TNR's dubious fact-checking

Ever since the brouhaha started over the New Republic's Baghdad Diarist started, I have been wondering about the quality of the magazine's fact-checking. After all, fact-checking is supposed to be one of those advantages that the established media has over pajama-clad bloggers.

Well, one blogger, Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee has been fact-checking the TNR fact-checkers. And he's talked to one of the experts cited in the magazine's statement on why they were standing by Scott Beauchamp's writing. And guess what, the guy didn't say what they said he said. And they didn't really ask him the questions that they implied that they asked him. Tsk, tsk.

And, just to pile on TNR some more, the Associated Press covers the story and then refers to some media experts who criticize TNR's journalistic methodology involved in this story.

Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at The Poynter Institute school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., said granting a writer anonymity "raises questions about authenticity and legitimacy."

"Anonymity allows an individual to make accusations against others with impunity," Steele said. "In this case, the anonymous diarist was accusing other soldiers of various levels of wrongdoing that were, at the least, moral failures, if not violations of military conduct. The anonymity further allows the writer to sidestep essential accountability that would exist, were he identified."

Steele said he was troubled by the fact that the magazine did not catch the scene-shifting from Kuwait to Iraq of the incident Beauchamp described involving the disfigured woman.

"If they were doing any kind of fact-checking, with multiple sources, that error _ or potential deception _ would have emerged," Steele said.

He added that he was also troubled by the relationship between Beauchamp and Reeve, his wife, who works at The New Republic. "It raises the possible specter of competing loyalties, which could undermine the credibility of the journalism," he said.

Paul McLeary, a staff writer for Columbia Journalism Review who has written about the matter, said The New Republic failed to do some basic journalistic legwork, such as calling the public affairs officer for Beauchamp's unit.

"There is a degree of trust and faith editors have to put in their writers," McLeary said. "If you're on a tight deadline, you have to go as far as you can. The New Republic definitely didn't go as far as it could in terms of checking out its stories."

Tsk, tsk, indeed.