I myself would like to know if it’s true (as I read somewhere) that fact-checker at TNR is an entry-level job. The way the Bradley manufacturer described the questions from TNR when they were trying to verify the dog story seemed to indicate that TNR had no interest in reporting the facts but was doing CYA of the very thinnest kind.

You really have to wonder if they learned anything at all from the Glass affair.

In case you were too dense to figure it out, this story is about background and motivation – if you want to actual debunking of STB’s “diaries” follow the links up in the story to Confederate Yankee or Ace of Spades. See how TNR fact-checked the Bradley dog-killing story by asking a Rep for the company that makes the Bradley if the vehicle can make tight turns (yes it can) – too bad it also has a huge blindspot on the right that would prevent the driver from seeing the doomed doggie. That is just one example – as has been stated numerous times, awful things happen in war – too bad STB couldn’t find any and instead had to make up this BS.

BTW, is your Vietnam Vet friend perchance named Jean Francois Kerry? Maybe JenJis Khan?

Last line of the article, a Foer quote:”I hope that the New Republic will have a devil-may-care attitude when it comes to fact-checking and reportorial standards.”

ChrisO – the only thing that is laughable is TNR’s efforts to defend this. Instead of just manninig-up, saying that they were trying to do something different with their Iraq Diarist, and that it didn’t work out, they keep trying to play offense and looking even more silly. Even a cursory review of STB’s blog and his myspace page would have show what whackjob the guy is – I guess that was more diligence than TNR was prepared to do,

He’s charged with turning TNR around (financially) on a very short timetable — three years.

Last line of the article, a Foer quote:”I hope that the New Republic will have a devil-may-care attitude when it comes to pissing people off.”

As CEO of Pajamas MEdia, allow me to state publicly and directly we made a mistake on the Ayatollah Khamenei death. Of course, we acknowledged that within several hours and even published contradictory reports.

This is now weeks since the Beauchamp Affair and The New Republic has acknowledged nothing.

Tahnk you for your input. We will try to do better,but I always hope we admit our mistakes.

Now, what were you guys saying about the New Republic?

And McGee, whom I’ve seen described elsewhere as a temp (which, if true, is a pretty significant omission on your part) posts information he’s learned while working at a magazine to right wing blogs that are attacking the magazine, and you treat it as a scandal that he was fired? In what universe does a guy doing that get to keep his job? Especially if he is indeed a temp. The fact that he chose to post to right wing attack blogs says more than a little about his politics and agenda.

I have no idea what happened at TNR, and I find the firestorm around it more interesting than the actual articles. But to see commenters on this site praising this as an example of “great reporting” is a joke.

I think you have it 100% backward. It was the major lack of plausibility, recognized by enlisted men who had been to war, that triggered doubts in the blogosphere and lead to the humiliation of TNR and Beauchamp.

It was also that, by describing rather awful things as being routine, he was smearing the army as a whole. Not to say that all soldiers are plaster saints – clearly they’re not, or that bad things don’t happen in war – clearly they do, but STB’s story on the IED woman made it seem as if a really awful sort of cruely was accepted and routine. He made it seem like discipline was so lax that a Bradley driver could go dog hunting, thereby placing the Bradley and those in it in grave danger merely to get him his sick thrills. He made it seem like the sanitation system in Baghdad was so bad that kids had to play in waist-deep rivers of sh*t (we all know that the infrastructure in Iraq suffers from decades of neglect and abuse – and that for years Baghdad received electricity at the expense of the rest of the country). He made it seem like Iraq was overrun with zombie dogs (Ok that one was more bizarre than offensive). In short STB defames his fellow soldiers and the army as a whole. He could not find the sort of stories that he wanted to write about, so he made them up – some from whole cloth (the IED woman) and some from kernels of truth (an old cemetary becomes a mass grave).

It matters because while TNR has a small circulation, it is read by influential people in politics and journalism. Stories go from TNR, to the NYT to the local news.