Sunday, September 04, 2016

Professional Journalism

This morning, readers across the country woke up to a New York Times op-ed by Yale University lecturer Jim Sleeper that contains patently false charges about FIRE and me.
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Anyone reading the sentence would believe not only that I shot the video, which I did, but also that I identified the student and gratuitously posted irrelevant photos of her family’s home. That’s simply a lie. The article Sleeper refers to was published by The Daily Caller after the video went viral. FIRE has never released the name of any of the students involved in the confrontation. Indeed, I’ve been publicly critical of The Daily Caller for doing so.

Sleeper knows that FIRE didn’t name or dig up photos of the student or her house; the source of the article is correctly identified in one of his Alternet rants. I caught the flagrant misrepresentation on Saturday, and I immediately wrote The New York Times for a correction. The paper quickly issued one, changing the online version of Sleeper’s truth-challenged attack to read slightly more honestly. (I would note that few have done more to spread the identity of the young woman in the Yale video than Jim Sleeper, who has repeatedly linked to reports that include her name.) Disappointingly, however, the print version that perhaps hundreds of thousands of readers peruse every Sunday morning repeats this false claim. A print correction is promised for next week.
Next week.  After the lies have had plenty of time to get around.






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