The Fall of Caliphate

December 26, 2020 10:10 AM

The New York Times has admitted serious editorial failings over its award-winning podcast series Caliphate and reassigned reporter Rukmini Callimachi. In September, the central character of the story, Shehroze Chaudhry, was charged by Canadian police with perpetrating a terrorist hoax, saying his account was entirely fabricated. With other shows in the broader true crime genre accused of plagiarism and sourcing, perhaps the podcasting gold rush requires extra scrutiny…
posted by adrianhon (29 comments total)

Interesting! I listen to a lot of True Crime, (including The Trail Went Cold, mentioned in the article) but I'd never heard of this particular show. Guess I won't listen to it now.

I, for one, would like an 8-part investigative podcast about how this failure of fact checking happened.

Joking aside there's a profit incentive in Podcasting, in the IP, but also the advertising. I understand it's more lucrative than other forms of advertising and hasn't peaked yet. With the increase of use of dynamic adverts it's much easier to target the ads we hear, based on location and audience. With other revenue sources drying up I can see why there's pressure to get 'sexy' stories like this out fast and give sources the benefit of the doubt. I'm not saying it's right, but I understand where it's coming from.
posted by Braeburn at 10:28 AM on December 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

i have friends adjacent or within the CT field, and while I still don't understand the details (since I first encountered this news via subtweets), what was evident was that plenty of CT experts raised serious doubts over the account as covered in the show, but NYT went ahead with it anyway, and the clout they provided really complicated the work of people actually working in the field.
posted by cendawanita at 10:47 AM on December 26, 2020 [7 favorites]

I remember listening to several episodes of this podcast over a couple long drives. It was engrossing but I had this sinking feeling that they were enabling this creepy man to share his story, sensationalizing it. Then in episode 6 or so, they admitted they had little confirmation that anything in the prior episodes was true! I remember feeling very punked. I am shocked and disappointed that they are allowing the reporter to continue covering sensitive topics like Breonna Taylor.
posted by dantheclamman at 10:50 AM on December 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

After the NYT's Dean Baquet attributed the problem to there being a lack of the same strict editorial oversight in the NYT audio dept as there is on the news side, having Daily host Michael Barbaro, who is engaged to the executive producer Caliphate, interview him for the "audio" version of the correction seems like an immediate failure to put into action the lesson they should have learned from the incident.

Barbaro's attempts at damage control also seem less than professional, as NPR's media critic Folkenflik noted in his followup Host of 'The Daily' Clouds 'N.Y. Times' Effort To Restore Trust After 'Caliphate'

Privately, Barbaro repeatedly pressed at least four journalists Friday to temper their critiques of The Times and how they framed what happened. I know, because I was one of them.

So was NPR host and former Middle East correspondent Lulu Garcia-Navarro, whom he admonished to demonstrate restraint and warned was hurting the feelings of people at the newspaper.

Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple also received multiple direct messages from Barbaro, especially about his use of the word "retract" on Twitter to describe what happened.

"I happen to believe that in this instance that it is a sign of The New York Times' integrity, that they took this step," said Wemple, who has written extensively about Caliphate. "They should embrace that they retracted it instead of ... tiptoeing around this idea."
posted by CaptWacky at 10:52 AM on December 26, 2020 [16 favorites]

From the NPR article:

[NYTimes executive editor] Baquet says editors relied on Callimachi's judgment to guide their own when it came to Caliphate.

"She's a powerful reporter who we imbued with a great deal of power and authority," he says. "She was regarded at that moment as, you know, as big a deal ISIS reporter as there was in the world. And there's no question that that was one of the driving forces of the story."

Pinning the blame on their reporter is apparently how the editors "share blame".

Listen, the heart wants what the heart wants. In this case, as in many before, their hearts wanted to promote a caricature of their own islamophobia.
posted by el gran combo at 10:58 AM on December 26, 2020 [25 favorites]

Sharing some of the stuff I got via twitter that got this news on my radar back in Oct, to build on my earlier comment:

- An article from The Baffler back in 2018: Stalking the Story
- A Vox podcast producer who shared her own DM with Callimachi that had her reservations

Tangential: A callout back in January, when Callimachi was leaning on her credentials to offer analysis on the ME development at the time.
posted by cendawanita at 11:08 AM on December 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have been a subscriber to The Daily for the last few years, and I have to say this whole episode gives me serious concern about the integrity and professionalism of the whole NYT. I had understood that their investigative journalism was still well-managed (as opposed to their political reporting and editorial stuff, which is a hot mess). Now I am pretty dubious about the old gray lady...
posted by suelac at 11:12 AM on December 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

Actually, I'm looking more into this and it looks like this wasn't just a case of 'not doubting' the story or doing sufficient fact-checking in the hopes of breaking a story, but a longer pattern of islamaphobic reporting from Callimachi .

And according to NPR Baquet (Executive editor, quoted by el gran combo) said "Because this was a different form [audio, not written], people like me and some of my top deputies didn't feel as comfortable, and that's why that fell through the cracks,"". How ridiculous.
posted by Braeburn at 11:14 AM on December 26, 2020 [6 favorites]

I had seen the initial retraction articles in the NYT, but hadn't seen any of the other links and backstory here. Thanks for the post and for the additional links throughout the comments here which add a lot of context.

I am surprised that such a major retraction and embarrassment only led to the reporter being reassigned. I would have thought the consequences would be more severe but that is apparently not how things work at the Times.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:22 AM on December 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Harper’s had an article looking at big ticket podcasts which are usually either true crime or history shows. A lot of them suffer from either lax fact checking through to blatant falsehood. But they have huge audiences. And large production values - reinactments, music, EFX, etc. The production values give them the aura of professionalism and the story contents are designed for ratings and not verisimilitude. It’s not surprising to hear about this podcast given the overall environment of podcasts these days.
posted by njohnson23 at 11:27 AM on December 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Has anyone done a “yeah so Osama bin Laden pretty much actually won and pulled off a redux of the Afghanistan/Soviet Union mortal wound thing” podcast yet, especially updated for the Trumpocalypse phase? If not, that would be a great pivot/career resuscitation for Callimachi... “see this is Al Qaeda again, not ISIS, I'm still totally reassigned.”

I mean I'd think OBL's ghost is probably not thrilled at the boost China is getting from the US decline but he'd probably say “one at a time.”
posted by XMLicious at 11:56 AM on December 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don't think his ghost would DGAF about China, with with the UK and US offering him enough for the next 1000 lifetimes.
posted by infini at 1:18 PM on December 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Tangential: A callout back in January, when Callimachi was leaning on her credentials to offer analysis on the ME development at the time.

Yeah this guy is a COVID denying deep-state conspiracist. No need to bring him into legit discussion of the Times’ failings here.
posted by schoolgirl report at 2:15 PM on December 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

Listen, the heart wants what the heart wants. In this case...

Savage
posted by fatbird at 2:49 PM on December 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

This is such a disappointment. I feel like when something like this happens, most people who comment say they always felt like something was off but I legitimately really liked this podcast, recommended it to people, and also enjoyed Rukmini Callimachi's other work on Reply All and Breonna Taylor. And then it's shocking to find out that Michael Barbaro didn't mention that he is in a relationship with the executive producer while involved with explaining what happened here. Bah, it feels shitty to lose confidence in an institution I'd trusted.
posted by carolr at 5:33 PM on December 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

Yeah this guy is a COVID denying deep-state conspiracist

Really! Very well-noted then, thank you.
posted by cendawanita at 6:18 PM on December 26, 2020

The lesson I'm getting from this is to not trust the State Dept's media collaborators to tell you about the enemies of the U.S.
posted by jy4m at 7:14 PM on December 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

This is the Harper's piece on well produced but unreliable podcasts which was mentioned upthread. While it doesn't cover this incident it's very on point here.
posted by mark k at 7:22 PM on December 26, 2020 [9 favorites]

Back when it released, they talked about this podcast on the floor of the House of Commons in Ottawa. The conservatives were vociferously accusing the government of doing nothing about these unrepentant terrorists hiding in Toronto. And it was all a lie. Ouf.
posted by papineau at 9:21 PM on December 26, 2020 [7 favorites]

I think there are glaring issues with podcasts as journalism and academic work (podcasts are frequently used in classrooms today), but I also don’t recall the Canadian’s story as being as big a piece as it apparently was. I remember mainly the reporting on ISIS through Callimachi’s visits and the trove of documents (that I think have been returned to Iraq now?). I do think it brings the whole thing into question, but almost all podcasts like this are reliant on story arcs (doesn’t The Daily market itself as news told through stories?) and that promotes a whole host of issues.

Anyway, I love podcasts and narrative style journalism, but it’s good for people to be reminded that podcasts are, mainly, entertainment.
posted by Corduroy at 11:21 PM on December 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

I just want to focus on the question of why Chaudhry is being charged with perpetrating a "terrorist hoax." I would expect a terrorist hoax to be something like a threat of a (non-existent) attack, designed to promote an ideology through fear of the purported attack, not, you know, "bullshitting about being a terrorist."

I don't know how Canadian law handles this, but if this RCMP press release and this citation of the statute (scroll down to 83.231) are accurate, this doesn't look like a great case, or a great use of that law.
posted by pykrete jungle at 6:22 AM on December 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

A few issues jump out at me. One is the seductiveness of slick production. The power of presentation shouldn't be discounted. It's fundamentally a sales pitch, regardless the quality of information being presented. And the story arc is a format that speaks to people in a fundamental way.

Another is the seductiveness of confirmation bias. Bullshitty stories thrive when people want to believe. When the right buttons are pushed, we often grant more leeway, or jettison critical thinking altogether. It's kind of scary, really, to find how many stories are debunked because there are people whose prior beliefs contradict a particular story angle. That's the kind of determination that drives further research, moreso than sheer curiosity or skepticism. I think people are not necessarily the truth seekers they like to believe themselves to be, but tend to be truth seekers of convenience.

And finally the less ephemeral nature of podcasts/documentaries. News stories are more easily corrected, retracted, and updated. Podcasts/video seems to be more durable medium. Once committed, there's more reluctance to revisit or delete. The slicker the production, the more reluctance. I think not only on the part of producers and editors, but also the consumer.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:53 AM on December 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

Next you're going to tell me the WSJ's podcast on Greenpeace is unreliable..
posted by benzenedream at 9:58 AM on December 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

> the CT field

I'm guessing from context that that CT means counter-terrorism.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:38 PM on December 27, 2020

Barbaro's attempts at damage control also seem less than professional, as NPR's media critic Folkenflik noted in his followup Host of 'The Daily' Clouds 'N.Y. Times' Effort To Restore Trust After 'Caliphate'

I can't say I'm surprised. Hearing Barbaro on the radio often feels like I'm listening to the pure distillation of the New York Times' breathless reverence for itself.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 1:16 PM on December 27, 2020 [6 favorites]

Kenneth Tomlinson put NPR (and other Committee for Public Broadcasting outlets) on the gibbet 15 years ago. They've been fading ever since.
posted by rhizome at 7:57 PM on December 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Ah yes, podcasting. The medium that convinced thousands of people that Adnan Syed couldn’t possibly have killed his girlfriend because “he seemed like such a nice boy.”
posted by panama joe at 8:16 PM on December 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

My 13 yo son has listened to Serial several times. We’ve had a few conversations about Adnan Syed and how his story relates to the US legal system. I think his story exemplifies the arbitrary and discriminatory nature of convictions — I do think the podcast did a good job showing how the prosecution’s theory was full of holes. A whiter, wealthier defendant would have beaten the charges because they would have gotten a presumption of innocence that Adnan did not get from his jury.

Which isn’t to say I think Adnan was railroaded — rather, I think there was enough evidence that pointed to his guilt that the prosecution knew any holes in their timeline would be papered over by the jury.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 6:48 AM on December 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

I think the only reason Serial could even be a podcast was the shameful incompetence of Syed's lawyer. Doesn't make him any less guilty, but left enough stones unturned that it left some room for doubt, especially in an audience that might already be predisposed to distrusting the criminal justice system.
posted by panama joe at 7:31 AM on December 28, 2020 [1 favorite]