TNR apologizes (sort of)

In regard to the Beauchamp/TNR scandal a few months back, Frank Foer, editor of The New Republic, makes a reluctant retraction and now claims that "we cannot stand by these stories". Unfortunately, we have to sift through no less than 14 pages of excuses and snide remarks against his critics before he even gives us that grudging non-apology.

Essentially, Foer gives a dozen excuses, blaming it all on the difficulties of the circumstances and on the Army's lack of cooperation (in fact the article is even titled "Fog of War"). Nowhere does it occur to him that it wasn't the Army's job to disprove Beauchamp's stories, but rather TNR's job to prove them!

He also claims that the magazine tried to do the right thing all along. Since I don't work for TNR, I couldn't tell you if that is true or not. But to my mind, doing the "right thing" would include a real apology, with the actual words "I apologize" or "we're sorry" in it. And that apology could extend to his critics (like me) whom he relentlessly attacked. He also demanded an apology himself, so now that he knows he was in the wrong, why doesn't he apply that same standard to himself?

After all, this was the same man who said:

I just wish that ... those in the blogosphere who kind of move from one reckless allegation to another reckless allegation for once apologize when they get something wrong.

Speaking of apologies, here's a couple other Ivory Tower folks who could stand to do so as well:

Andrew Sullivan:

Can we now expect apologies from the people who smeared and maligned the magazine and its soldier-reporter? I doubt it. The attackers are not the kind to acknowledge their own errors.

Or his twin at the Atlantic, Matthew Yglesias:

as best I can tell nobody has yet brought forward any serious reason to doubt his story...
All these people [Beauchamp's critics] need to stop. They need to take a deep breath. They need to apologize to the people at TNR who've wasted huge amounts of time dealing with their nonsense.

Well, instead of simply saying "I'm sorry" or "I was wrong", Yglesias takes Foer's lead of obfuscation, and calls the whole thing "hardly significant", the TNRs critics "crazed hawks", and then tries to change the subject to a recent fake story scandal at the conservative NRO, which is also regrettable incident, but one doesn't make up for the other.

In fact, while Yglesias rips into the NRO with one insult after another, he gives us not even a single derogatory term directed at the people who actually wrote or published the bogus TNR story. Translation: He believes it's scandalous when the political right does it, but understandable when it comes from a left-wing sympathetic view. Personally, I thought all dishonest reporting was equally reprehensible, no matter what side of the political spectrum it comes from. But that's just me.

Gawker.com also has a good take on the TNR's "apology".





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