Times Editors Cut From Story Their Own Reporter’s Debunking Of GOP Mouse Tale
Okay, this is pretty interesting. As I noted here yesterday, the infamous GOP talking point that the stimulus package contains gobs of cash for saving marsh mice found its way into a New York Times story, without the paper mentioning that the claim is untrue.
It turns out, however, that earlier drafts of the story did describe the claim as “misleading” — but Times editors removed that description from the copy, leaving the assertion to stand on its own. An email from the author of the story to a reader confirms this.
The line in the final story read:
Mr. Gingrich sees the stimulus bill as his party’s ticket to a revival in 2010, as Republicans decry what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like marsh-mouse preservation. “You can imagine the fun people will have with that,” he said.
The story doesn’t note that there are no such funds in the bill.
A reader tells me that he emailed the author of the story, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, to discuss the omission. Here is part of her reply to him in her email, which I obtained:
I did write in the story I submitted that the assertion was misleading, but I’m sorry to report that language was removed by editors and that I didn’t notice the deletion. My initial text read like this:
“….as Republicans decry, often misleadingly, what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like marsh mouse preservation.”
So the words “often misleadingly” were removed by editors.
Often such editing decisions are made in haste or to save space. But this was only two words, and it’s worth recalling that the notion that there was millions in the bill to save the marsh mouse in Nancy Pelosi’s district isn’t just some garden variety talking point. It has been a major component of GOP push-back for weeks, repeated by high profile GOP officials in all sorts of settings.
In the email, Stolberg (who declined to comment) also wrote: “Still, I think the wording as published was not inaccurate.”
I can kind of understand this argument — to a point. The final Times passage doesn’t quite say that the money is in the package. Nonetheless, this was clearly a reference to the GOP talking point that the money is, in fact, in the bill. And the paper removed its own reporter’s assertion that it was “misleading” before publishing.
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Ah, Stoolberg.
Great stuff. As published, the sentence is highly misleading. Even Stolberg’s original version doesn’t squarely address the existence of the marsh mouse project. Most readers would take her original sentence as suggesting that it may not be pork barrel spending, not that it may not have happened.
nothing like a media post to bring out the old horse’s mouth readers…
We checked the mouse claim for PolitiFact and rated it FALSE: http://tinyurl.com/d6nerp
Did anyone check to see if the marsh mouse lives in aluminum tubes?
its still not really accurate even with the language left in. of course, everything they say is ‘misleading’ – these people never, ever tell the truth! but really, can’t she at least be censored for specifically saying “a false claim given that no such program exists or is proposed in the bill”? I mean, if you’re going to bother, why not specify?
I can kind of understand that, actually. Even with the words “often misleadingly” in, Stolberg doesn’t specifically say that the marsh mouse claim is bogus. So with nothing to back up those words, the editor may have decided that they represented a bit of editorializing, and removed them.
Really it’s more a lesson in writing than anything. And that lesson is: Say what you mean…
There are two people to blame here: the editor, for removing the qualifier, but also the reporter, for ackwardly inserting that quasi-parenthetical “often misleadingly” in the middle of a sentence in which she essentially positioned the marsh-mouse story as fact, not fiction.
It’s easy to imagine the editor’s flustered reaction on reading that “often misleadingly”: “OMG, she’s calling the Republicans liars!” Truth should have been her defense, but to a timid, and harried, copy editor on deadline it probably looked like a provocative overgeneralization.
It’s reasonably clear from the quote that it was Gingrich who raised the mouse “issue.” So, better to have quoted him in full, instead of paraphrasing, and THEN pointed out that there is no such provision in the bill — in other words, that Newt is a pathological liar and a vicious, remorseless sociopath.
But these are the kinds of dumb decisions reporters make on deadline, and in this case I think we probably ought to cut her a little slack.
That’s right, the wording was not inaccurate. It was irresponsible. Publishing erroneous Republican talking points as if they were fact is shoddy work from the NYT. Lazy and irresponsible.
Thank heavens for the Tubes of the Internet. Otherwise, editorial malpractices like this would never be uncovered, and readers of the Times would be left with the impression that the stimulus bill is going exclusively to house and feed a bunch of mice in Nancy Pelosi’s district.
OK, maybe not that extreme, but the fact that the Times chose to edit out an important clarification is disturbing. Makes them complicit in furthering erroneous talking points.
Gosh. That’s never happened before with the Times, has it? Is Judith Miller back on payroll?
I’m really sick of the defense of “well, technically we didn’t lie”. That’s not what journalists are supposed to say. Aren’t they supposed to be adults?
What is clear here is that there are people in the works who are actively involved in trying to deceiver the readers of the NY Times.
The NYT motto: “All the (distorted) news that’s fit to print”…
Is there some conspiracy by the MEDIA to continue to say this is in the stimulus package when it is not? It seems the Republican talking points always seem to make their way into articles unchallenged yet they are always claiming the LIBERAL MAIN STREET MEDIA is out to get them.
Mouse in my yellowcake, yo.
These people that deliberately spread lies about our government or it’s elected officials including news organizations, blogs and talk shows in an attempt to undermine the repair and recovery of our great nation should be strung up to the nearest tree as traitors to their country. Anything less is unacceptable for treason.
Furthermore their parent companies should be shut down if they will not cease their treasonist behavior.
Opposition is one thing that this country needs to remain viably democratic, however outright lying and making up stories to further the oppositions viewpoint is not only treason, it’s unpatriotic and un-American.
If you can’t come up with fair HONEST arguments to oppose the POTUS and his party then shut the hell up or bring me some rope so I can shut you up.
Stop the lies.
Return honesty to our government.
Funny, Gingrich never had a problem with pork-barrel spending for projects like increasing our fleet of moth-balled C-130s which cost much more to preserve.
http://tinyurl.com/crxks5
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Federal biologists and private companies engaging in endangered species habitat restoration need work too. Endangered species run the gamut from plants to insects to mice to bighorn sheep. As someone once said “size makes no difference.”
The British government has learned that Iraq has obtained large quantities of marsh mice from Africa.
-GSD
A staggering admission of right-wing bias by the corporate media. So much for the “lib’rul media,” huh boys and girls? The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (VRWC) rolls on….
And where in all this, does the poor little marsh mouse, who never bothered anybody, end up?
Not only do federal biologists and ecosystem restoration companies need the work, but wetland restoration helps to mitigate flooding in developed areas, which is good for business and real estate values. While deregulation has made it easier to deplete natural habitats, it has also allowed the depletion of our public discourse to the point that the populist Know-Nothings own a monopoly on the airwaves.
Case study in reportial self-delusion. Stolberg’s original never addresses the falsity of the mouse claim, yet she feels that she’s personally off the hook because of some ambiguous weaseling she had in there, reflexively. It’s all about convincing yourself that you’re not the liar that you are.
“The final Times passage doesn’t quite say that the money is in the package.”
Straw man. The issue is, did the piece uncritically pass on a Republican claim that “the money is in the package.” The piece does indeed do this.
My tax dollars should not go to take care of mice for Pelosi! What has this country come to? Sarah Palin, please save us from communism in 2012!
How nice! Now when there really aren’t 2 sides to the story, NYT will invent one.
The “real” Marsh Mice, wherever they are, should sue the paper for slander! Maybe they can get their 30 million from the RNC coffers!
Great. Now idiots can point to the Times as a reference for this stupidity. The %^$& happened to journalistic integrity?
If it said: “Republicans decry what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like exploring moss on Neptune” then it’d obviously be wrong and misleading, no? It’s like the old saw “when’d you stop beating your wife?” (because the question, by implication, suggests you beat your wife). If there is no money anywhere in the bill for preserving marsh mice, then the statement is a lie as written. Period.
I didn’t find the article misleading. The phrase “Republicans decry what they see as…” clearly suggests that what follows it is their own fantasy straw man.
Another Horse’s Mouth reader checking in. I think Stolberg was more to blame than her editors, although it sounds like her heart was in the right place for once in her stenographer’s life.
I’m all in favor of reporters saying something is false when it is false, but it’s a serious enough charge that it has to be made in specific terms. Saying “Republicans are lying about the marsh mouse” is fine. Saying “Republicans lie a lot” is not really fine (even though it’s accurate!) and unfortunately, the sentence Stolberg wrote sounds a lot more like the latter. I don’t think it’s good reporting to just say, in non-specific terms, that Republicans have been making a lot of misleading claims during the stimulus debate.
Speaking as a long-time editor, the New Yotk Times editor was absolutely right to delete the phrase.
The reporter, since she apparently suspected the claim was false, had to do one of two things: elicit a firm denial from Pelosi, or read the damn stimulus bill herself to see if it was true. Preferably both.
Good story greg! I really like reading your stuff from this new place you call home. Although TPM will always have a special place in my heart.
acanuck, Pelosi’s office has already forcefully denied the claim:
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/stimulus-package/pelosi-staff-conservative-talking-point-about-30-million-for-mice-is-fabrication/
My point, Greg, was that the claim should have been vetted for accuracy before appearing in print. I know Pelosi has denied the claim. I am saying the reporter did a lousy job.
I’d really like to see Daniel Okrent return to the NYT as Public Editor.
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Hmmm. $30M for wetlands. That’s about 10 cents per person. Bruddah, canya spare a dime?
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If these mice are as reported in some quarters actually the projection into our universe of omnipotent pan-dimensional beings, there might be National Security implications. E.g., rumors abound in GOP circles that they’d be adamantly opposed to blowing up the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Seems like their help is something we could really use!
Do liberal marsh mice eat mythical yellowcake uranium from non-existent aluminum tubes? I think I’ll run it past “the Google.”
Transparent GOOPer canards — get ‘em right here, folks, dirt cheap!
But it’s true that Pelosi was seeking funds to pay for weddings for gay marsh mice. Hannity and O’Reilly told me so.
I meant ghay marsh mice. Dunno why the asterisks.
The draft wasn’t that much better than the published version. An accurate, complete story would have stated: “There is no reference to any mice in any locale anywhere in the ### pages of the stimulus package.”
I can not wait for the “After Deadline” comments to come out. Lets see if honesty in journalism is a subject important enough to The New York Times to discuss.
Bad writing. Worse editing. Holy jeez, my county weekly has grammar less tortured than that.
Had she written the sentence as: Mr. Gingrich sees the stimulus bill as his party’s ticket to a revival in 2010, as Republicans decry what they see as pork-barrel spending. “You can imagine the fun people will have with that,” he said.
— with or without “often misleadingly” inserted — it would have been accurate. She’s falling over so many clauses I’m surprised the Times isn’t buying her new front teeth.
“Decry” is a stupid word. Try “complain about” or “Object to”
I have to side with the NYT editors in this one. The phrase “often misleadingly” does not explain how often, how misleading, or how
it is misleading. It inspires doubt in the reader without showing rational cause for that doubt, instead looking like an insertion of the reporter’s personal opinion. I also add that this phrase is not a debunking, it is just a denial not supported by the piece and not specifically of the GOP Mouse Tale.
What the Times should do in this situation, and what every paper should do when they quote someone who turns out to have been fibbing to their faces, is to print a correction along the lines of “this paper quoted Republican Operative Whatzisname as saying ‘blah blah’. This actual evidence shows that not to be true. The paper regrets the error.”
Hey, cool tips. I’ll buy a bottle of beer to that man from that forum who told me to go to your blog