Very interesting Email exchange, John.
Dowd doubts: In our business, when you goof, you fix it
07/27/03 - (Editor, Mobil Register)
The following is an e-mail that I sent to Gail Collins, editorial page editor of The New York Times, this past Monday.
Dear Ms. Collins:
Now that the Times is settling in with a new editor, I need clarification on a matter that came up during all the post-Jayson Blair newsroom tumult.
As editor of the Mobile Register, I subscribe to The New York Times Wire Service. Until earlier this summer, we printed Maureen Dowd's columns on our op-ed pages. We stopped running her column after publishing the following correction:
An opinion column by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, published in the May 15 Mobile Register, should have quoted President Bush as saying, "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al-Qaida operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore." Dowd's column changed the president's meaning by omitting the quote's second sentence and the opening words of the third sentence: "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated ... They're not a problem anymore."
Dowd's fans -- who include me -- are anxious to see her columns back in our newspaper. But if she will not acknowledge this clear mistake, how can we trust the content of her future work?
And if The New York Times does not correct or clarify the quote, shouldn't the same concern apply to the credibility of your wire service?
Perhaps I missed a clarification.
In any case, I'm going to have to tell my readers something, so I hope to hear from you soon.
Mike Marshall Mobile Register
And I got two responses from Ms. Collins Tuesday morning.
Hi Mr. Marshall,
Maureen feels very strongly that she clarified the Bush quote. I appreciate your taking the trouble to write, and I'll ask Maureen if there's anything else she wants to say about the matter.
Best wishes, Gail Collins
Here's Response No. 2, sent a couple of hours later, I suppose after she consulted with Maureen Dowd:
Dear Mr. Marshall,
Thanks for writing to ask. After Maureen received complaints about the editing of the quote she decided to reprint it in full in a later column, which ran on May 28. We're confident it was never her intention to distort the meaning.
Best wishes, Gail Collins
I responded to those emails Tuesday afternoon, this time sending a "cc" to Bill Keller, who was named executive editor of the Times last week.
Dear Ms. Collins,
Thanks very much for the prompt response.
I was aware that Ms. Dowd used the president's full quote in a subsequent column, but that column makes no reference to the earlier blunder. That would not qualify as a correction or clarification in any editor's book.
If there has been some other clarification that I have somehow missed, please let me know.
Absent any other clarification by Dowd, I need to know if The New York Times Wire Service is going to set the matter straight, or if the Times management has made a conscious decision to let the error stand.
I can believe that Ms. Dowd had no "intention to distort" the president's meaning. But when it comes to the need for a correction or clarification, intent is irrelevant. She goofed, and that goof must be corrected.
Again, I have delayed this inquiry until the Times installed a new editor, appreciating the managerial problem this might pose during an interregnum.
But make no mistake: I am not among the right-wingers hoping to see Maureen eat a little crow. (Though they're having a field day with this issue as long as she and the Times allow it to moulder.)
I am a NY Times Wire Service subscriber concerned with the credibility of your venerable organization. And mine.
Thanks for taking the time to deal with this concern.
Mike Marshall Mobile Register
As I write this column on Friday morning, that's where the matter stands.
Except that, as many of our readers noted with raised eyebrows, we printed one of Dowd's columns on our op-ed page in Tuesday's Register.
Well, that was a goof of our own -- my fault, caused by a miscommunication between our editors. We will not be running Dowd's columns, at least not until we hear back from her or the Times.
When we make a mistake, we admit it.
Dowd is a gifted writer with a trenchant wit, though her talent is largely squandered: She seldom expresses a constructive thought. As I put it in an earlier column, she is mainly a standup comic specializing in insults -- Don Rickles with an exceptionally high language quotient.
But her column is popular, and I hope we can start running it again some day.
Meanwhile, I'll let readers know what I hear back from the Times.
You can write Mike Marshall, editor of the Mobile Register, at P.O. Box 2488, Mobile, Ala. 36652, e-mail him at mmarshall@mobileregister.com, or phone him at 219-5674. |
