'Major league failure' by NY Times on Caliphate podcast
Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz on the New York Times admitting false claims in its acclaimed podcast series on ISIS.
Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz said Friday The New York Times committed a "major league failure" after the paper admitted to not properly vetting the claims of a supposed terrorist featured in its award-winning podcast "Caliphate."
The Times published a lengthy correction to the 12-part series Friday after an investigation showed Shehroze Chaudhry's claims of committing atrocities in Syria on behalf of ISIS were false. The paper said the story did not meet its standards for accuracy and added that reporter Rukmini Callmachi had been reassigned from the terrorism beat.
"It's hard to overstate what a major league failure this is for the New York Times, which fell for an elaborate hoax," Kurtz told "Outnumbered Overtime."
NEW YORK TIMES ADMITS MASSIVE FAILURE TO VET FALSE CLAIMS IN 'CALIPHATE' PODCAST
Kurtz credited the Times and executive editor Dean Baquet with coming clean about the story's errors, though he noted the Times had not deleted the podcast.
The newspaper published an interview with Baquet about the editorial breakdowns that allowed Chaudhry to claim on "Caliphate" that he had joined ISIS in Syria in 2014 and executed prisoners. Investigators in Chaudhry's native Canada found he had fabricated his ISIS tale and likely never even entered Syria.
"This failing isn’t about any one reporter. I think this was an institutional failing," Baquet said.
Kurtz noted Callimachi's apology for what the newspaper got wrong, "which as it turned out, was a lot."
Baquet told NPR the newspaper "fell in love" with the idea of interviewing a former ISIS fighter, even though its own vetting before the podcast aired showed discrepancies in Chaudhry's story.
"We fell in love with the fact that we had gotten a member of ISIS who would describe his life in the caliphate and would describe his crimes," Baquet said. "I think we were so in love with it that when we saw evidence that maybe he was a fabulist, when we saw evidence that he was making some of it up, we didn't listen hard enough."
Chaudhry was arrested by Canadian authorities in September for perpetrating a terror hoax, which carries a five-year prison sentence. He has denied the charges.
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"In the absence of firmer evidence, 'Caliphate' should have been substantially revised to exclude the material related to Mr. Chaudhry. The podcast as a whole should not have been produced with Mr. Chaudhry as a central narrative character," the Times correction said.
The episode got the attention of President Trump, a longtime reader and critic of the flagship newspaper. He tweeted "they do this to me every day" and called for an apology.
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