New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane has a new column wondering if the readers of the Paper of Record want to know if the politicians the paper covers are telling the truth.

Seriously. It's right here.

He writes:

I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge "facts" that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

He even has a pretty good example:

on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches "apologizing for America," a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the "post-truth" stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: Should news reporters do the same?

I don't think Brisbane's trying to be cute here, though he might want to know that Krugman for a time was actually not allowed call a lie a lie: During the 2000 presidential election season, Krugman said the Times "barred him from using the word 'lying'" when writing about George W. Bush (Washington Post, 1/22/03).

Nonetheless, Brisbane even offers some language that a reporter might insert into a story about Romney's false assertion:

"The president has never used the word 'apologize' in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words."

This would be an improvement over nothing, but it's still pretty tame--if Romney's making this up in order to generate a campaign rally applause line, is it really a "misleading interpretation" of Obama's actual words?

The fact that this question is even being asked tells you something pretty profound about the state of corporate media--at least when it comes to politics, that is.

I don't think sports reporters would be so baffled by the idea that facts matter. Let's say New York Knicks star forward Amar'e Stoudemire declared after a game that he was proud of scoring 40 points, and went on to brag that this was much better than the measly eight points that Boston Celtics forward Kevin Garnett scored, who sat much of the second half due to foul trouble.

Reporters who watched the game and looked at the box score would notice that Garnett wasn't in foul trouble, had actually scored 20 points, and that Stoudemire hadn't actually scored 40 points.

I suspect that his odd, wildly inaccurate boasting would find its way into the paper--and that a reporter wouldn't talk about how Stoudemire had "misleadingly interpreted" the box score.

Of course political arguments aren't always so clear-cut (though the Romney example is pretty straightforward). But it is very easy to imagine a kind of journalism that demands powerful figures document questionable assertions--and note when they are unable to do so.

I wrote a letter to the New York Times in 1991 after they ran a piece by Fox Butterfield (4/17/91) that invaded the privacy (literally peering into her daughter's bedroom window) and scrutinized the personal life of a woman who accused a member of the Kennedy family of raping her. Clearly some people inside the paper were outraged as well, because they don't usually print letters that are this critical (4/21/91):

I read with growing disbelief the "profile" of the alleged victim in the Palm Beach, Florida, rape case. It seems you are borrowing not only your policies on naming rape victims from supermarket tabloids but also journalistic and ethical standards.

There has been a decades-long struggle by advocates for rape victims to convince the courts that details of a victim's personal life are simply not relevant to the crime committed against her. Yet you consider it appropriate to note that the alleged victim's mother was called a "longstanding girlfriend" in her stepfather's divorce case; that in ninth grade, she skipped classes in school; that when out on a date with a chef, she talked to other men.

When one looks at this information and tries to puzzle out why you thought it worth reporting, the conclusion seems inescapable: The lifestyle of a woman is a significant question in determining how sorry we should feel if she was raped.

The article shows contempt not only for the woman, but also for the intelligence of your readers, when you explain that "the matter of her privacy" was taken out of the hands of Times editors by NBC's April 16 nationwide broadcast. When NBC aired the woman's name (without irrelevant details of her social life), it justified its decision by pointing to the Globe, a supermarket tabloid; the Globe passed on responsibility to a tabloid in Britain.

Only the Times is responsible for maintaining journalistic and ethical standards in the Times, and by publishing this sensationalistic invasion of privacy, you have failed in that responsibility.

This shifting the blame in rape cases was a persistent problem at the Times; this is from a 1991 Extra! piece by Laura Flanders (3-4/91):

"After Rape Charge, Two Lives Hurt and One Destroyed" was the New York Times headline (11/12/90) above a story about a University of Rhode Island student who committed suicide before giving testimony to police about a rape he had witnessed. The story, by William Celes 3rd, presented the rape survivor and her attacker as equally "hurt," the real victim being the 20-year-old young man with "personal problems" who couldn't bear the memory of the assault he'd witnessed without trying to prevent. (Celes points out, however, that "some said the real victim was Mr. Lallymand," the man charged with the rape.)

This was 20 years ago, and it would be nice to believe that consciousnesses have been raised at the Times since then. Unfortunately, a piece by James McKinley Jr. that appeared in the Times yesterday (3/9/11), about a town in Texas where 18 men and boys were charged in the gang-rape of an 11-year-old girl, suggests little progress has been made. (See MotherJones.com, 3/9/11.) McKinley reports that the East Texas town is asking itself "how could their young men have been drawn into such an act," and provides this as part of the answer:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands--known as the Quarters--said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

There's no indication in the article that the reporter questions in any way the reaction of the town, which seems (to hear McKinley tell it) more concerned about the plight of "their young men" than about the 11-year-old victim.

Faced with widespread criticism of this report, the Times is digging in its heels: "The paper stands by the controversial piece," a spokesperson told Yahoo! News (3/10/11).

UPDATE: New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane (3/11/11) weighs in on the story, saying "the outrage is understandable."

New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane (2/27/11) offers a justification that makes very little sense for his paper's concealing the fact that an American arrested in Pakistan worked for the CIA. The Times, Brisbane wrote, could not "take the risk that reporting the CIA connection would, as warned, lead to Mr. Davis’s death."

Davis was arrested for murder after allegedly shooting two people in Pakistan. Pakistan has the death penalty, so in theory he could be tried and executed if found guilty. Is that the risk that the New York Times is concerned about? If so, is that how the Times approaches all its crime reporting? This would lead to some interesting editorial conversations:

"We found out that the suspect took out a big insurance policy on his wife just before she disappeared, chief."

"We can't report that!! We're journalists! Do you want to get someone killed??"

The closest Brisbane comes to explaining the Times' logic is this: "The American government hoped to avoid inflaming Pakistani opinion and to create 'as constructive an atmosphere as possible' while working to resolve the diplomatic crisis." In other words, it will be easier for the U.S. to get Davis out of the country where he can't face trial if key facts in the case are hushed up. If you think that's a good reason for self-censoring your reporting, then you have no business calling yourself a journalist.

UPDATE: The New Yorker's Amy Davidson (2/28/11) delves into Brisbane's illogic in greater detail.

New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane wrote a response (of a sort) to the criticisms that the paper's reporting on Iranian missiles was fundamentally flawed. It's hard to believe that his column was meant be taken seriously.

To review: The Times published a story, based on a WikiLeaks cable, on November 29 alleging that Iran possesses powerful missiles with "the capacity to strike at capitals in Western Europe." The Times kept the cable off its website, but it was available on the WikiLeaks site. The cable showed that these were not facts, but U.S. claims--and weak ones at that, to the point where doubts existed as to whether the kind of missiles Iran had supposedly purchased from North Korea even existed.

The Washington Post wrote a piece (12/1/10) that cast considerable doubt on the Times' account. (The Post pointed out that the U.S. position was apparently based on a German newspaper article that did not fully corroborate the U.S. claims the Times was touting.) That was followed by a Times article (12/3/10) headlined "Wider Window Into Iran's Missile Capabilities Offers a Murkier View," which hinted at some of the weaknesses in the case--the ones the Times didn't see fit to report the first time. For a useful comparison, compare the definitive headline of the  original story: "Iran Fortifies Its Missiles With the Aid of North Korea." FAIR issued an Action Alert (12/1/10) and a follow-up (12/3/10) urging activists to ask Brisbane to address the problems in the Times' coverage.

So now to Brisbane's column. Here is what he wrote about the incident:

United States officials believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government obtained so-called BM-25 missiles from North Korea, enabling Iran to extend its range enough to strike Western Europe or Moscow. This development largely explains the Obama administration's willingness to shift its missile defense strategy in Europe.

But wait, other news organizations have now weighed in to say the Times' coverage of the BM-25 missiles was misleading, that other authorities have cast strong doubt on whether such missiles even exist. That leads me to the further point: Publication isn't necessarily a short hop to the full truth. It is sometimes only a first step. But it is the essential first step in a process that has to start before the marketplace of news and information can establish the facts.

Read those last three sentences again. He is saying (without really saying it) that the Times' publication of an erroneous article was commendable, "the essential first step in a process that has to start before the marketplace of news and information can establish the facts."

I guess you could say the same thing about the Times' infamous pre-war "scoop" on Iraq's aluminum tubes. It was totally wrong, but other news outlets--including the Washington Post--published articles that accurately conveyed the doubts about the bogus intelligence the Times was touting. So, yes, the Times is performing a service, in the sense that other reporters get the opportunity to demonstrate how poorly the Times is covering important news stories.

Brisbane asked: "The real question should be: Are Times readers and Americans at large better informed on these issues because of the stories?" In this case, the answer is obviously no. But somehow he arrived at the opposite conclusion.