This one is surely now to stack up as a case for the nation’s journalism schools.
We ran this extensive post earlier about a report in The Weekly Standard that Scott Thomas Beauchamp had recanted his controversial articles written about the U.S. military in Iraq under a pen name. If you re-read it, you’ll note that we added our own journalistic “hedges” since we were commenting on a report based on an anonymous source and not confirmed elsewhere.
But now The New Republic has essentially said it not only cannot confirm The Weekly Standard‘s “scoop,” but its sources are seemingly throwing cold water on it. Here’s TNR‘s statement:
A STATEMENT ON SCOTT THOMAS BEAUCHAMP:
We’ve talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Major Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, “I have no knowledge of that.” He added, “If someone is speaking anonymously [to The Weekly Standard], they are on their own.” When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, “We don’t go into the details of how we conduct our investigations.”
So will this boil down, in the end, to The Weekly Standard saying its anonymous sources say the stories are solid…and TNR saying its sources are solid
One thing: if TNR sticks by the story and says its sources confirm it, anonymous, unnamed sources from The Weekly Standard will not be judged (in other than totally partisan circles) as having proven the allegations untrue. But The Standard talked about a signed, recanting confession. That’s a yardstick. True? Case closed. NOT true? Then that is a huge issue. If it’s false and was passed onto The Standard then it would represent a new low in political misdirection.
This may be something for the dreaded, cursed, denigrated mainstream media to sort out.
And us? We’ll refrain from any blow-by-blow posts on this until this is resolved. Remember that The Weekly Standard enjoys high-level Bush administration sources. Will their report prove to be factual, or inaccurate? Stay tuned..
NOTE: The headline on this post has been changed. Actually, TNR is saying it can’t confirm it. Their statement is worded in a way that they don’t flatly deny it. And — in this age when all of us citizens need to hire lawyers to interpret official statements — the words “no knowledge” is not a complete denial. It’s still possible that it’ll come out that a recant statement has been signed and then the issue for some will be whether it he was intimidated into signing it and, if so, how.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.