The New York Times recently reported — wrongly, as it turns out — that Hillary Clinton was the subject of a “criminal” investigation for conducting official State Department business on her private email system. Many of the Times‘s liberal readers were upset about the paper’s handling of the Democratic frontrunner, and so, over the weekend, Times public editor Margaret Sullivan dragged out the sackcloth and ashes to explain the paper’s coverage. Sullivan’s column on the matter, however, contains a pretty remarkable characterization of the Times’s Benghazi coverage:
Last Thursday, I handed Mr. Baquet a printed copy of Mr. Hannay’s email and asked him to address it.
To that end, he told me that he has urged reporters and editors to focus anew on issues stories. And he pledged fairness. “I’m happy to make a promise that she’ll be treated fairly,” he said, though he added, “If you look at our body of work, I don’t believe we have been unfair.” One testament to that, he said, was an investigative piece written by David Kirkpatrick shortly after the 2012 Benghazi attacks, with conclusions seen as favorable for Mrs. Clinton, who was then secretary of state. It came under heavy attack from the right.
The “investigative piece” linked by the Times didn’t just come “under heavy attack from the right” because its conclusions were “favorable for Mrs. Clinton.” It came under attack because it was decisively wrong. Here’s the key sentence from Kirkpatrick’s piece, which by the way, was not written “shortly after” the 2012 Benghazi attacks, but rather, more than a full year later:
