March 25, 2007

A Post-Modern, Non-Correction Correction, By The NYTimes

        For PoMo journalists, the 'narrative' is crucial. Facts can always be selected to further the narrative. The PoMo journalist is not a grubby impartial fact gatherer, bound by truth and falsity. She has a higher calling. Sometimes that calling requires acknowledging errors. Never should such acknowledgment be understood as an apology for lying. It's never deliberate. If anything, it's understandable zealousness in pursuit of a noble story. Any correction is more like adjusting a story line than acknowledging falsehoods. In the standard liberal, left narrative, women are always victims of rapacious men who must be exposed and punished. War itself is, of course, always bad, a man's game, offering possibilities for sexual exploitation of innocent women. On March 18 the Times published one of their more or less predictable tearjerking tales of female victimization, The Women's War. The "correction" offered today is more informative than the original story, which was the usual NYTimes narrative of the plight of American women. Having run a story featuring the sexual victimization of female soldiers in Iraq, the Times discovered one little problem after the story ran--one of the women we were meant to sympathize with never actually served in Iraq, nor is there evidence she was a victim of sexual abuse. Of course, the "correction" by the good little PoMos at the NYTimes never mentions the possibility that Ms. Randall is a serial liar. Oh no, since her aims are noble she can't possibly be a sociopath. Instead the Times suggests that she honestly believed her own fabrications and only just learned, by asking another member of her unit, that she had not actually been in Iraq. We should therefore sympathize with her plight, and by extension with the NYTimes, so eager were they to help expose the seamy side of war that they just didn't bother with the trivial matter of fact checking before they ran the story.

"...On March 12, three days after the article had gone to press, the Navy called The Times to say that it had found that Ms. Randall had never received imminent-danger pay or a combat-zone tax exemption, indicating that she was never in Iraq. Only part of her unit was sent there; Ms. Randall served with another part of it in Guam. The Navy also said that Ms. Randall was given the medal with the insignia because of a clerical error.

Based on the information that came to light after the article was printed, it is now clear that Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq, but may have become convinced she did. Since the article appeared, Ms. Randall herself has questioned another member of her unit, who told Ms. Randall that she was not deployed to Iraq. If The Times had learned these facts before publication, it would not have included Ms. Randall in the article."
        Anyone foolish enough to believe Ms. Randall convinced herself she'd been to Iraq will very likely believe the NYTimes is a legitimate 'newspaper', rather than an organ of propaganda for the Bush hating left. I guess that's what the editorial board is hoping.