Posted on 06/05/2003 7:10:05 AM PDT by Servant of the Nine
I have learned three important things since first breaking the Maureen Dowd story,
First, I learned that an ellipse is an oval while an ellipsis is three dots which indicate an omission of one or more words that are obviously understood but that must be supplied to make a construction grammatically complete [thanks to Dr. Stephen Cooper at Marshall University for the lesson]
Second, I learned that the Blogosphere is a powerful place. For the uninitiated, it is a term coined last year by William Quick to describe the growing corner of the web dedicated self-published online diaries (web + log = Blog; Blog + logos=Blogosphere)
Third, I learned, as if I did not know already, that The New York Times matters in a very profound way.
There has been a good deal of debate in the media these past few weeks on the severity of Maureen Dowd’s ethical lapse in the wake of her controversial editing of a presidential speech last month. The story has especially touched a nerve in the Blogosphere. A good deal of the debate has centered on whether or not her use of an ellipsis to truncate a quote from President Bush represented a distortion of his remarks, whether any resulting distortion was accidental or intended, whether it was a serious breach of journalistic ethics, a minor transgression or a complete non-event. A good deal of HTML has been coded in a hopeless attempt to resolve this and other issues surrounding Dowd’s column of May 14th. I cannot hope to resolve those questions here but I hope most can agree that whatever the depth of Dowd’s journalistic sins, her decision to truncate this particular quote in that particular way was, as Howard Kurtz put it on CNN last week, “not her best judgment”. Whether she intended to distort the president's remarks or not, the fact is that her use of an ellipsis was not in keeping with good journalistic practice and did have the effect of conveying a false impression. Ms. Dowd’s insertion of the full quote in a subsequent column would seem to imply some recognition of this (more on that later). As one of the most prominent figures at the New York Times, her timing in relation to the Jayson Blair scandal opens her up to a credible charge of a failure in corporate responsibility. Put simply, she gave enemies of the New York Times one more log to throw on the fire and that was not smart no matter what you think of Maureen Dowd's writing or views.
As the person who first broke the Dowd Ellipsis story by “leaking” a copy of my email to the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, I have followed the debate with keen interest but still have no way of knowing Maureen Dowd’s intentions nor do they interest me. What does interest me and what I have failed to see discussed in all of the uproar and vituperation on the subject of Maureen Dowd and her Ellipsis is any reflection of my original intent in forwarding my correction request to Clay Waters at Times Watch and Matt Drudge at The Drudge Report. I have to admit that I like reading Maureen Dowd (obviously, since I read her May 14th column) and I have no axe to grind against her or The New York Times. I grew up reading The Times and consider myself a loyal reader. What concerns me is the hypocrisy exhibited by senior management at The New York Times in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.
Not one article on this subject has failed to take note of the real significance of my email to The Times and the subsequent stories on Times Watch and Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish – they are all dated May 14th, 2003. Those following the Jayson Blair fiasco will recall that it was on May 11th that The New York Times ran a lengthy expose detailing Blair’s lies, distortions and fabrications. Before and after the expose appeared, senior officials at The New York Times went on television in a high stakes round of damage control. They spoke eloquently about the need to restore trust at the paper, to “get it right” and to come clean. There was a good deal of dismay expressed that readers had not been more proactive in reporting problems with Blair’s articles. A review committee was formed and a renewed commitment to journalistic integrity was proclaimed.
Three days after the Blair expose ran, a reader discovered a serious error in Maureen Dowd’s column. The reader (me) spent hours attempting to notify the Times of the problem. The message sent to the reader was clear – “thanks but no thanks”. It was the indifferent attitude of the paper which prompted me to send the infamous email which ran at Times Watch. All of this took place between 8 AM and 11 AM on May 14th. Times Watch, AndrewSullivan.com and Newsmax all had the story up on their sites that afternoon. Bloggers across the internet had links up to all three stories. I would conservatively estimate tens of thousands people around the country knew the Dowd column contained a problem quotation including people at The New York Times. And they syndicated her column anyway. Given an opportunity to correct the record, and afforded a clear window during which to avoid infecting other newspapers, The Times did nothing.
Given their inaction, I believe this story, like the Jayson Blair matter before it, says a lot more about the administration at The New York Times than it does about an individual writer at The Times. Dowd either purposely distorted the words of the President to present him as inept and out of touch in the light of the al-Qaeda bombing in Riyadh or innocently failed to observe proper protocol in the use of an ellipsis when truncating a quotation. Whatever she did, The New York Times knew they had a column with a problem and not only did nothing to correct the record but transmitted the error to hundreds of newspapers around the world. As a result, readers around the world were misled as dozens of media outlets reported Dowd’s misleading quotation as fact including all three cable news networks. Newspapers across the United States were forced to explain the error to their readers. Yet to this day The New York Times has not printed a correction or editor’s note nor syndicated such a correction or note with Maureen Dowd’s column.
What the Times did do was to print Maureen Dowd’s column of May 28th which included the full version of the controversial quote without explanation and then announce with, to borrow from Ms. Dowd, “lulling triumphalism”, that The Times considered the matter closed. See if you can follow The Times logic: (1) they implicitly acknowledge that there was a problem with the truncated quotation; (2) they acknowledge that some action was in order; (3) they take an action that is completely transparent to the reader so that the false impression created by the previous column remains intact. As Pulitzer Prize winner, Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette noted in his column today,
It's as if Ms. Dowd ran the complete quote just to cover herself -- so she could say she quoted the president in full at some point -- rather than take responsibility for what she'd done earlier. This second little maneuver only aggravates the first. The first showed a contempt for truth; this one shows a contempt for her readers, who aren't supposed to see what's going on here.
As noted above, The New York Times “matters”. It matters in a way that no other news outlet in this country matters. Over the past weeks I have reached out to various media outlets where their reporters, columnists, editorial writers or on-air personalities appeared to have relied on Maureen Dowd’s manufactured quotation for remarks they made. All confirmed that they had relied on Dowd and most admitted that they had not bothered to fact-check the quote. Their reason? It came from The New York Times. For the record, as one of a handful of people who bothered to fact-check the quotation, it took less than thirty seconds to copy the quotation from the Times web site, paste it into Google and find the original text of the speech along with an audio recording on the Times web site.
My real concern is that The Times stop talking about doing something to restore their credibility and start doing things. Maureen Dowd’s column represented the first post-Blair opportunity to demonstrate their new found desire to “get it right”. And they “got it wrong”. There is still time but the first lesson in Damage Control 101 is to jump at the first opportunity to show you are serious on making good the mistakes of the pass. Right now The Times is getting an “F”. As for Dowd, I can only hope that she does not do something like this again. I have no idea how to spell the plural of Ellipsis and I do not want to try.
TWO MORE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE SUBSCRIBERS CORRECT THE PAPER OF RECORD
Dowd quotation labeled "false" and "out of context" by editorial editors
Editors across the country continued to express concern over Maureen Dowd's use of an ellipsis to form a "misleading" and "inaccurate" quote from remarks made by President Bush in Arkansas several weeks ago. The President spoke in Little Rock on May 5, 2003. Dowd's column with the controverial quotation appeared in The New York Times on May 14th and was syndicacted nationally the following day.
The Roanoke Times issued a formal correction earlier today in response to a request from The National Debate. The "RT" had included the quote from Dowd's column in a recent editorial critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror. The Roanoke Times joined the Sacramento Bee in running a correction which had also inserted the Dowd quotation into a recent editorial critical of the President. The Sacramento Bee's correction ran the day after receiving a request from The National Debate.
Both papers acknowledged that the quotation had been "taken out of context". The Sacramento Bee correction went further noting:
"The use of the partial quotation created the false impression that the president was dismissing the threat posed by al-Qaida as a whole rather than its members who had been killed or apprehended."
Tommy Denton, Editorial Editor for The Roanoke Times, in describing his decision to run a correction in his paper, conceded that "the journalistic issue is whether the words we published accurately portrayed what he actually said". Editors at the Sacramento Bee did not respond to requests for comment on their decision to run a correction of the quotation.
The Roanoke Times is the fourth customer of the Times' news service to voice concerns about Dowd's column and joins The New York Daily News, The Rocky Mountain News, The Lufkin Daily News, The Sacramento Bee, WSJ.com, The Washington Times and others in taking steps to correct the record with regard to Dowd's misleading quote of President Bush's remarks.
The New York Times has so far refused to issue a formal correction. CNN reported last week that New York Times, through a spokesperson, indicated no correction would be forthcoming and the "paper of record" considered the matter closed. Maureen Dowd has yet to comment on the matter or explain what has been called a "serious breach of journalistic ethics".
ALTERMAN EXPRESSES "REGRET" AT HAVING RELIED ON MAUREEN DOWD
Calls truncated quote "misleading"
Eric Alterman, columnist for The Nation, issued a correction of recent comments made in Altercations, his MSNBC web log. Alterman confirmed that his comments were based on Maureen Dowd's controversial quote of President Bush in a recent column. Dowd's column appeared in The New York Times on May 14th and was syndicacted nationally the following day.
Writing yesterday, Alterman expressed regret at having "relied on Maureen Dowd's misleading use of an ellipses (sic) to quote George Bush on al-Qaida".
Alterman, author the best-selling book What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News, alerted to the problematic quote by The National Debate, responded swiftly to correct the record. The full text of his remarks are available on the MSNBC web site.
Alterman joins The New York Daily News, The Rocky Mountain News, The Lufkin Daily News, The Sacramento Bee, The Roanoke Times, WSJ.com, The Washington Times and others in taking steps to correct the record with regard to Maureen Dowd's misleading quote of President Bush's remarks at an appearance in Arkansas on May 5, 2003. The Sacramento paper noted in its correction that the quotation created a "false impression" and were "taken out of context".
The New York Times has so far refused to issue a formal correction. CNN reported last week that New York Times, through a spokesperson, indicated no correction would be forthcoming and the "paper of record" considered the matter closed. Maureen Dowd has yet to comment on the matter or explain what has been called a "serious breach of journalistic ethics".
HOW I BROKE THE MAUREEN DOWD ELLIPSIS-DISTORTION STORY
Early on the morning of May 14th, I was listening to Imus on the Radio when Imus began ranting about Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times. Interested, I jumped over to The Times web site and read the column. I immediately realized that the quote she had attributed to President Bush had to be wrong. I had never heard President Bush say anything like what she wrote. Curious, I copied and pasted the quote into Google which led me directly to the text of the original speech on the White House web site. A short "CRTL + F, CTRL + V" later, I was reading the original words from the speech. It was immediately clear that Maureen Dowd had edited the quote so as to change its meaning to support the premise of her conclusion in the column. What she had done was clearly wrong and needed to be corrected. I was aware that her column was widely syndicated and realized that if I acted swiftly The Times would at least be able to correct the quotation in syndication.
My initial reaction was excitement. I had seen Howell Raines and Bob Herbert on television in the previous days talking about the Jayson Blair scandal and recalled hearing expressions of dismay that readers had not been more proactive in reporting problems with Blair's stories. Anticipating a hearty thanks from the Times, I scoured the web site for contact information. I found a corrections link and called the number on the screen. Voice mail. I called again and tried pushing "#" and "0" to work around the voice mail without success. I looked all over the site but could not find a main switchboard number. I called information and was given the main number at the Times offices in Manhattan. I explained the reason for my call to the operator and was routed into the same voice mail. I tried several more times with the same result. The last person I spoke with told me my only other option was to send an email. Sensing that I was getting the runaround, I composed a detailed email requesting a correction to Maureen Dowd's May 14th column but decided to send it where it might get noticed. My email went to the Op-Ed Department at the Times but included a "cc" to Clay Waters at Times Watch.
[NOTE: you can view a copy of my original email at The National Debate web site]
I never heard back from the Times but Clay got back to me in 10 minutes. Clay reworked my email into the story he posted shortly thereafter. Andrew Sullivan got the story up later that afternoon. He put the story up on The Daily Dish after receiving an email from a reader. I have yet to confirm whether his reader saw the Times Watch story or sourced it independently. Either way, Andrew and his readership deserve credit for their role in getting the story out. Between the active bloggers who follow Andrew's blog and my own efforts to post the Times Watch and Daily Dish links all over the Internet, word of Dowd's Distortion began to spread. Newsmax picked up the story from Andrew Sullivan. Brendan Nyhan did a great job in his piece on Spinsanity in showing the pernicious nature of how this quotation spread to media outlets around the world.
The Washington Times was the first to print the story via Andrew Sullivan's Weekly Dish and Greg Pierce's report on Brendan Nyhan's article in his Inside Politics column. [note: The Daily Dish article is not currently available on the Washington Times web site]. From that point the storywent all over and suddenly exploded in the mainstream press. It was covered in print, on television (CNN, FNC amd MSNBC) and on radio (Imus, Limbaugh). Tony Snow of the Fox News Channel called the Maureen Dowd story a testament to the power of the the blogosphere.
Here is the list of stories from the web that I have found so far...
Dave Kopel of The Rocky Mountain News blasted Dowd while reporting that his paper removed the altered quotes before running the column
Maureen Dowd "responded" in her May 28 column by inserting the full version of the quote (without explanation)
On the same day, Zev Chafets of The New York Daily News broke the story that Maureen Dowd's column was being investigated
Times Watch reported on both Dowd's non-correction correction and the Daily News story
Joanne Jacobs reported on both Dowd's non-correction correction and the Daily News story
Newsmax reported on both Dowd's non-correction correction and the Daily News story
James Taranto of WSJ.com's Opinion Journal reported on the Daily News story
Times Watch reported on Dowd's "correction" and crediting me with breaking the story
The Washington Timesa> reported on Dowd's "correction" and cited the Times Watch story crediting me with breaking the story
The New York Daily News reported that Dowd was "happy" to include the full quote in her May 28th column
CNN's Peter Vines did an extensive report on the Dowd Deletion for Lou Dobbs Moneyline. CNN reported that the Times considered the matter closed after Dowd placed the full quote in the May 28 column, Dobbs asked: "how is that corrective?"
The Times "correction" was not good enough for The Lufkin Daily News in Texas which has suspended running Dowd's column and demanded that she fully explain herself
Greg Pierce of the Washington Times reported on the Lufkin Daily News Dropping Dowd
James Taranto of WSJ.com's Opinion Journal reported on the Lufkin Daily News Dropping Dowd
Newsmax reported on the Lufkin Daily News Dropping Dowd
With the story now broken wide open, I began to follow up on Brendan Nyhan's Spinsanity.com article by sending emails to the editors of both papers he cites in the article to request a correction. Their responsiveness and desire to "get it right" stands in sharp contrast to the attitude at The New York Times which has yet to respond to my original phone calls and emails on May 14th.
The Sacramento Bee ran a correction the day after receiving my email
After exchanging emails with me for a week, The Roanoke Times came around and agreed to run a correction on the Dowd quotation
Pulitzer-prizing winner and Editorial Editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette says Dowd shows "contempt for her readers"
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/paulgreenberg/pg20030604.shtml
Chris Muir satirized the Dowd Ellipsis in his Day by Day comic strip
[editor's note: this is the coolest thing that has happened on this story]
____________________________________________
It is my intention to continue to push this story until The New York Times runs an actual correction and distributes that correction to all the papers who printed Maureen Dowd's column through The New York Times syndication service. I will update this with information as I get it. If anyone has a story link to add to this list please email me.
THE EMAIL THAT STARTED IT ALL
From: Robert Cox
Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 10:50 AM
To: letters@nytimes.com nytnews@nytimes.com
Cc: DRUDGE@DRUDGEREPORT.COM; cwaters@mediaresearch.org
Subject: not sure who to send this email to....it is a correction but it is to an editorial
Dear Sir or Madam,
As a reader, I am not clear on the difference between selectively editing a quote to materially alter a statement and simply making up a quote? Perhaps you can explain it to me.
For example, in today's column Maureen Dowd writes:
"Al Qaeda is on the run," President Bush said last week. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. . . . They're not a problem anymore."
[source: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/14/opinion/14DOWD.html]
Here is the full quote from President Bush:
"Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore. (Applause.) And we'll stay on the hunt. To make sure America is a secure country, the al Qaeda terrorists have got to understand it doesn't matter how long it's going to take, they will be brought to justice."
[source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030505-4.html]
President Bush used the word "they're" to refer to his preceding statement "top al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead". By selectively editing the quote, the word "they're" has been made to appear to refer to Al Qaeda as an organization and not to the operatives who are "jailed or dead". This ommission materially alters the statement the President made in Arkansas this week. On a technical basis the capitalization of the "T" in "They're" makes it appear that this line was a new sentence when it was not. Further, the use of the word "They're" is not, to quote Fred Durst, "in agreeance" when it is used to refer to Al Qaeda as an organization. Either Ms. Dowd does not know this or she is implying a more subtle point: that the President does not know this.
Given this, it appears that Maureen Dowd materially altered the statement of the President to make a claim (that Bush has stated that Al Qaeda is no longer a threat) which support the premise of her column (that Bush is engaged in "lulling triumphalism"; that the attack in Riyadh undercuts the President's "basic assumptions" about Al Qaeda) and given your paper's "contrition" over the Jayson Blair fiasco I would you to speak with Ms. Dowd and ask that she issue some kind of statement with her next column. Barring that, the paper itself should issue a statement or correction to run with her next column.
Robert A. Cox
So9
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