After Shearer located Wemp last year, she put him in touch with the magazine. The fact-checker interviewed him by phone in August and the magazine says that “Wemp raised only relatively minor factual objections to Diamond’s account and asserted that the stories were basically true,” according to Science. However, the New Yorker soon complied with a request from Wemp, passed on by Shearer, that the article be removed from the Web site. That’s why it’s now only available to subscribers. The magazine’s lawyer said this was a gesture of “good will.”
It appears as though Wemp told one version of the story to Diamond and another to Shearer’s researcher. The New Yorker says he reverted to his original story when a fact-checker was finally able to speak with him. This makes for a confusing situation. It may in fact require a court to sort it out.
But let’s set aside the lawsuit for a moment and rewind to when the magazine was checking the story. It had what was basically a single-source story, and it wasn’t able to check the article with the source, Daniel Wemp. The story itself also contained some very serious criminal allegations against the source in question. The dilemma is obvious: should you publish without getting some level of confirmation from the source or another party with specific knowledge of the events in question?
True, Diamond provided the magazine with what is by all accounts a notebook filled with detailed notes from his interview with Wemp, in addition to some recorded notes he made for himself. And there’s the fact that he’s, well, Jared Diamond, a respected author and scientist. A person’s reputation can’t excuse them from being checked, especially at the New Yorker, but he has impressive credentials. Was that a factor in deciding to go to print without further confirmation?
In the end, the magazine decided that Diamond’s notes were enough to move ahead with the story. (The experts it contacted had no specific knowledge of the events.) It also made the decision to use Wemp’s real name, thus implicating him in the murders. Remnick told Science that using real names is the standard journalistic practice, which is, of course, true.
“They thought they were being true to journalistic principles,” Michael Balter, the author of the Science article, told me. “An anthropologist would use pseudonyms. The problem in this situation is that you’ve got a principal named source, and it’s basically a one-source story… If you can’t find the original source, then what do you do when you’ve got somebody named as being involved in criminal behavior?”
Exactly. I researched the practice of magazine fact-checking and interviewed current and former New Yorker fact-checkers for my book. I can’t help but express a certain level of surprise that the story ended up in print. A reporter’s notes are a valid source of facts, but they are not the preferred way to check a story. Nor should they be the only source of information when it comes to such serious allegations.
Fact-checkers everywhere learned the perils of notes-only checking thanks to Stephen Glass. He got away with fabricating articles because he also fabricated his notes. Let me be clear: I’m not saying that Diamond forged his notes. I don’t think that’s the case in any way, shape or form. My guess, and that’s all it is at this point, is that Wemp spun some tall tales without realizing they could come back to haunt him. One expert quoted in the Science article suggests this was the case:
Anthropologist Pauline Wiessner of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, a leading expert on tribal warfare in PNG, thinks Diamond was naïve if he accepted Wemp’s stories at face value, because young men in PNG often exaggerate their tribal warfare exploits or make them up entirely. “I could have told him immediately that it was a tall tale, an embellished story. I hear lots of them but don’t publish them because they are not true.”
As of now, there exist two very different versions of this tale of vengeance. In the end, someone’s reputation will certainly be vanquished.
thanks for this! i love TNY and was fascinated by the original tny article making this very interesting. it does sound like tny has been very stalinistic about this case where it seems very clear they majorly screwed up. would like to hear more clearly from cjr on their judgement of tny's handling post being called on this. once they are sued i guess it's par for anybody to become totally legalistic and act like complete despicable so-and-so's. but it sure does not sound like they have ever done the right thing around the entire article and the questioning of its accuracy and their total lack of fact checking before accusing people in PNG of murder.
The globe is such a small place now anything published anywhere is now accessable anywhere including to folks in the jungle or any remote locale.
#1 Posted by steve schmandt, CJR on Sat 23 May 2009 at 10:51 PM
Anthropological literature is fraught with made up stories. In some cases it is a matter of sources telling researchers what they think the researchers want to hear. In other cases it is gulling fools. There is an entire genre in anthropological literature that black culture refers to as "putting on the honkey." In African American and Native American literature, it happens often and is used satirically in some imaginative works.
#2 Posted by David Newquist, CJR on Sun 24 May 2009 at 12:19 AM
I've been a journalist in Southeast Asia for a decade and in and out of Papua, the West side of the island, with many ethnic groups that cross borders, such as the Dani (I think). I'd treat any tales of heroism with a big, big grain of salt. My impression is there's a tolerance of competitive boasting when it comes to great or dastardly deeds in alot of Papua, both sides. I'm surprised jared got taken in. Can't help thinking that Jared himself was surprised that he was called on it.
#3 Posted by Tom, CJR on Mon 25 May 2009 at 12:12 AM
Interesting article - but what is New Guinea? Do you mean Papua New Guinea?
#4 Posted by Jonas, CJR on Mon 25 May 2009 at 01:07 PM
Thank you for this, and I hope you continue to follow this story. Some of Jared Diamond's previous work has not withstood close scrutiny, but most of the criticism of his writings that I have found has been in academic publications. There is a lengthy and very good criticism of Diamond's Easter Island observations that are online, and show to me deliberate efforts to distort the record. I am not a lawyer, but I do not understand why this is not filed as a libel suit, instead of a defamation suit. Would not a libel suit bring several magnitudes greater financial consequences than defamation.
#5 Posted by edward, CJR on Tue 26 May 2009 at 11:11 AM
Having read Tim Flannery's book Throwin Leg Way concerning New Guinea and growing up in Australia, where documentaries whose intent in showing the 'primitive savages' was the norm 20-30 years ago, including beating up stories of head hunters, the inflection was that their tribal wars are savage and ours our noble.
It is most likely that boasting has caused this article and a failure by Jared Diamond to see this story in the context of a greatly modernised Papua New Guinea, rather than as a story from the 'jungle'.
Not to make too much light of this, Mandingo brings Monty Python to mind, When burning the village witch a villager (Eric Idle) accuses: "She turned me into a mute: I got better"
#6 Posted by James, CJR on Tue 26 May 2009 at 06:38 PM
Is there any chance that the CJR could get a little more sophisticated about its reporting of lawsuits?
After all, what makes this a "$10-million lawsuit"? Nothing, other than the plaintiff asking for $10 million, a sum they plucked from the air. The number is a fantasy.
And yet the CJR, and most journalists, report that number as if it has real meaning. Doing so displays their ignorance of the process, as that number has no legal signifance whatsoever. (In fact, some jurisdictions forbid the incusion of such a sum in the Complaint so as to prevent such gullible reporting.)
So CJR, show some leadership and sophistication and stop referring to the sum in the Complaint as if it had any legal or factual significance.
#7 Posted by garhighway, CJR on Tue 26 May 2009 at 07:05 PM
I'm surprised Silverman has not applied his usual "worst intention" standard to jared Diamond, as he does in almost every other case of journalistic error he castigates. Of course, he has also has a somewhat different standard--the benefit of the doubt--for such publications as the New York Times.
#8 Posted by Jake, CJR on Wed 3 Jun 2009 at 07:57 PM
has this lawsuit been settled? seems so.
#9 Posted by Peter Smith, CJR on Thu 10 May 2012 at 06:24 PM