Nobody likes the New York Times right now.
The 164-year-old newspaper has weathered a great deal of criticism recently for its reporting on Hillary Clinton, but not from the traditional right-leaning voices. Rather, the Times has come under fire from Democratic political operatives, left-leaning news groups and general news organizations.
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At the heart of some of the most recent criticism for the newspaper is a faulty, error-riddled July 23 report, originally titled “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email,” that claimed two inspectors general had recommended the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into Clinton’s use of a private, unauthorized email server when she was secretary of state.
“Will the New York Times ever finish cleaning up Clinton story?” the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple asked this week of the now-defunct Times report.
Earlier, the Atlantic published an article titled, “The New York Times’ Botched Story on Hillary Clinton.”
“The paper of record’s inaccurate reporting on a nonexistent criminal investigation was a failure that should entail more serious consequences,” the article’s subhead read.
Mother Jones‘ Kevin Drum wrote in his take on the issue, “[V]irtually everything about the story turned out to be wrong. Clinton was not a target. The referral was not criminal. The emails in question had not been classified at the time Clinton saw them.”
“The authors of the story … really ought to address these issues in public at a press conference. After all, the press loves press conferences, right?” he asked in an article titled, “The New York Times Needs to do a Better Job of Explaining Its Epic Hillary Clinton Screw-Up.”
Contrary to what the Times originally reported, the recommendation was not made on criminal grounds. The newspaper was forced to update its story with two major rewrites before admitting eventually that the whole thing was “a mess.”
The article’s headline has been updated so that it now reads simply, “Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email.”
Criticism for the Times’ original report was swift and harsh, beginning with Hillary for America communications director Jennifer Palmieri.
“We feel it important to outline these concerns with you directly so that they may be properly addressed and so our campaign can continue to have a productive working relationship with the Times,” she said in a letter addressed to Executive Editor Dean Baquet.
Her letter to the Times was at first private, but it was soon obtained and published by CNN. After that, newsrooms everywhere noted the tiff between the Times and Team Clinton, keeping the newspaper’s seriously goofed “criminal inquiry” story in focus.
“Hillary Clinton camp in overdrive going after New York Times,” Poynter blared in a headline, linking out to a related CNN article, titled “Clinton aide’s message: Modern media comes with no ‘undo’ button.”
Vox meanwhile responded to the botched article with a report beginning, “It’s hard to foul up a major story as badly as the New York Times did with” its supposed “scoop.”
“The result of the Times story is the exact opposite of what journalists strive for — it has confused, rather than clarified, the issue at hand,” it added.
Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan responded quickly to the story with two mea culpas, promising that the newspaper would be more careful going forward.
“[T]he Times’s ‘screw-up,’ as Mr. Baquet called it, reinforces the need for reporters and their editors to be ‘doubly vigilant and doubly cautious,'” she wrote in a blog post this weekend. “Times readers (and on their behalf, I, too) will be watching and evaluating that over the next months. No one should expect a free ride for Mrs. Clinton. But she certainly deserves a fair shake.”
When asked by the Washington Examiner for comment on the sustained criticism for the Times’ reporting on the non-existent “criminal inquiry,” Sullivan referred the media desk to her previous blog posts.
