New York Times Agenda Alert: Can a 15-Year-Old Be a ‘Woman Without a Spouse’?

Byron E. (Barney) Calame became public editor for The New York Times on May 23, 2005. According to the New York Times, "As the readers' representative, Mr. Calame responds to complaints and comments from the public and monitors the paper's journalistic practices." The Times also explains: "Byron Calame is the readers' representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly on the Sunday Op-Ed pages."

Why am I telling you all of this?

Well, Mr. Calame (pronounced kuh-LAME) has been doing some excellent work, much to the chagrin of many people at the New York Times.

The New York Times has often been accused of having a progressive agenda. Some of Mr. Calame's articles appear to give evidence that there is substance to those allegations.

Two recent opinion pieces written by Mr. Calame illustrate my point.

On April 9, 2006, The New York Times Magazine published an article titled, Pro-Life Nation, depicting a woman who was serving 30 years in a prison in El Salvador for getting an abortion, the implication being that this was an injustice and exactly the type of injustice that legal, elective abortion prevents. There was one major problem with the facts presented in the article: while abortion is illegal in El Salvador, the woman depicted in the article had actually been convicted of murder for strangling her baby after giving birth.

Mr. Calame revealed the facts to Times readers in this opinion piece: Truth, Justice, Abortion and the Times Magazine

Here's some quotes:

THE cover story on abortion in El Salvador in The New York Times Magazine on April 9 contained prominent references to an attention-grabbing fact. “A few” women, the first paragraph indicated, were serving 30-year jail terms for having had abortions. That reference included a young woman named Carmen Climaco. The article concluded with a dramatic account of how Ms. Climaco received the sentence after her pregnancy had been aborted after 18 weeks.

It turns out, however, that trial testimony convinced a court in 2002 that Ms. Climaco’s pregnancy had resulted in a full-term live birth, and that she had strangled the “recently born.” A three-judge panel found her guilty of “aggravated homicide,” a fact the article noted. But without bothering to check the court document containing the panel’s findings and ruling, the article’s author, Jack Hitt, a freelancer, suggested that the “truth” was different.

Later in the opinion piece, Mr. Calame explains:

Complaints about the article began arriving at the paper after an anti-abortion Web site, LifeSiteNews.com, reported on Nov. 27 that the court had found that Ms. Climaco’s pregnancy ended with a full-term live birth. The headline: “New York Times Caught in Abortion-Promoting Whopper — Infanticide Portrayed as Abortion.” Seizing on the misleading presentation of the article’s only example of a 30-year jail sentence for an abortion, the site urged viewers to complain to the publisher and the president of The Times. A few came to me.

The care taken in the reporting and editing of this example didn’t meet the magazine’s normal standards. Although Sarah H. Smith, the magazine’s editorial manager, told me that relevant court documents are “normally” reviewed, Mr. Hitt never checked the 7,600-word ruling in the Climaco case while preparing his story. And Mr. Hitt told me that no editor or fact checker ever asked him if he had checked the court document containing the panel’s decision.

Mr. Hitt said Ms. Climaco had been brought to his attention by the magistrate who decided four years ago that the case warranted a trial, so he had asked the magistrate for the court record. “When she told me that the case had been archived, I accepted that to mean that I would have to rely upon the judge who had been directly involved in the case and who heard the evidence” in the trial stage of the judicial process, Mr. Hitt wrote in an e-mail to me. So he didn’t pursue the document.

But obtaining the public document isn’t difficult. At my request, a stringer for The Times in El Salvador walked into the court building without making any prior arrangements a few days ago, and minutes later had an official copy of the court ruling. It proved to be the same document as the one disseminated by LifeSiteNews.com, which had been translated into English in early December by a translator retained by The Times Magazine’s editors. I’ve since had the stringer review the translation of key paragraphs for me.

The latest opinion piece by Mr. Calame, Can a 15-Year-Old Be a ‘Woman Without a Spouse’?, deals with a January 16, 2007, New York Times article titled, 51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse

Here are some quotes:

Several readers, including some who perceived the article as an attack on family values, challenged the inclusion of 15-year-olds [in the sample], in e-mails to me and in comments posted on the Web version of The Times. “The article is a little deceiving because it is based on the percentage of women 15 and older who are not married,” wrote one reader, noting that “it’s not even legal to marry at 15” in many states. I couldn’t agree more.

The failure to prominently and clearly explain the methodology of the survey used was one of several journalistic lapses that I found in the handling of this story…

But editors may have made the problem worse. I saw the top portion of a draft of the article prepared by Mr. Roberts in which the age range was first mentioned in the 10th paragraph. The first reference in the published story was in the 21st paragraph.

When readers did get to the mention of what ages were included, it was incorrect.

Mr. Calame also says:

When I began to look into reader concerns about the article shortly after it appeared, it became clear that there was confusion over the issue of 15-year-olds. Mr. Roberts initially told me, and wrote in an e-mail, that 15-year-olds had been excluded from the “raw numbers” cited in the article, mainly because he had discovered some states’ restrictions on marriage at that age. So the statements in the article and graphic that 15-year-olds were not counted seemed at first to be consistent with what Mr. Roberts had told me and the office of the standards editor last month.

My subsequent questions, however, led to Mr. Roberts’s eventual acknowledgment that 15-year-olds had been fully included in all the data. Seeking to explain that shift, he wrote in a Jan. 30 e-mail to me: “When I realized that nothing would change by eliminating 15-year-olds, I left the numbers as is, again for consistency.”

It does appear that The New York Times will have difficulty staving off allegations of bias if they continue to publish articles with this type of slant.

I recently read the article, Is There A Post-Abortion Syndrome?, in The New York Times Magazine and was appalled by the blatant pro-abortion bias in the article. It basically denied the existence of post-abortion syndrome, using the logical fallacy of proof by assertion, and dismissing any claims by women who reported that they were, or are, experiencing post-abortion syndrome. The deep and abiding depression experienced by these women was explained away by pointing to other issues in their lives. The experiences of Rhonda Arias, a woman whose experiences are a primary focus in the article, were depicted in a manner that was unflattering, dismissive, and condescending. I've never seen a better example of poisoning the well in print.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[Bruce]

Have you seen :
The Manipulation of ‘Post-Abortion Syndrome’: Part Two:
by Marcy Bloom ?
comments are also a good read.

Bruce.

[Mark]

He's really going to tick off a lot of people if he continues on his current path.

[CoffeeMugPhilosophy]

Real slow in here, maybe another Bishop Brown cartoon is in order?

[JMC]

I wonder why they're using the word "spouse"? This is an all-female group they surveyed; is there something so terribly wrong with the word "husband"?

And, yes, I know "spouse" is an old, accepted word, most commonly used when you were speaking to a mixed group, or making up forms to be filled out by people of both sexes, but, come on, let's knock it off with the so-called "inclusive"language already!