Margaret Sullivan
In death as in life, journalist Michael Hastings is creating a public debate on good journalism.
After the New York Times received criticism for its harsh obituary of Hastings (6/19/13), Times public editor Margaret Sullivan (6/22/13) responded with an article headlined, “Hastings Obituary Did Not Capture His Adversarial Spirit.”
Sullivan wrote, “An obituary of the journalist Michael Hastings missed an opportunity to convey to Times readers what a distinctive figure he was in American journalism.”
The paper had published an obituary which read to many (FAIR Blog, 6/20/13) as an attempt to discredit his most prominent work: the Rolling Stone article (6/22/10) that brought down U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal. One passage from the obituary read:
An inquiry into the article by the Defense Department inspector general the next year found “insufficient” evidence of wrongdoing by the general, his military aides and civilian advisers.
The inspector general’s report also questioned the accuracy of some aspects of the article, which was repeatedly defended by Mr. Hastings and Rolling Stone.
In her take on the obit, Sullivan said that while “the obituary…is not factually inaccurate, as far as I can tell,” she said it “seems to diminish his work’s legitimacy.” She asked obituaries Editor Bill McDonald “to respond to the complaints that the obituary gave the Pentagon inquiry undue emphasis,” and printed his response:
In a 12-paragraph obit, that aspect of his story came up in paragraphs 6 and 7, after calling him in the lead paragraph “intrepid,” noting the Polk Award for his work and recounting the considerable impact his article had. Only then did we report–as we must, if we’re going to write an honest obit about him–that the article triggered a Pentagon investigation and an inspector general’s report, which challenged Mr. Hastings’ reporting. That was a pretty newsworthy development and an inescapable part of his story, and in an obit of 425 words or so, we dealt with it in about 50.
(McDonald’s characterization of the inspector general’s report as having “challenged Mr. Hastings reporting” is dubious; it was primarily concerned with whether McChrystal or others had committed punishable offenses under the military code, which was not an argument that Hastings’ article made.)
Michael Hastings
While Sullivan observed that obituaries don’t necessarily have to be nice (“An obituary is not intended to be a tribute. It is a news story about the life of a notable person”), she suggested that the Times gave scant space to the qualities that made Hastings deserving of an obituary in the first place:
The Pentagon references, suggesting a debunking of the Rolling Stone article’s conclusions, got more space than what many consider to be essential information about Mr. Hastings: that he was a fearless disturber of the peace who believed not in playing along with those in power, but in radical truth-telling.
She noted that a quote from BuzzFeed, Hastings’ last outlet, was originally in the online version of the obit but was cut for space from the print version, which is the edit that goes into archives like Nexis:
Michael Hastings was really only interested in writing stories someone didn’t want him to write–often his subjects; occasionally his editor. While there is no template for a great reporter, he was one for reasons that were intrinsic to who he was: ambitious, skeptical of power and conventional wisdom, and incredibly brave.
If there wasn’t space for that, Sullivan noted, a tweet from the Freedom of the Press Foundation hit home more succinctly:
Rest in peace Michael Hastings, a journalist’s journalist, who embodied the First Amendment’s adversarial spirit.
“An inquiry into the article by the Defense Department inspector general the next year found “insufficient” evidence of wrongdoing by the general, his military aides and civilian advisers. The inspector general’s report also questioned the accuracy of some aspects of the article, which was repeatedly defended by Mr. Hastings and Rolling Stone.”
Those quotes came from the Pentagon’s NYT report Thom Shanker’s 2011 NYT article supposedly clearing Gen. Stanley McChrystal of wrongdoing in “Le’Affair Rolling Stan.” During an interview about his book “The Operators” Michael Hastings was asked by Robert Greenwald,“are there individual reporters whom you want to call out publicly for their sort of following the Pentagon line and not doing their job?” He replied, “Yeah. I saw a pretty egregious example with the New York Times Pentagon correspondent [Thom Shanker] who literally just published the Pentagon spokesperson’s anonymous quotes when he was reporting on my stories … he’s got the official line from the Pentagon.”
It’s worth noting that four years ago Shanker also whitewashed Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s key role in the cover-up of Pat Tillman’s 2004 friendly-fire death in Afghanistan. Just before McChrystal’s June 2009 Senate confirmation as Afghan War commander, the NYT’s published Thom Shanker’s piece (“Nomination of U.S. Afghan Commander Revives Questions in Tillman Case”) that supposedly “exonerated ” McChrystal and claimed he was “cleared of wrongdoing.” Although Shanker’s article was full of official “facts,” he ignored clear evidence I gave him of McChrystal‘s culpability [see my posts “More NYT Lies Borne Out by Facts, If Not the Truth” and “Lies Borne Out By Facts, If Not the Truth” at the Feral Firefighter blog].
The evening after his Senate confirmation, McChrystal gave Shanker (& fellow NYT reporter Eric Schmitt) a private tour of his new Pentagon HQ! A few months later, he took a sabbatical as a “writer in residence” at the think-tank CNAS (which worked closely with McChrystal on the Afghan War “surge) and CNAS hosted his 2011 book release party. Isn’t “access” grand!
I didn’t come away from my personal experience with the Pentagon’s NYT reporter Thom Shanker with any confidence in our “watchdog” media. Neither did Michael Hastings express much confidence in the mainstream media during his Robert Greenwald interview:
“… I called it the “media military industrial complex” … and they call it the Pentagon Press Corps, right? And you sort of think, oh, well it means the people who kind of watch over the Pentagon and perform the media’s watchdog function, but no, it’s an extension of the Pentagon. For the most part. … when was the last time anyone at the Pentagon broke a story that wasn’t pre-approved? It’s very, very rare.” … “And I noticed this first in Iraq when things were going horribly … when I was there. And the spokespeople in the military public relations apparatus would just lie to your face. Every day they would lie. And God forbid you … point this out. Yeah, we all know they’re lying but you’re not supposed to say it, you know? We know we’re getting bs every day, but come on, man, don’t point it out — that’s not classy.”
“In her take on the obit, Sullivan said that while “the obituary…is not factually inaccurate, as far as I can tell” …”
As Margaret Sullivan noted, the references to the Pentagon’s report suggest “a debunking of the “Rolling Stone” article’s conclusions” and discredit Hastings’ work. So was Sullivan implicitly saying the Pentagon references were a disingenuous prevarication, a “lie borne out by facts, if not the truth”?
“the obituary…is not factually inaccurate.” What exactly does that mean? (If you take out the double-negative, she’s saying the obituary is “factually accurate”). She seems to be agreeing with the NYT’s obituary editor McDonald who wrote “it’s not The Times that is questioning the article’s accuracy; it was the Defense Department. We’re simply reporting what it publicly said.” So, if the obituary repeats/reports the Pentagon’s lies, that’s OK with her because it’s technically true the Pentagon said it?
“As far as I can tell.” How much fact-checking did she do? Why didn’t she do sufficient fact-checking to discover which side has more credible evidence and logic to support its case? [for links to source material, see “More NYT’s Lies Borne Out by Facts, If Not the Truth” at the Feral Firefighter blog]. Did she read the DoD’s six-page report whitewash and compare it to Hasting’s detailed account in his book “The Operators”? (I’ve read both and the report is a complete joke). Or ask Elise Jordan to take a look at Hasting’s transcripts/tapes to verify the facts for herself? Or try to get Gen. McChrystal or any of his staff to actually go on the record to dispute the accuracy of the profile?
Unfortunately, Sullivan’s column dodged the central issue of the obituary controversy that concerned Michael Hasting’s widow Elise Jordan: the truthfulness of his “Rolling Stone” profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Sullivan failed to resolve this issue by failing to sufficiently research & discuss the glaring weaknesses of the Pentagon’s report and investigation.
“The paper [NYT’s] had published an obituary which read to many as an attempt to discredit his most prominent work: the Rolling Stone article that brought down U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal.”
Last week Michael Hasting’s widow, Elise Jordan, objected to the “blatant mischaracterization of my late husband Michael Hastings’s Rolling Stone story “The Runaway General” in his obituary” and wrote a letter to the NYT asking them to make corrections:
“If a reporter at the Times actually would read and properly analyze the Pentagon report, they would find exactly the opposite … the mischaracterization in the obituary reflects a longstanding – and ongoing – misrepresentation of the facts in and surrounding this story by the Times … I personally transcribed and have all the tape recordings of Michael’s interviews during his time with McChrystal and his staff. I can personally verify that some of the most damning comments were made by McChrystal himself, and many others made by his aides in his presence were greeted with his enthusiastic approval.”
In his disingenuous 2013 memoir Gen. Stanley McChrystal only briefly mentioned the controversy which led to his firing by President Obama. Although McChrystal claimed he “took full responsibility,” he also blamed Michael Hastings for his supposed lack of fairness and accuracy [see the post “Never Shall I Fail My Comrades” at the Feral Firefighter blog]. However, it’s telling that McChrystal has repeatedly refused to confirm or deny the accuracy of Hasting’s quotes when questioned by reporters (probably because he knows his most damning quotes were caught on tape).
In his 2012 book “The Operators” Michael Hastings lambasted the DOD whitewash/ “investigation” of “Le’Affair Rolling Stan”: The investigation reads comically. It is the last whitewash of McChrystal’s military career. … Pentagon officials would privately tell journalists that the intent of the investigation wasn’t even to find wrongdoing; it was to “damage” my credibility.”
“She asked obituaries Editor Bill McDonald ‘to respond to the complaints that the obituary gave the Pentagon inquiry undue emphasis’”
Despite the DoD’s whitewash of Gen. Stanley McChrystal in “Le’Afffair Rolling Stan,” the NYT obituaries editor Bill McDonald refused to make corrections to Michael Hasting’s obituary. He claimed that “it’s not The Times that is questioning the article’s accuracy; it was the Defense Department. We’re simply reporting what it publicly said.”
McDonald’s response recalls a quote from the film “V for Vendetta” in which a TV broadcaster said, “our job is to report the news, not fabricate it; that’s the government’s job.”
It appears the NYT journalistic standard really is the stenographic “Stephen Colbert Standard”: “Let’s review the rules, here’s how it works. The President makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces the decisions, and you people of the press type these decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put them through a spell check and go home.”
The ”blatant mischaracterization” in NYT’s Michael Hasting’s obituary is merely the latest example of their lack of journalistic integrity and it’s unwillingness to use what Kevin Tillman called a “mountain of evidence to arrive at an honest or even sensible conclusion.” Instead of seeking to discern the truth of the controversy, the NYT’s has once again (as with the Pentagon’s NYT’s reporter Thom Shanker’s whitewash of McChrystal’s key role in the Pat Tillman cover-up) displayed its stenographic ability to parrot the official government position “borne out by facts, if not the truth.” Stenography in the service of smearing a real journalist after his tragic, early death!
After her pathetic treatment by the NYT’s, perhaps Michael Hasting’s widow Elise Jordan should release the tapes/transcripts of his interviews with Gen. McChrystal’s “Team America” to attempt to clear his journalistic reputation (and stick it to McChrystal and the NYT!). Maybe give them to a more reputable news outlet like “The Guardian” who’ve actually done some real journalism recently!
Guy,
You are not alone here. I have read your comments, and I want to thank you for educating me as to the particulars of this pentagon report. Needless to say, I too love to find the true story and too often it is buried deep in the weeds and there are all too many out there who are happy to keep them there.
X
If he were alive….and a true journalist…..im sure he would be thinking that we are spending too much time on this.Especially as the United States is itself in its death throws due to this massive -out of control governments actions.So RIP though I never new yee
From Sept. 6 2011 article about Tom Shanker’s newly published book.
Time/US: “What under-acknowledged skill set, technology, person played a key role in protecting the nation post-9/11?
Shanker: No tool has revolutionized the nation’s ability to take apart terror networks, or received less acclaim, than the computer or, more specifically, the vast array of supercomputers devoted to the mission. Driven by the NSA, the system can collect, analyze, sort, and store data from a range of communications, in particular cell phone conversations, e-mails, and Web sites, billions of times faster than humans can. It’s the same case with data from documents seized on raids or forensic analysis of bombs.””
SAY NO MORE: Add Thom Shanker to the list of jurnalerrorist!