The Discourse Report: December 18, 2020
By: Berny Belvedere
Tags: Journalism, Sports, Covid, Terrorism, Media

Rundown

A brief comment on a notable idea, issue, or policy

The New York Times today added a remarkable update to one of their blockbuster pieces of terrorism coverage of the past several years: Rukmini Callimachi’s “Caliphate” narrative podcast series.

The update reads:

In 2018, The Times released a 12-part narrative podcast series called “Caliphate” on the Islamic State terrorist group and its operations. While parts of the series involved a broad examination of the group’s tactics and influence, multiple episodes were driven primarily by the confessional tale of a Canadian man of Pakistani origin who called himself Abu Huzayfah and claimed to have been a member of the Islamic State who had taken part in killings in Syria. During the course of reporting for the series, The Times discovered significant falsehoods and other discrepancies in Huzayfah’s story. The Times took a number of steps, including seeking confirmation of details from intelligence officials in the United States, to find independent evidence of Huzayfah’s story. The decision was made to proceed with the project but to include an episode, Chapter 6, devoted to exploring major discrepancies and highlighting the fact-checking process that sought to verify key elements of the narrative. In September — two and a half years after the podcast was released — the Canadian police arrested Huzayfah, whose real name is Shehroze Chaudhry, and charged him with perpetrating a terrorist hoax. Canadian officials say they believe that Mr. Chaudhry’s account of supposed terrorist activity is completely fabricated. The hoax charge led The Times to investigate what Canadian officials had discovered, and to re-examine Mr. Chaudhry’s account and the earlier efforts to determine its validity. This new examination found a history of misrepresentations by Mr. Chaudhry and no corroboration that he committed the atrocities he described in the “Caliphate” podcast. As a result, The Times has concluded that the episodes of “Caliphate” that presented Mr. Chaudhry’s claims did not meet our standards for accuracy.

The editorial note goes on for a bit longer, but the conclusion is that the podcast should not have run.

While retractions are more common in media than they perhaps ought to be, they’re not an everyday thing. Still, this is a new one for me. It’s the first time I’ve come across a major publication needing to retract an entire podcast series.

No publication covers themselves as well as the Times — and this case is no different. Here is a four-byline report (including two Pulitzer winners) on what went wrong with “Caliphate.”

As they investigated the “Caliphate” series, the Times took the opportunity to revisit some of Callimachi’s past work. As The Washington Post’s media reporter Erik Wemple notes in a tweet-thread, at least one of her past articles — one from 2014 — has received an editorial update published today.

In light of these revelations, the Times has apparently “reassigned” Callimachi as opposed to outright dismissing her. The top Times editor Dean Baquet basically suggested Callimachi is no longer a credible journalistic source on terrorism. Wemple asks in his thread: “For what beat is she suited, then?”