Pot, Kettle. Kettle, Pot
Posted by
Kevin
If I had the constitution of a hanging judge, which I don’t, I’d have sent Finkel directly to the gallows for his Youssouf lies. He deliberately wrote things that were not true and called the work journalism. If that doesn’t constitute a professional death wish, I don’t know what does. He filed his lies in a fact-checked magazine that is read by knowing eyes around the world, the equivalent of robbing a camera-filled bank while wearing no mask. Finally, he violated the extreme bond of trust that readers and editors must invest in foreign correspondents. Distance, language, and culture make double-checking the truthfulness of stories reported from overseas difficult.
Comments Finkel has made to the press since the incident also indicate something less than complete remorse. (Finkel e-mailed me back once in response to a direct question about his career, but wrote that given his druthers he didn’t want to appear in this column. He did not respond to a second e-mail.)
… But you can’t “reach higher” by labeling fiction as fact. Nor is constructing composite characters a “journalistic technique.” It’s cheating. Journalism is a hard business because you’re not allowed to make stuff up. If a lawyer took the same liberties in making something up in a brief, he could be permanently disbarred. Luckily for Finkel, journalists aren’t licensed.
Finkel also told New York, “Look, I wrote a 6,000-word story without a single quote, without a blink in the shift of tone and pace. It was an ambitious attempt. I slipped. It deserved a correction. But there is a great deal of accuracy. Not once has the prose been called into question.”
I suppose there’s a great deal of honesty in a bank heist, too, if you drive the speed limit to the scene of the crime and don’t litter on the way out.
Despite Shafer’s protestations, that sounds pretty close to a hanging judge to me. What makes this so odd to me is that Shafer was the editor responsible for the infamous “monkey fishing” story (long story short: Slate bought and published a story about people fishing for monkeys). Not only did Shafer not lose his job, he was allowed to continue to be the press critic for the site. Now, I am not arguing that Shafer should have been fired, but its odd to see a man who was partially responsible for a legendary press screw up be so unforgiving. Maybe Shaeffer thinks that he did nothing wrong, that he didn’t let his desire for a good story ge tin the way of his editorial judgment in the monkey fishing case. Shafer didn’t deliberately make things up the way Finkel did, but he did fall for a rather obvious hoax — a hoax so obvious that you have to think the people involved let thier desire for a good story get in the way of the critical thinking skills.
Wanting to be fooled, allowing yourself to be fooled, is better than fooling someone else, obviously, but the differences aren’t so great as all that.
The article is a little odd: its main point could have been written in one sentence (”People who deliberately falsify journalistic stories should not be employed as journalists again, even if they sincerely apologize.”); instead, Shafer devotes a long article to essentially rehashing the story of Finkel publishing a fabricated piece 5 years ago, and only tangentially to his ostensible point - that that should have precluded him from working for another prestigious publication now. I do think there’s a difference between Finkel hoodwinking his editors and Shafer getting hoodwinked by his writers, and I tend to agree with Shafer that dishonest reporting is the unforgivable journalistic sin, but I still think Shafer’s getting too worked up over his belief that Finkel wasn’t ostracized enough.
I don’t see why he needs to go through all the details of the original lapse (still less start giving first-person advice to Finkel, now, 5 years after the fact [”You could have canceled the vacation, dude, and gotten more time to write.”]). I also don’t see why he needs to pick on Finkel at all - as he points out, there have been many examples of these kinds of shenanigans, and it’s hardly like Finkel’s being allowed to tell an important story about a major health crisis, after once having been dishonest 5 years previously, is some sort of scandal that has to be redressed. In places he just seems petty. (He complains that Finkel’s online biographies don’t mention that he once cooked a story - what’s Finkel supposed to do, sew a scarlet letter on himself? He did, in fact, publish a book-length discussion of the event in which he confesses in detail and says “I’ll never forgive myself”, but I guess that’s not enough. Somewhat ironically, the book was financially successful, which just seems to piss Shafer off even more.) He seems intent on making sure that Finkel gets the woodshedding Shafer thinks he still deserves, whether it’s got anything to do with Shafer or not.
Shafer ends by referring to criticism of Finkel as a “long-lasting grudge”. That’s exactly what it seems to be.
Comment 8/1/2007
[…]its main point could have been written in one sentence[…]
I’m sorry, KTK. The irony, it hurts me so.
No offense intended, you windbag.
Comment 8/1/2007