One might think that the editors of The New Republic would use their energy to investigate the collapse of their credibility after publishing a fabulist for at least the second time in the last few years. Instead, Jonathan Chait takes aim at Bill Kristol for his criticism of the magazine, blithely sidestepping any editorial responsibility for Beauchamp’s fabrications:
Kristol’s sensibility is perfectly summed up in one representative passage from a recent issue. The topic was The New Republic’s decision to publish an essay by Scott Beauchamp, an American soldier serving in Iraq, detailing some repugnant acts he said he and his comrades committed. Legitimate questions have been raised about this essay’s veracity. (We’ve been publishing updates on our continuing efforts to get answers to them at tnr.com.) But Kristol rushed past these questions, immediately declaring the piece a “fiction.” Offering up his interpretation of why tnr would publish such slanders, he concluded, in an editorial titled, “They Don’t Really Support the Troops”:
Having turned against a war that some of them supported, the left is now turning against the troops they claim still to support. They sense that history is progressing away from them–that these soldiers, fighting courageously in a just cause, could still win the war, that they are proud of their service, and that they will be future leaders of this country.
In just two sentences, this passage provides a full summary of the decrepit intellectual state of neoconservatism.
Perhaps Chait may want to first address the decrepit state of editorial control at TNR before attacking anyone else’s decrepit intellectual state. Chait has decrepitness himself when he offers a weak excuse that TNR merely published Beauchamp’s diary “merely for the edification of readers.” Really? A once-premier opinion publication like TNR no longer has any editorial reasons to publish articles other than “edification”? Let’s take a look at the rest of their articles highlighted on their front page to see whether they express a political point of view, or are merely edifying:
America’s Hypocritical Impulse To Spread Freedom And Democracy Mitt Romney’s Flimsy Iowa Victory The U.S. Must Act in Darfur–Right Now How Political Psychology Explains Bush’s Ghastly Success Are Terrorists Soldiers or Criminals?
My goodness! How dare Kristol assume a political purpose for TNR’s editorial decisions!
And let’s face it — Beauchamp’s writings had a particular point of view, and one that appealed to TNR’s editors. Beauchamp wanted to write about how the war dehumanized American soldiers, and he wasn’t content to write non-fiction to make that point. TNR’s editors didn’t care to fact-check his exaggerations and outright fiction, probably because, as Chait suggests, they found Beauchamp edifying.
Chait should save his shocked, shocked! hypocrisy for the people in his own office who violated journalistic standards to publish Beauchamp, apparently based on the word of his wife and sweetened by the themes of his inartful fabulism. Attacking Kristol for essentially nailing the strangely-silent editors and publisher of TNR may conform to the strategy of going on offense as the best defense, but it’s rather transparent, like the glass house TNR has chosen to occupy. (via Power Line)
“They sense that history is progressing away from them”
The discredited Kristal talking about himself here? – Me detect a little transference here.
“–that these soldiers, fighting courageously in a just cause, ”
lost cause Bubba – not just cause.
“could still win the war, that they are proud of their service, and that they will be future leaders of this country.”
Maybe they could “win” if you Mr Armchair Hypocristal demanded a National Draft and propose that your Children serve in Iraq for that cause of yours.
Neocons – always sending other’s children to serve in their wars.
lovely.
As long as we understand TNR’s new (or maybe not so new) editorial standard: “Fake, yes, but explored an important issue from an interesting perspective.”
No children are being sent to fight America’s wars. Well educated adults are choosing to join the Armed Services and protect you, gaffo.
Wow, this story continues to be so fascinating and important! Reminds me of the time I was fiddling while Rome burned…
So Jonathan Chait is hurling himself into the breach to protect editor Franklin Foer and his stooges Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp. This is a dazzling case of the magazine doubling-down, and points to a future dramatic production far exceeding the Stephen Glass fake-story fiasco and movie, once Foer’s fake-but-accurate defense inevitably crumbles.
Enter new owner Can West, which is anything but liberal in its top-down approach to the editorial policy in its various publications. Will it indeed ‘cement TNR’s center-left ideology’, as Foer expects, or will it give up wasting resources in defending Beauchamp’s politically correct fables? Tune in the next time Foer emerges from his bunker and addresses his oh-so-nicely-busted scam against the US military.
Ok, you’re right about most of this.
But I have to ask, was Romney’s victory in Iowa really all that…..signicant? Maybe TNR gets one right occasionally.
Seriously, Chait is a well known liberal apologist and looks to take his shots where he can. It was a typical liberal blather about how the Right is as bad as the Left. On the Beauchamp story, Chait’s opportunity is kinda limited. And it’s not like the article was anything more than a personal vanity piece by Chait.
Surprising? No. Important? No. Just another attempt to hide just how bad TNR really is.
Ok, you’re right about most of this.
But I have to ask, was Romney’s victory in Iowa really all that…..signicant? Maybe TNR gets one right occasionally.
Seriously, Chait is a well known liberal apologist and looks to take his shots where he can. It was a typical liberal blather about how the Right is as bad as the Left. On the Beauchamp story, Chait’s opportunity is kinda limited. And it’s not like the article was anything more than a personal vanity piece by Chait.
Surprising? No. Important? No. Just another attempt to hide just how bad TNR really is.
Once TNR completes their “continuing effort” to get answers, perhaps they can help OJ with his problem as well.
My bet is that OJ finds the answers first.
Hear, Hear! And while we’re at it lets take to task the bloggers and publications that propagated all the fabulist tales about Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. Oh wait, unless there’s no need for fact checking or accountability when lies are helpful to those people promoting war efforts?
The Weekly Standard is hardly without sin in their coverage of the Beauchamp story. I caught Michael Goldfarb in a lie three weeks ago. One I’ve got email from him to prove.
http://thefloridamasochist.blogspot.com/2007/07/knuckleheads-of-day-award_31.html
TWS is willing to lie(Goldfarb refused to fix his mistake after I called him on it) in a very small way to make a side point. Their credibility therefore is far from 100% clean. Why not fix the mistake? Because Goldfarb and TWS have their own agenda, and if that means making inaccurate statements or lying, so be it.
Bill
DwightKSchrute,
As I remember, stories about Lynch and Tillman named names and quoted real people. And, in the case of Tillman, when falsehood was discovered, that was put forth as well (I’m unfamiliar with what you are referencing with regard to Lynch — maybe the unknown blonde-haired trooper who perished while killing several of the attackers of Lynch’s convoy, and which was reported as well, once known?)
What we are seeing at TNR is quite different. No names were named, and when falsehood was discovered, it was not put forth.
And, as I remember, one of the “fabulist” publications dealing with both Lynch and Tillman was the Los Angeles Times — certainly not a publication known for its pro-Iraq War leanings.
You, Mr. K’Schrute, are perfectly capable of founding a blog to force “accountability when lies are helpful to those people promoting war efforts”. I’m sure your new blog will have great readership.
WOW! What a new look to the page!
And, the other thing I’m noticing is how the stories with which I’m familiar, from Drudge’s headline, yesterday, about the two loose Mideasterners on the Seattle Ferry. To this TNR story, too. THE INTERNET IS COVERING THE NEWS!
And, this means hundreds of thousands of people are being informed. On stories easy to follow. Even though the major media outlets went to sleep.
I was up at Little Green Footballs, before coming here, today. And, I posted this: (Because some people don’t see how TRN is now “doing” the Nixon thing, trying to control a news cycle, that’s tumbled out of their hands. Just like it did; out of his.) So I’m just cutting & pasting MY OWN WORDS. This Net thing is so fascinating! It doesn’t feel like we’re reacing hundreds of thousands. But it used to be the same with TV. I thought it was on IN MY LIVING ROOM. Who knew about the rest of the world?
How Nixon-ion
There are lots of adults, today, who weren’t even born when Nixon went down. But it’s an interesting story, here, none-the-less; because Nixon OWNED the presidential bully pulpit … Just as TNR owns their stage. And, Nixon decided to “tough it out.”
IT. DIDN’T. WORK. That’s your example, from history.
Of course, there’s that old adage; When history’s tragedies repeat themselves, they often-times come back as farce.
TNR is unaware of why this story keeps sticking!
They know they’re getting a beating! But they think it’s coming from the Right. Shows ya what they know about hurricanes, and winds, too. They’re concentrating on how to keep their house intact; while a Category #5 is ripping through it.
And, people? Well, Nixon could’a told ya. They stick around and watch.
A long time ago, advice to Nixon, after the fact, came with the question “WHY?” Why didn’t ya just come out and tell the truth? Would have ended the show. (And, Bob Woodward would not have climbed to journalistic fame.) Instead? He fired Cox. When “playing with your cox becomes routine, do expect reality to hit ya, hard.”
unclsmrgol. Hear hear. Well put, shipmate.
Caught! Bill Kristol saying nice things about Peter Beinart (former editor of TNR) and the pro-American, anti-Iraq left!
http://alendalux.blogspot.com/2007/08/best-defense.html
Back to the drawing board for Mr. Chait
The “fighting to the death” description came from one unnamed “official” in an April 3, 2003, Washington Post story, by Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb, in which “several” other “officials” cautioned that the facts weren’t yet known, and “Pentagon officials” said reports of Lynch’s gun-firing heroics were only “rumors.”
A comment over at QandO:
It appear from this that Beauchamp got busted down a rank.
Self-Professed Bush-Hater Accuses Conservative Journalist of Thuggery
Today, in The New Republic, a man who made The Case for Bush Hatred penned a piece accusing a fellow opinion journalist of thuggery.
Well, I guess it’s not thuggery when you hate a Republican president, but it is when you challenge the veracity o…
I think Chait’s piece shows what happens when you adopt a bunker mentality, crouching in the dark and shooting blindly at every shadow. This story has nothing to do with Bill Kristol or anyone else who’s criticized TNR’s decision to print Beauchamp’s stories without independently verifying them as factual. It has everything to do with the professional judgment of TNR’s editors.
It has become obvious (to me) that they lack both integrity and maturity to do what any rational person would have done weeks ago. Admit that they were duped, acknowledge that they must make changes in their decision making process and implement appropriate safeguards to see that this doesn’t happen to them again. That’s all. They would have been out of this mess already.
Me thinks it is time for a new “slogan”;
Beauchamp Lied- TNR Died.
A couple of weeks ago, Ed wrote that TNR “barely qualifies these days as anything more than a blog — and not a very good one at that.”
Maybe they feel that frees them from the myriad layers of editorial oversight that legacy media tout as proof of superiority.
If Chait and TNR were upset and vented their furstration at Kristol, you can bet dollars to donuts that they will react to the possible busting of their “budding Hemingway” with even more vitriol.
This is all part of TNR as “victim”.
The question that TNR is trying to obscure .. who is the victimizer ?
Of course, it is the fabulist, Mr. Beauchamp.
The funniest part of that whole rant is that Chait gets all in a lather over what seems both rational and plainly evident. OMG, how DARE Kristol opine about the obvious.