New York Times public editor Byron Calame seems to have found his voice with a column about the Geraldo Rivera/Alessandra Stanley dispute. Calame watched the video footage in question and says there was no
"nudge," meaning that Stanley's description of one is
false. Executive editor Bill Keller's response to Calame seems to admit this. [UPDATE: The Times published an Editor's Note on September 27 that acknowledged there was no nudge. More here.] Here's what Calame quotes him as writing:
..."frankly," that in light of Mr. Rivera's reaction to the review, Ms. Stanley "would have been justified in assuming" - and therefore writing, apparently - that Mr. Rivera used "brute force" rather than merely a "nudge" on Sept. 4.
Calame says it's "disturbing" that Keller seems to imply that Geraldo's "bad behavior essentially entitles the paper to rely on assumptions and refuse to correct an unsupported fact." More from Keller:
...Mr. Keller's final reason for rejecting a correction was that Ms. Stanley, "who is writing as a critic, with the license that title brings - was within bounds in her judgment." He elaborated: "Ms. Stanley's point was that Mr. Rivera was show-boating - that he was being pushy, if not literally pushing - and I think an impartial viewer of the footage will see it that way."
Based on the videotape and outtakes I saw, Ms. Stanley certainly would have been entitled to opine that Mr. Rivera's actions were showboating or pushy. But a "nudge" is a fact, not an opinion. And even critics need to keep facts distinct from opinions.
Calame also uses the column to draw attention to his ongoing dispute with Times columnist Paul Krugman (background here).
Meanwhile, in the opinion section of The Times, the corrections policy of Gail Collins, the editor of the editorial page, is not being fully enforced. As I have written on my Web journal, Paul Krugman has not been required to correct, in the paper, recent acknowledged factual errors in his column about the 2000 election in Florida.
The Times has long been a trailblazer in its commitment to correcting errors. This is no time to let those standards slip - even when well-known critics and columnists are involved.
The Times owes Geraldo a correction. It seems clear, however, that he won't get one. This is conduct unworthy of the Times and it only emboldens its critics. Expect this episode to become a frequently-cited example of the Times' supposed liberal bias and unaccountability. It didn't need to end up this way.
Calame ends the column by drawing attention to what appears to be an inconsistent application of the Times' corrections policy. Smaller errors such as misspellings or wrong dates are supposed to fall under the heading "For the Record," while more substantive errors run under the "Corrections" heading. It doesn't always work out tht way. Here's what Calame concludes:
Based on the last 30 days, my sense is that many of the errors falling between the two definitions are being treated as "For the Record" corrections.
The one-year mark could be a good time for the veteran editors who handle corrections to apply their long experience to a review of the existing definitions. I hope they would give serious consideration to broadening the definitions as a way to reduce the gap between them.
I would like to see the substantive category expanded to include errors that have practical importance for readers. If there's an error in information that seems likely to become the basis for action or decision-making by more than a few dozen readers, I think it deserves the prominence offered by the current substantive category. One of the fine-tuning chores, of course, would be to calibrate how many users of the information should be required to qualify for greater prominence.
