In letter to New York Times Executive Editor, Hillary Clinton fires back at Times' 'journalism':

[DeepModem Mom]

In the aftermath of The New York Times' latest case of journalistic malpractice against Hillary Clinton, the Clinton campaign is firing back. In a letter to the Executive Editor of The Times, the Clinton campaign says:

"I feel obliged to put into context just how egregious an error this story was. The New York Times is arguably the most important news outlet in the world and it rushed to put an erroneous story on the front page charging that a major candidate for President of the United States was the target of a criminal referral to federal law enforcement. Literally hundreds of outlets followed your story, creating a firestorm that had a deep impact that cannot be unwound. This problem was compounded by the fact that the Times took an inexplicable, let alone indefensible, delay in correcting the story and removing 'criminal' from the headline and text of the story. [...]

Just as disturbing as the errors themselves is the Times’ apparent abandonment of standard journalistic practices in the course of its reporting on this story."

The Clinton campaign goes on to say that the story "was reported hastily and without affording the campaign adequate opportunity to respond," and that:

"Despite the late hour, our campaign quickly conferred and confirmed that we had no knowledge whatsoever of any criminal referral involving the Secretary. At 10:36 pm, our staff attempted to reach your reporters on the phone to reiterate this fact and ensure the paper would not be going forward with any such report. There was no answer. At 10:54 pm, our staff again attempted calling. Again, no answer. Minutes later, we received a call back. We sought to confirm that no story was imminent and were shocked at the reply: the story had just published on the Times’ website.

This was, to put it mildly, an egregious breach of the process that should occur when a major newspaper like the Times is pursuing a story of this magnitude."

In other words, come hell or high water, The Times was running with this story, the facts be damned.

The Clinton camp notes the shoddy, questionable anonymous sources the paper relied upon, the delays in correcting the many, many errors, and of course that by then the story had been picked up by every news agency on the planet. Which can only be described as "mission accomplished" for The New York Times.

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/31/1407516/-Hillary-Clinton-fires-back-at-New-York-Times-shoddy-journalism via Daily Kos

[Thinkingabout]

1. If they want to write fiction then by all means write fiction but call it fiction.