A little journalism lesson for you.
When you make a mistake, you need to admit it as straightforwardly as possible. The New Republic announced today it will no longer stand behind the reporting of a soldier in Iraq.
They admitted that American soldier Scott Thomas Beauchamp probably fudged some of his writings for the magazine, without taking hardly any responsibility for some crucial mistakes.
In 2004, public editor Daniel Okrent chastised the New York Times for a similar correction, calling the pseudo-apology "rowback." Dig it:
"[J]ournalism educator Melvin Mencher describes a rowback as 'a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error.' A less charitable definition might read, 'a way that a newspaper can cover its butt without admitting it was ever exposed.'"
As you can see by the 404 angry comments from readers at TNR, the webby world doesn't take rowback lightly. In addition, 23 blogs have already posted about the disaster. I especially liked Andrew Sullivan's take, a level-headed look at why it might have happened.
Avoid rowback at all costs, especially these days when blogs are calling for blood. Admit your mistakes, and try not to stay defensive in your apology. Here's Sullivan's take:
"it seems to me that the obvious motive behind the Beauchamp piece was to get some vivid first-person war-reporting in the magazine, to convey what it's actually like to be a soldier. They picked the wrong soldier; and they were too defensive in trying to figure out what happened (which is still unclear to me); and they should never have assigned his wife as his fact-checker."
What annoys me is that so many people are sharply criticizing TNR without at least acknowledging that their investigation was -- and still is -- largely hindered by a highly-partisan smear campaign from the U.S. Army -- which included denying them access to the soldier and leaking documents to Matt Drudge. Reading that 14 page document, I can only conclude that they made an arduous attempt to investigate the matter only to hit dozens of brick walls that shouldn't have existed in the first place. There's plenty of blame to go around, and not all of it rests on TNR's shoulders.
Posted by: Simon Owens | December 3, 2007 9:45 PM | Permalink to Comment