It looks like war-time fabrication isn’t just the domain of The New Republic anymore. The National Review’s W. Thomas Smith, a regular contributor and author of the magazine’s milblog The Tank, has been caught reporting fabrications fed to him by sources during a trip to Lebanon this fall. According to several critics—and Smith and the NRO themselves—Smith fell for the falsehoods his sources fed him completely, without ever bothering to try to corroborate or confirm them independently, while making it sound like he had witnessed more than he really had.
At issue are two posts in particular that Smith wrote while in Beirut. On September 25, he wrote that he “passed by the sprawling Hezbollah tent city — some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail, basically the headquarters of the prime minister, his deputies, and all the cabinet members.” Then, on September 29, Smith reported that “between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling show of force, positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.”
Turns out, the latter incident looks to have been completely made up, while the former is a gross exaggeration.
Writing at the Huffington Post, Thomas Edsall broke the story over the weekend, and interviewed four reporters either currently in Lebanon or with extensive experience reporting from the country. Beirut-based reporter Michael Prothero told Edsall that:
In his [Smith’s] wildly entertaining postings, he describes kidnap attempts, an armed incursion into Christian East Beirut by 5,000 armed Hezbollah fighters that was missed by every journalist in town, he also notes the presence of 200 armed Hezbollah fighters in downtown Beirut ‘laying siege’ to the prime ministers office…In a word, this is all insane.
Beirut-based journalist Chris Allbritton also told Edsall that Smith is “a fabulist,” and that his claim “that 4,000 Hezbollah gunmen took over East Beirut at the end of September simply never happened. Every journalist in town would have pounced on that story, and he’s the only one who noticed?”
Another Beirut-based journalist, David Kenner, weighed in over the weekend:
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Lebanon knows that these events didn’t happen…If 4,000 - 5,000 Hezbollah foot soldiers really did deploy to Christian areas of Beirut in September, Lebanon would be tumbling over the precipice into civil war. Christian politicians and security experts would be screaming from the rooftops, not making off the record statements to one foreign journalist/blogger.
In an attempt to douse the firestorm of criticism on Friday, Smith posted on The Tank a weak-kneed defense of his reporting. With reference to his claim of having seen “some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen,” there’s this explanation:
Though the tents were very large and many of them closed, I saw at least two AK-47s there with my own eyes. And this from a moving vehicle on the highway above the camp. And in my way of thinking, if a guy’s got an AK-47, he’s “heavily armed.”
Did I physically see and count 200 men carrying weapons? No. If I mistakenly conveyed that impression to my readers, I apologize. I saw lots of men, lots of them carrying walkie-talkie radios, and a tent city that could have easily housed many more than 200.
Not exactly the impression the original post left, right? Even better is his claim that “My detractors’ argument that they had never seen weapons in the camp does not mean there is an absence of weapons.” Well, sure. But it doesn’t mean that you can just assert that they’re there, either. Doing so is generally referred to as fabrication, and it’s not something that journalists are encouraged to do.
So, McCleary is taking NRO to school for publishing reports form a correspondent that have turned out to not be “verified” (or worse, may not even be true), and with a bit of viciousness to boot I see! Good for you Paul, it looks like your diligence for good reporting, accountability, and journalistic integrity, key qualifications for the gold standard of journalism that CJR personifies, has once again trumped the “right wing machine”!
But what’s that you write in the opening paragraph, TNR has been caught in some unnamed scandal too? Get out of here … that’s impossible, because according to blogging you previously did on this, the TNR stories were only “partially discredited” … why the change in tune now?
And why the complete 180 treatment of the two stories? In all your writing about Beauchamp before, you spent almost all of your time attacking TNR’s critics, with some of the most childlike rants I have had the displeasure to read I might add, and almost no time actually dealing with the substance of their arguments .. namely that Foer and TNR were less diligent with Beauchamp because he was telling them what they wanted to hear. So why the kid gloves treatment for your buddy Foer and the verbal waterboarding for NRO? Why spend all your time attacking TNR and Beauchamp’s critics when writing about that, but now spend all your time hammering away at NRO?
Was NRO’s factcheker married to Smith, like TNR’s factchecker was married to Beauchamp, a cleat conflict of interest? Is NRO’s managing editor stonewalling like Franklin Foer was? Has NRO taken retribution on anyone who has been talking about this story, like the way TNR fired the individual who leaked Beauchamp and Reeves marital status?
Am I the only one who sees a bit of a discrepancy in the way McCleary has represented these two similar stories? You see, behavior like this might leave some readers thinking that you are a hack, and you wouldn’t want that would you?
Posted by TDC
on Tue 4 Dec 2007 at 11:15 AM
TDC, the answer to your first rhetorical question . . .
But what’s that you write in the opening paragraph, TNR has been caught in some unnamed scandal too?
is simply a case on Paul’s part of modified mendacity. As long as Franklin Foer was stonewalling, Paul was not going to demonstrate any measure of intellectual honesty by challenging what everyone knew -- that Scott Beauchamp was a utter liar. Instead, he defended TNR, Foer, and Beauchamp by gamely and inexcusably minimizing the matter, including calling TNR's critics "childish."
Nor will Paul now point out that the offense at TNR was a serious repeat offense of fabulism, or that it was particularly egregious because the stories served to undermine the very troops that Scott was serving with. Unlike Paul, some of us do care about those who are voluntarily putting their lives on the line in the service of our country. We don’t like seeing them put in danger or demeaned by haters back here.
And, Paul minimized another key difference; that as soon as they found out about it the folks at NRO responded by examining the matter and making it public, marking a significant distinction from the reaction at TNR.
Franklin Foer still has not come clean, by the way, even after months and months.
All of these things, and all of the items you mentioned, TDC -- the retribution, the wife as fact-checker, the initial hole in the story that should have alerted TNR to back down all together -- should have been included in any fair compare and contrast piece by a responsible journalist.
But Paul's motivation here is to continue the anti-American ideological struggle he and the left, including Franklin Foer, are so heavily invested in. They seem particularly incensed now that the tide of battle has turned, and that we are now openly routing the Islamist extremists in Iraq, including al-Qaeda, because it means that cooler heads indeed prevailed.
Paul finished here with an attack on the way Katheryn Lopez handled her mea culpa by stating that her response "speaks to the corrupt intellectualism" of attacking Beauchamp and TNR, while minimizing the log in their own eye.
Paul, is that not precisely what you did with this very piece -- beginning with an "oh, by the way," aside comment about your ideological partners at TNR, having never once taken them to task lo these many months of their stonewalling?
It's not very convincing to attack someone for actions that you yourself employ in making the attack!
Posted by Trochilus
on Tue 4 Dec 2007 at 02:28 PM
I wont go as far as to say Paul doesn’t care about the people Beauchamp's stories hurt, he just can come to admit that his friend at the "respected" TNR, Franklin Foer published garbage and stonewalled when he was questioned about it. In fact, McCleary just repeated the tactics, attacking anyone who raised a question about Beauchamp's writings, and refused to comment on any of the substance, most importantly that the fact checker was the writers wife.
And then, if that wasnt bad enough, McCleary repeated verbatim the same ill treatment that he accused TNR's detractors of with Smith.
I guess Paul just borrowed a page from Victor Navasky's playbook for this one. Its good to see his influence is sitting so well with the CJR's watchdog brand of journalist.
Posted by TDC
on Tue 4 Dec 2007 at 06:18 PM