisher about a possible error, Craig Whitney, who is also the paper’s standards editor, drafted a response that was approved by Gerald Marzorati, who is also the editor of the magazine. It was forwarded on Dec. 1 to the office of the publisher, which began sending it to complaining readers.

The response said that while the “fair and dispassionate” story noted Ms. Climaco’s conviction of aggravated homicide, the article “concluded that it was more likely that she had had an illegal abortion.” The response ended by stating, “We have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the facts as reported in our article, which was not part of any campaign to promote abortion.”

This, folks, is a snapshot of the breakdown in honest, fair, professional journalism by one of the mightiest media with a grand tradition. The Emperor has no clothes, and he’s being told that loudly and clearly. But he’s still in denial.

Except for Byron Calame who had to write this introspective piece for a media giant not given to introspection unless forced. He did fairly well in trying to come clean in the piece, but it pointed to the need for a much better conclusion than this:

One thing is clear to me, at this point, about the key example of Carmen Climaco. Accuracy and fairness were not pursued with the vigor Times readers have a right to expect.

What an understatement.

This is just the latest in a string of even higher profile problems at the Times. I’ve written a magazine article on media bias that examines a couple of them, which should be out next month. This story belongs squarely in the middle of it.