Professor Questions Credibility Of New Yorker Piece On Bin Laden Capture: Writer Made ‘Egregious Oversight’

by Alex Alvarez | 5:05 pm, August 4th, 2011

» 16 comments

You might remember Monday’s post drawing attention to a fascinating New Yorker piece about the capture of Osama Bin Laden. The article offered many details about the meticulous planning leading up to the raid on Bin Laden’s compound in suburban Pakistan, including the fact that the ultimate goal of the mission had always been to kill the terrorist leader.

Now, however, one woman is casting doubt on the article’s author, Nicholas Schmidle. In a guest post for Registan.net, Georgetown University assistant professor C. Christine Fair (shown here with quite a cute doggy) recounts how she first met Schmidle five years ago, when the writer visited Foust’s office at the United States Institute of Peace to ask for help in getting to Pakistan in order to live in and write about the country for two years. She subsequently kept an eye on his writing career, including his recent New Yorker piece.

Fair raises an eyebrow over just how detailed Schmidle’s account of the night Bin Laden was killed happens to be, with the writer even going so far as to chronicle the contests of a Navy SEAL Team Six member’s pockets. This is information that could very well be gleaned from interviewing the individuals who were there that historic night, but, as a correction issued by NPR shows, that’s not what happened:

We incorrectly said that reporter Nicholas Schmidle had spoken with the Navy SEALs who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Schmidle used information from others who had debriefed the SEALs; he did not speak with them himself.

Fair emailed Schmidle to express her “dismay at his reportage,” and attempted to take advantage of a livechat with Schmidle to ask why neither the author nor his editors at the New Yorker saw it fit to note that, contrary to what the article strongly implies, he had not, as the article strongly implies, he had not spoken directly with the individuals who were in that helicopter over Abbottabad on the night of May 1st:

During a “live chat” with Mr. Schmidle on the New Yorker’s website yesterday, several persons including myself tried to ask Mr. Schmidle to explain this egregious oversight. (I posed the question four times throughout the course of the “live chat.” The moderator did not post a single one. (Earlier in the day, Schmidle and I exchanged emails wherein I expressed my dismay at his reportage.)

Many of us were following this in real time via twitter. I was not alone: others—including other journalists—tried to ask other tough questions but the moderator did not post them either. I also tried to post a comment to this effect along with other readers’ comments. That comment has not yet been posted.

Eventually, the chat’s moderators did allow one person to ask Schmidle that very question — which would have been a step towards transparency were it not posed by a close friend of Schmidle’s and received what was essentially a “non-answer.”

Why be upset over it? According to Fair, the reason is at least twofold:

First, many Muslims across the world fundamentally doubt the events of the Bin Laden raid. Some believe Bin Laden is still alive. Others believe he died long ago. Others believe that the events of May 2 were staged to allow the Obama administration to make an exit from Afghanistan. As Mr. Schmidle’s is the first (and so far only) account of the drama, these problems cast a pale of doubt upon the events that transpired that evening.

Second is the simple fact of Mr. Schmidle parentage. His father, as noted above, is the deputy commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. Given the conspiratorial propensities of many within and beyond the Muslim world, Schmidle’s ties to this organization by virtue of his father would recast any serious inaccuracy in his report as a U.S. military psychological operation to deliberately misinform the world about the operation.

Have a look at her full post (as well as commenters’ reactions) and let us know what you think. Is she right to ask for disclosure? And what do you make of her emphasis on the so-called “Muslim world’s” possible reaction to Schmidle’s piece?

h/t Registan.net

C. Christine Fair, New Yorker, Nicholas Schmidle, Osama bin Laden

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SI5NXALBPMGH5A7BLRV6GWW3BM Jim

It’s about time that the long gone New Yorker Magazine of Harold Ross and William Shaw got pegged for the piece of dung it has become. Period. Enough said!
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SI5NXALBPMGH5A7BLRV6GWW3BM Jim

It’s about time that the long gone New Yorker Magazine of Harold Ross and William Shaw got pegged for the piece of dung it has become. Period. Enough said!
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SI5NXALBPMGH5A7BLRV6GWW3BM Jim

William Shawn…. Sorry.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ECYBIXNKAG5E46BC3GCJQPA7CQ well_its_no_cannibal_holocaust

Bin Laden has been dead for years. Obama just wanted to win the next election.
http://twitter.com/lazzzlo lazzzlo

The thing that bugs me isn’t the way Schmidle basically reconstructed the story without actually talking to the individuals. It’s that he doesn’t let the reader know that fact.

Schmidle wasn’t able to interview any of the 23 Navy SEALs involved in the mission itself, so he relied on the accounts of others who had debriefed the men.
But a casual reader of the article wouldn’t know that; neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story. Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong impression that he spoke with them directly.
New Yorker editor David Remnick tells Farhi he’s satisfied with the accuracy of the account. “The sources spoke to our fact-checkers. I know who they are.”

Romenesko.
Commentary Magazine has a good short post on second-hand reporting.
nancillarypeloslinton

Doesn’t look too likely.
Anonymous

“…attempted to take advantage of a livechat with Schmidle to ask why neither the author nor his editors at the New Yorker saw it fit to note that, contrary to what the article strongly implies, he had not, as the article strongly implies, he had not spoken directly with the individuals who were in that helicopter…”

Dude. Proofreading is your friend.
Jerry Baustian

I made some comment the other day where I lumped The New Yorker, New York Magazine, New York Times Magazine, and the New York Times newspaper together, as biased and unreliable. I no longer recall what article I was trashing, but my post took at few hits. It was alleged that my opinion said more about me than about the publications I was criticizing.

But whether they are printing hit pieces against conservatives, or puff pieces on liberals, or articles based on non-existent interviews, there is still no reason for me to believe any of it.

Let me add Rolling Stone to the list of publications I do not trust.
Exgoper

Fine. Then you’ve walled yourself off from some of the best, sharpest and most insightful writing in the country, if not the world. No one has ever claimed that the Times or the New Yorker are perfect or that they never make errors. They do. ALL publications do. But they generally own up to them and correct the record, this incident notwithstanding.

I’m going to assume from the content of your note that you’re a Fox News viewer, which is why I take your criticism with a grain of salt. It’s so rare that Fox — which has a TERRIBLE record with factual accuracy and which, as many studies have shown, has the most misinformed viewers — ever corrects a mistake or changes the record. Politifact has called them out dozens of times for their willful disregard for the truth. (Jon Stewart recently did a piece calling them on the carpet for it.)

So I would assume that it’s not that you object to the fact that you find these publications “biased” that’s the problem. It’s simply the fact that they don’t share YOUR bias that’s the problem.

Let’s just be honest about that, ok?
Exgoper

I don’t think the New Yorker should avoid acknowledging this simple fact and I hope that they’ll correct the record accordingly. But this is really a tempest in a teapot and Fair’s comment on the importance of all this is highly overblown. She writes:

“…many Muslims across the world fundamentally doubt the events of the Bin Laden raid.”

Given that al Qaeda has already acknowledged that Bin Laden was, in fact, killed, it’s ridiculous to believe that this New Yorker piece would fan these doubts. If al Qaeda — Bin Laden’s own people! — can’t convinced these Muslim doubters about the accuracy of the report, nothing the New Yorker writes is going to have any impact either.
Jerry Baustian

There is plenty of good writing elsewhere, and I’m never going to have time to read it all.

As for Fox News, one of the TVs is usually tuned to FNC but with the sound muted. Two decades I always had one TV tuned to CNN, but with the sound muted. In neither case does this indicate a single thing about whether I am informed or not, because I do not depend on cable news to inform me about what’s happening in the world. So you should not make baseless assumptions; in particular, you should not assume that I am an ignorant dummkopf because I do not read the NY Times.

I’ve heard the allegations that FNC is unreliable, but in fact it is no worse than any of its competitors. Politifact is not an unbiased media fact-checker — there is no such thing as an unbiased media fact-checker. Everything Jon Stewart said was based on a phony web-based poll by the Soros-funded WorldPublicOpinion.org at the University of Maryland. And everything he said was easily refuted by reference to Pew Research polls, which showed FNC viewers were as well-informed as anyone else.

You make an appeal to a pernicious kind of circular reasoning:

Stupid people watch Fox News Channel.
I assume that you watch FNC.
I assume you are stupid.

All intelligent people read the NY Times.You do not read the NY Times. Plus you sometimes watch FNC.Therefore, you are not intelligent. You are stupid and misinformed. And it does not matter if the Times or the New Yorker or the New York Magazine print bogus stories, because they are very well written even if false.
(end of discourse on logical fallacies)
Jerry Baustian

There is plenty of good writing elsewhere, and I’m never going to have time to read it all.

As for Fox News, one of the TVs is usually tuned to FNC but with the sound muted. Two decades I always had one TV tuned to CNN, but with the sound muted. In neither case does this indicate a single thing about whether I am informed or not, because I do not depend on cable news to inform me about what’s happening in the world. So you should not make baseless assumptions; in particular, you should not assume that I am an ignorant dummkopf because I do not read the NY Times.

I’ve heard the allegations that FNC is unreliable, but in fact it is no worse than any of its competitors. Politifact is not an unbiased media fact-checker — there is no such thing as an unbiased media fact-checker. Everything Jon Stewart said was based on a phony web-based poll by the Soros-funded WorldPublicOpinion.org at the University of Maryland. And everything he said was easily refuted by reference to Pew Research polls, which showed FNC viewers were as well-informed as anyone else.

You make an appeal to a pernicious kind of circular reasoning:

Stupid people watch Fox News Channel.
I assume that you watch FNC.
I assume you are stupid.

All intelligent people read the NY Times.You do not read the NY Times. Plus you sometimes watch FNC.Therefore, you are not intelligent. You are stupid and misinformed. And it does not matter if the Times or the New Yorker or the New York Magazine print bogus stories, because they are very well written even if false.
(end of discourse on logical fallacies)
Anonymous

Who cares what Muslims think. MG, they issue jihads over pizza toppings!
Bcarlton

Doesn’t everyone question the most obvious suspicious-ness of the “Bin Laden Kill” ?
Mr. Lebowski

So is not using the word “dude.”
Mr. Teller

Query? Is fair on the left or right of the photo?