Things are not well at the Atlantic.
The magazine has taken the rare step of retracting an article, a 6,500-plus-word essay about “Ivy League–obsessed parents,” after it was flagged for multiple inaccuracies and outright falsehoods. In place of the since-deleted report, titled “The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League–Obsessed Parents,” there is now a lengthy, 900-word-plus editor’s note of apology.
“After The Atlantic published this article,” the group said this weekend in a note of self-flagellation, “new information emerged that raised serious concerns about its accuracy, and about the credibility of the author … We have decided to retract this article. We cannot attest to the trustworthiness and credibility of the author, and therefore we cannot attest to the veracity of the article.”
The only thing more embarrassing than the Atlantic scuttling the profile, which was slated to run in the magazine’s November 2020 issue, is that it failed to apply an appropriately aggressive fact-check even knowing the story was authored by Ruth Shalit Barrett. As in the Ruth Shalit Barrett, the former New Republic associate editor who was drummed out of the news business in the 1990s after her body of work, which included stories in the New York Times Magazine and GQ, was found to contain multiple incidents of plagiarism and outright falsehoods.
In other words, the Atlantic accepted a contribution from a woman who left the news business in disgrace after she was caught making things up, it took her many outlandish claims at face value, and things played out for the magazine about as one would expect. Shalit, now Barrett, handed the Atlantic a story that contained so many falsehoods and inaccuracies that the publication was forced this weekend to take the last resort measure of retracting the article in its entirety.
“We decided to assign Barrett this freelance story in part because more than two decades separated her from her journalistic malpractice at The New Republic and because in recent years her work has appeared in reputable magazines,” the magazine’s editor’s note reads. “We took into consideration the argument that Barrett deserved a second chance to write feature stories such as this one. We were wrong to make this assignment, however. It reflects poor judgment on our part, and we regret our decision.”
Though it is certainly noble to offer even the most disgraced persons a second chance, the Atlantic’s conduct here has been decidedly imprudent. First, it knew with whom it was dealing. The decision not to run Barrett’s story through the most vigorous of fact-checks, which the Atlantic clearly did not do, is inexcusable. Second, the magazine obscured Barrett’s true identity, and all the baggage that goes with it, from readers. In the original version of the article, Barrett is credited simply as “Ruth S. Barrett … a writer in Westport, Connecticut.” It may have benefited readers to know that the massive article about WASPs in the Northeast was authored by a woman who was quite famously dismissed from the news industry for being lazy and dishonest. But that detail was kept from readers and, well, you know what happens next.
“Our fact-checking department thoroughly checked this piece, speaking with more than 40 sources and independently corroborating information,” the editor’s note states.
It adds, “But we now know that the author misled our fact-checkers, lied to our editors, and is accused of inducing at least one source to lie to our fact-checking department. We believe that these actions fatally undermined the effectiveness of the fact-checking process. It is impossible for us to vouch for the accuracy of this article. This is what necessitates a full retraction. We apologize to our readers.”
Asked by the Washington Post whether the Atlantic would accept future contributions from Barrett, a spokesperson for the magazine said, “Of course not.”
This episode marks the latest in a series of embarrassments this year for the once-prestigious publication.
In July, the 163-year-old magazine published a made-up anecdote alleging police brutality against a “boy” at a recreation center in St. Louis, Missouri.
Later, in September, the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief authored an exceptionally dubious, anonymously sourced report alleging President Trump had referred to dead U.S. servicemen as “losers” and “suckers.” There is no evidence to support this claim. Rather, there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary, including on-the-record denials from current and former officials and records supporting the White House’s version of events.
Now, the Atlantic has egg all over its face because it was apparently naive enough to think an essay by Barrett, a known fabulist and plagiarizer, merited only a routine fact check.
Maybe it is just a bad year for the magazine. Here is hoping that this is not the new norm.
