NYT returns Peabody Award for Caliphate

[Winehole23]

The old grey lady is full of fairy tales every day, but this one is a doozy.


Caliphate made its debut in spring of 2018. It explored ISIS and the lure and threat of terrorism, driven by host Rukmini Callimachi, a much-celebrated Times reporter. It focused greatly on a young-Canadian-Pakistani, Shehroze Chaudhry, who claimed to have been an executioner for ISIS in Syria. The Caliphate team made him the main character in the series, despite clear signs he was lying.

This fall, Canadian authorities filed federal charges saying Chaudhry had lied about being an ISIS executioner. The ensuing front-page treatment (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/world/middleeast/caliphate-chaudhry-hoax.html) from Mazzetti and his colleagues found no evidence Chaudhry killed anyone, joined ISIS or even ever traveled to Syria.

In other words, the narrative propelling Caliphate collapsed.
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/24/949906978/star-hosts-ties-cloud-n-y-times-effort-to-restore-trust-after-podcast-scandal

[Winehole23]

Michael Barbaro's attempts at damage control make the NYT look worse


Privately, Barbaro repeatedly pressed at least four journalists Friday to temper their critiques of The Times and how they framed what happened. I know, because I was one of them.

So was NPR host and former Middle East correspondent Lulu Garcia-Navarro, whom he admonished to demonstrate restraint and warned was hurting the feelings of people at the newspaper.

Washington Post media critic Eric Wemple also received multiple direct messages from Barbaro, especially about his use of the world "retract" on Twitter to describe what happened.

"I happen to believe that in this instance that it is a sign of The New York Times' integrity, that they took this step," said Wemple, who has written extensively about Caliphate (https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=wemple%20caliphate&btn-search=&sort=Relevance&datefilter=All%20Since%202005). "They should embrace that they retracted it instead of ... tiptoeing around this idea."

Beyond that, Wemple said, The Times should not have assigned Barbaro to interview Baquet about a scandal that he had such close ties to.

[DMC]

Agenda based media sources and the manipulating sock puppet award services that attempt to validate them should all be viewed as folly.