On Monday, The New York Times had an exclusive for its subscribers: an e-mail promising, as its title read, “The Story Behind the Story: The Twisting Case Against Dominique Strauss-Kahn.” Written by Carolyn Ryan, the metropolitan editor, it was only the second such behind the scenes e-mail offered by the Times as a perk to subscribers after instituting their paywall.
With that title, it sounds like a tantalizing and timely read, particularly given the latest twist in the case, when the lawyer of Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, claimed last week that news The New York Times originally broke—allegations of an “alarming” recorded phone call Diallo placed to an Arizona jail that made it seem “as if she hoped to profit” from her charges—was wrong.
Indeed, the story of the International Monetary Fund president and his hotel-housekeeper accuser has been full of twists, and the Times—being the juggernaut that it is—has been the petri dish in which much of this twisting narrative been cultured. Let’s review:
On May 14, Dominique Strauss-Kahn first made headlines like this one in The New York Times: “I.M.F. Chief, Apprehended at Airport, Is Accused of Sexual Attack.”
Details were sketchy, but things did not look good for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who was reported in American media to be a philandering womanizer and a Porsche-driving Socialist.
In the weeks that followed, the Times threw their weight into all sorts of related stories and op-eds—no less than fifty by June 30, Ryan tells us—about sex and power, the tolerances of French women, sexual-cravenness at the IMF, outrage in France, the appropriateness of the perp walk, the hazards for hotel housekeepers and so on.
By June 14, a month after the alleged attack, the media seemed to be fully in the anonymous accuser’s corner, as evidenced by the Times’s profile of the woman, which drew upon the collective efforts of three reporters (seven counting foot-noted contributors) and a trip to an isolated hamlet in Africa, to give the first detailed picture of who the accuser is. The takeaway was that, as the title put it, “Strauss-Kahn’s Accuser Portrayed as Quiet, Hard-working.” The reporting seemed exhaustive:
In dozens of interviews with people who know her or are familiar with her life, the woman, now 32, is portrayed as an unassuming and hard-working single mother. The interviews were conducted in New York and in her homeland, Guinea, with relatives, neighbors, co-workers and former employers. The woman herself has stayed out of public view in recent weeks and has not spoken to reporters.
For color we get that her father was an imam. She grew up in a thatched-roofed hut alongside holy books. Her life in New York is reported to be staid—she is “not fiery” and enjoys watching Nigerian comedies.
But then, just half a month later, came a drastically different picture. It was the result of revelations, broken by the Times on June 30. “Strauss-Kahn Prosecution Said to Be Near Collapse,” read the headline.
The story charts the accuser’s newly-discovered credibility issues. The Times produced a letter from the district attorney’s office which speaks to all of these—lying on her asylum application, lying on her taxes, inconsistencies in her story about movements after the assault. Actually, one key detail is absent from the letter, and, significantly, it’s the detail the Timeshat has become the most damning, one that was placed high in the article. The Times reports it like this:
According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him.
The Times ran another story on July 1, “Strauss-Kahn Accuser’s Call Alarmed Prosecutors,” which provides more detail and suggests that it was the phone call that had tipped the scales. It describes the “ground-shifting revelation”:
Twenty-eight hours after a housekeeper at the Sofitel New York said she was sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, she spoke by phone to a boyfriend in an immigration jail in Arizona.
Being of a cynical nature, and bearing in mind DSK had employed TD, which has strong connections with the NYP and the DA's office, I see it as very likely that the call together with the first 'synopsis' were slipped to the DA's office and leaked at the same time to the New York Times. The DA's office, in the confusion, never bothered verifying the translation, until forced to by Thompson.
#1 Posted by rob, CJR on Fri 5 Aug 2011 at 07:34 PM
Indeed, there ought to be a fuller reckoning, including the $100,000 found in her bank account (s) or did that somehow slip your notice?
Fair enough, the defense counsel said she had been misquoted, and that IS news. I think the truth might lie somewhere in between the two narratives, and hope the trial proceeds, so that justice may be SEEN to be done.
But, for his well publicised habitual ill treatment of women, I hope he never becomes President of France. Any thoughts on the timely issuance of an investigation of the Socialist candidate Christine Lagarde?
#2 Posted by Ergon, CJR on Sat 6 Aug 2011 at 09:11 PM
"New York Post went one step more and suggested she had worked as a prostitute"
This was worse than the original alleged assault.
'Sources close to the defense' gave the information to the New York Post. The World's media repeated it in headlines. Regardless of the outcome of the case, the slurs will stick.
Her life, her daughter's life and her family in Guinea will suffer from this until the end of their days.
If this had been my wife or daughter, I'd be more tempted to seek a gun than a lawyer and track down the journalists and the 'source close to the defense'.
The fact that it was lies is clear from the New York Post's stopping the moment a court action was threatened - Murdoch tabloids would have continued with even more vigour if they had had a shadow of a proof.
This is a terrible inethical, immoral cynical action.
#3 Posted by rob, CJR on Mon 8 Aug 2011 at 06:13 AM
I wrote and reported the two Times stories that included the quote you discuss above.
Your post is critical of an email sent by the Times metro editor about the case that "does not defend the reporting against the lawyer’s recent challenge or even acknowledge that a challenge has been made."
What challenge?
There's a dispute between the district attorney's office and the housekeeper's lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, about the words and substance of a taped conversation she had a day after the encounter with Strauss-Kahn.
But there's no dispute that we accurately reported how each side viewed the tape. As far as I know, Thompson hasn't challenged what we wrote.
In fact, on July 6, Thompson publicly released a letter in which he discusses an exchange he had on June 30 with the No. 2 prosecutor in the District Attorney's office. Thompson writes that the prosecutor "stated the victim said 'words to the effect' that 'this guy has a lot of money. I know what I'm doing.''
That's just how we reported the quote on July 1 -- a day after Thompson first heard it. (His complaint in that letter was that we shouldn't have known what the DA said -- not that we got it wrong.)
Some days later, when Thompson gave his version of what the tape said, we reported that too. He was arguing with the DA's office -- not with reporting in The New York Times.
#4 Posted by Jim Dwyer, CJR on Sat 20 Aug 2011 at 03:48 PM