Behind the News
NRO’s Editing Breakdown
Seems to be a problem with “opinion” mags these days
By Paul McLeary Fri 7 Dec 2007 02:25 PMIt looks like we won’t have W. Thomas Smith to kick around anymore. The freelance National Review Online writer, who was caught fudging some facts in a couple of recent blog posts from Lebanon, won’t be writing for the magazine any longer. He writes this morning that,
Both NRO and I have taken far too much heat for something which would never have happened had I been more specific in terms of detailing my sourcing while blogging about Lebanon at “The Tank”. That is a responsibility I have to accept.
Kathryn Jean Lopez, the editor of NRO, also posted a mea culpa on the site today, giving what at first glance looks to be a pretty good rundown of what happened:
We should have required Smith to clearly source all of his original reporting from Lebanon. Smith let himself become susceptible to spin by those taking him around Lebanon, so his reporting from there should be read with that knowledge…This was an editing failure as much as it was a reporting failure. [emphasis ours]
When it comes down to it, that last line says it all (though don’t tell TNR’s Frank Foer that—the guy just burned through a couple thousand words to say essentially the same thing, in a much more tortured and unsatisfactory fashion, while trying to distance TNR from its own fabulist, Scott Beauchamp.) In both cases, the editors in question saw a sexy story and failed to perform due diligence to make sure that it was true.
There is one thing I’d like explained, however. Remember how The Weekly Standard got all bent out of shape over Beauchamp’s fables? Well, not a single peep thus far from the folks there about Smith’s fairy tales.
CJR
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padikiller![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
Fri 7 Dec 2007 08:59 PMPaul McLeary Cops Yet Another Couple of Padikillerisms
Remember how The Weekly Standard got all bent out of shape over Beauchamp’s fables? Well, not a single peep thus far from the folks there about Smith’s fairy tales
padikiller basks in the glory of imitation/b>
"Single peep?"....
"Fairy tale?".....
Mr. McLeary is coming around to the padikiller way of thinking!....
Isn't this one of the seven signs?.....
Well.. I hate to burst the Moonbat Mythological Bubble... But the TNR scandal is EXACTLY opposite frrom the NRO scandal....
NRO did an open investigation...THANKING its critics.... and ultimately accepted responsibility for the mistake and fired the reporter.....
TNR, on the other hand, derided its critics... And obfuscated the truth th the bitter end....
And now, Mr. McLeary, who defended TNR's BS and derided its critics in a juvenile hissy-fit, is trying to backtack from his biased "reporting"...
WHAT A DAMNED HOOT!....
TDC![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
Tue 11 Dec 2007 02:39 PMCompare and Contrast
Smith took responsibility and NRO took responsibility in a fairly quick manner after the allegations were made, apologized and corrected the issue. Foer huffed and puffed and whined and pissed and moaned about it for months and individuals like Goldfarb at the Standard called him for it.
But its good that you now see this as a “problem”, because admission of a “problem” is the first step to fixing it.