New Action Alert on NY Times and Factchecking
08/04/2010 by Peter HartFAIR just released an action alert about the New York Times and a factchecking failure on its op-ed page. Read the alert if you haven't already, and if you decide to write to the Times, please share your letter in the comments section below.
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August 4th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Dear Mr. Shipley,
I would like to join the chorus of voices – of James Zogby on HuffPo and now FAIR and others – kindly calling for the Times to issue a brief correction to Efraim Karsh's use of an internet-based web poll as reliable evidence in his recent op-ed on Palestine.
According to Fox News, upwards of 82% of Americans oppose the "Ground Zero Mosque" if you go by their recent web poll on the matter. Right…
Thank you,
***
August 4th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Dear Mr. Shipley,
On August 2, the New York Times published an op-ed arguing that Arabs do not care much about Palestinians. The piece was by Efraim Karsh – the piece is hogwash. One anticipates that the New York Times will publish, with all haste, a correction pointing out that Efraim Karsh's August 1 op-ed about Arab ambivalence towards Palestinians erroneously treated an unscientific website poll as if it were a meaningful survey of public opinion, and that, most importantly, he misrepresented its findings.
Sincerely,
Diane V. McLoughlin – editor, mcloughlinpost.com
August 4th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Dear Mr. Shipley:
The August 1, 2010 Op-Ed by London King’s College professor Efraim Karsh about alleged Arab ambivalence to Palestinians, merits prompt correction in the New York Times. Prof. Karsh in error relied on a website poll of Al Arabiya television as though it were a statistically valid survey of public opinion. Moreover, Prof. Karsh misrepresented the poll findings in his article. I understand that the website poll did not even mention “Palestine” or “Palestinians” in the question posed on-line. Here I rely on James Zogby’s critique of the Karsh piece that appeared in the Huffington Post on August 2, 2010. (Arabs Don’t Care About Palestine? Don’t Bet On It.)
Prof. Karsh’s representation to the contrary deserved fact checking by you or your editorial staff. That the Karsh piece found its way into print in your esteemed journal on August 1, certainly discounted your assertion of the day before (What We Talk About When We Talk About Editing, 7/31/10) “[f]actual . . . errors have been caught.” The precatory phrase — “(We hope.)” – appended to your description of the editorial standards to which you aspire plainly let your readers down in this instance.
Please let NYT readers know that you dropped the ball. Print a correction.
Sincerely,
Rob Pool
Seal Beach, CA
August 4th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Your words, Mr. Shipley: "While it is the author's responsibility to ensure that everything written for us is accurate, we still check facts--names, dates, places, quotations. We also check assertions. If news articles--from the Times and other publications--are at odds with a point or an example in an essay, we need to resolve whatever discrepancy exists."
Efraim Karsh's words (from The Palestinians, Alone): "the sooner the Palestinians recognize that their cause is theirs alone, the sooner they are likely to make peace with the existence of the State of Israel and to understand the need for a negotiated settlement."
In addition to the latter, Karsh bases statistics (71 percent) from a website readers' poll — as opposed to those with legitimacy.
"Their cause is theirs alone." "71 percent."
Our media can indeed be used as a propagandistic weapon.
As an editor, will you make a stand against this?
August 4th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Mr Shipley, you earn your living by making decisions essentially in the role of a Times op-ed gatekeeper and quality control professional. Have you truly earned your salary by publishing Efraim Karsh's fantasy-based opinion as fact-based?
To be clear, if you want to publish Karsh's malicious crap, I think it's a terrible idea but certainly within your rights. Opinion is opinion, no matter how objectionable.
But allowing Karsh to frame his entire point as if based on fact, that is way over the line.
I was alerted to this issue by FAIR. If FAIR is wrong, I apologize in advance and retract my comments.
However, FAIR is correct, then I invite you to publicly apologize to your employer, Times subscribers, the public at large, and to the Arab and Palestinian communities.
Further, I urge you to:
a) give your "mea culpa" as much prominence and visibility as you gave to the offending Karsh piece and, in the process,
b) publicly recommit to "walking the walk" with regard to at least rudimentary fact-checking of op-ed pieces in line with existing Times policy.
Thank you.
August 4th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Apparently the poll cited by Mr Karsh was a very unscientific web poll that did not ask specifically about the Israel/Palestinian situation, but phrased it as the "Middle East Peace Process."
This is obviously misleading and seems to reassure those of your readers who are very pro-Israel that the persecution of the Palestinian peoples is of no interest to other Arabs and Muslims.
You know this to be false. So I'm asking to you print a clarification of the polling methods so that your readers can judge for themselves.
Thank you.
August 4th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
New York Times
Op-Ed Page Editor
David Shipley
Dear Mr Shipley,
I just read the FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) assessment (below) of Efraim Karsh's August 1 op-ed about Arab ambivalence towards Palestinians, which shows that this author mistakenly treated an unscientific website poll as if it were a meaningful survey, and ignored a real survey that found an opposite conclusion to what he drew. Please publish a correction which cites the real survey. Thank you.
Far from apathy toward the Palestinian plight, outrage about it is a major recruitment tool for anti-American terrorist organizations.
margaret copi
Oakland, CA
94602
August 4th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
I sent a fairly bland email to NYT:
Please explain your failure to catch the obvious errors in Mr. Karsh's op-ed concerning the so-called poll of Arabs. I expect a correction is actually required.
Larry S. Mills
Danville, IL
…
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots,
…
Edna St. Vincent Millay
August 5th, 2010 at 6:15 am
Dear Mr. Shipley:
Efraim Karsh's op-ed piece in the New York Times of August 2nd cited an unreliable Internet poll to support its dubious claim that Arabs don't care about Palestinians. First, the Internet poll only asked about a "peace process" and not the Palestinians, and it's quite possible that many Arabs agree with me that the "peace process" is a sham. Second, it's an INTERNET poll, which does not meet even minimal standards of scientific polling necessary to draw such any serious conclusions about public sentiment. Additionally, there are other scientific polls, not to mention plenty of anecdotal evidence, that would strongly suggest widespread popular Arab concern and support for Palestinian welfare and self-determination.
There is little doubt that the New York Times ran this piece for two reasons: (1) the Times's unrelenting racist hostility toward Palestinians, and (2) the recent Peter Beinart piece in the New York Review of Books that indicates younger American Jews don't care much about or for Israel. The desperate attempt by the Times to suggest a similar lack of interest by Arabs for Palestinians is predictable, but not supported by the evidence.
Two requests for the New York Times: (1) the paper should issue a correction and an apology to its readers, and (2) the paper should factcheck its op-ed pieces.
Thank you for your consideration,
E.
August 6th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Dear Mr Shipley,
Why do you call Mr Karshs piece an op-ed? It is so utterly in accord with the steady hostility of the New York Times against the Palestinian people that it doesnt merit the prefix 'op'. The pseudo scientific study that the opinions were based on bring the whole newspaper in disrepute. I hope that you find the gumption to begin to assert basic fair journalistic standards sometime before it is too late.
John Stokes
August 8th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Dear Mr. Shipley,
The New York Times published an op-ed by Efraim Karsh on August 1 arguing that a survey published by the Al Arabiya television network undermined a key contention of those who cite the importance of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement to bringing peace and stability to the Middle East. According to Karsh, the survey found that 71 percent of Arabs had no interest in the “Israeli-Palestinian peace talks”. Karsh failed to note that this was not a scientific poll, which even Al Arabiya attested to, but was instead an online survey that anyone at the Web site could enter. The New York Times editors who supposedly fact-checked the op-ed column failed to do due diligence to determine whether this central assertion of the article was based on a legitimate poll. The survey was not conducted scientifically, and the question posed actually concerned the Middle East peace process, not whether Arabs continue to have an interest in a just settlement for the Palestinians. As everyone knows, a survey on a Web site can be answered by anyone with access to a computer who happens to be at the Web site, and those taking the “survey” cannot vet who actually responded, nor can they assure that it was a random sample large enough to guarantee an accurate assessment of opinion. It’s even conceivable, given the ambiguous wording of the survey, that a respondent could have answered that they had no interest in the Middle East peace process because they regard it as a farce, which a growing body of expert opinion shares.
The editors’ decision to identify Karsh only as “a professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King’s College London” and “the author, most recently, of ‘Palestine Betrayed’” also raises questions. It suggests that Karsh is merely an objective academic observer and overlooks the fact that Karsh’s academic reputation is in disrepute and that he was born and raised in Israel and attained the rank of major in the Israel Defense Forces. Even the right-wing Israeli historian Benny Morris has called attention to what he says is a pattern of lies and distortions in Karsh’s work.
The thrust of Karsh’s argument is that the Palestinians are alone in their struggle and should recognize the existence of the state of Israel and reach a negotiated settlement. This represents a one-sided characterization of the positions taken by the two sides currently involved in the negotiations. In effect, it negates the fact that the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization have already recognized the existence of the state of Israel. Any editor worth their salt would have seen immediately that Karsh’s characterization was a distortion.
August 22nd, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Mr. Shipley,
I have not yet seen a correction to the very misleading op-ed piece regarding Arab perception of Palestinian issues. Your representation of the author was misleading, as was the author's choice of statistics. Have I missed your apology for lack of fact-checking, and correction to the half-truths and falacies?