NYT op-ed editor Shipley says op-eds must be fact-checked; does policy apply to Brooks, Tierney?

In a July 31 New York Times column, op-ed page editor David Shipley laid out the editing process for the paper's guest op-eds, explaining that editors must fact-check the op-ed and its assertions. "If news articles -- from The Times and other publications -- are at odds with a point or an example in an essay," Shipley wrote, "we need to resolve whatever discrepancy exists." But the paper's self-described rigor toward guest op-eds apparently does not extend to its own columnists; over the past year, David Brooks and John Tierney made numerous assertions that conflicted with the Times' published reporting or news reports by other mainstream news sources.

The Times' editorial process

Shipley described the op-ed page's editing process as follows: Once an article has been selected for publication, an editor prepares the piece for publication. That editing process includes specific "clear-cut" procedures, including spelling and grammar checking; editing the article to meet space constraints; and also editing to meet the Times' style guidelines. Importantly, Shipley writes that the editor must also fact-check the article -- including checking its assertions against news reports:

Here are the clear-cut things the editor will do:

[...]

• Fact-check the article. While it is the author's responsibility to ensure that everything written for us is accurate, we still check facts - names, dates, places, quotations.

We also check assertions. If news articles -- from The Times and other publications -- are at odds with a point or an example in an essay, we need to resolve whatever discrepancy exists.

For instance, an Op-Ed article critical of newly aggressive police tactics in Town X can't flatly say the police have no reason to change their strategy if there have been news reports that violence in the town is rising. This doesn't mean the writer can't still argue that there are other ways to deal with Town X's crime problem -- he just can't say that the force's decision to change came out of the blue.

How would we resolve the Town X issue? Well, we'd discuss it with the writer -- generally by telephone or e-mail -- and we'd try to find a solution that preserves the writer's argument while also adhering to the facts.

In a March 27, 2004, "Memo on the Columnists" (which former public editor Daniel Okrent posted online as #22), Shipley's superior, New York Times editorial page editor Gail Collins, commented that "columnists are obviously required to be factually accurate. If one of them makes an error, he or she is expected to promptly correct it in the column." Collins explained that columnists are expected to correct all factual errors:

After having had some experience with the columnist-correction issue from both sides of the fence, I think it's a good policy for other reasons as well. Being a columnist is like walking a tightrope without a net and the very lack of supervision creates an enormous sense of responsibility. You feel very keenly that you and you alone are answerable for every word. That's the way it should be, and I think the corrections policy reinforces that. Also, the relationship between columnists and their readers is extremely personal, and I think readers rightly expect corrections to be delivered in the columnist's own voice.

None of this is meant to suggest that columnist can pick or choose which errors to correct. They are expected to correct every error. Anyone who refused to fulfill this critical obligation would not be a columnist for The New York Times very long. And none of this is meant to suggest that the editorial page editor can use the policy to duck responsibility for inaccuracies on the page. Whenever an error is brought to the attention of one of the Times editors, it goes to me, and through me to the columnist in question. These are some of the top writers in American journalism. They take their reputation for accuracy very, very seriously.

John Tierney's columns

As a columnist, Tierney has repeatedly made assertions that conflict with "news articles from the Times and other publications," resulting in columns that have not "adhered to the facts."

• May 14: Tierney warned readers that Social Security had a "long-term deficit" of $11 trillion. The Boston Globe and the Associated Press, however, reported that professional actuaries regard the "infinite horizon projection" -- the $11 trillion figure -- as highly misleading. A March 24 Globe article reported that "many actuaries say the [infinite horizon projection] estimate is of little value, because it is impossible to make accurate projections so far into the future." The December 20, 2004, Associated Press report noted that the American Academy of Actuaries, the country's leading association of insurance and demographics experts, criticized the Social Security trustees' decision to provide an infinite horizon projection of the Social Security trust fund deficit in the 2003 trustees' report. According to the AP, the academy warned that, by including the projection, "the public 'is likely to be misled into believing that the program's financial situation is deteriorating and the cost of restoring actuarial balance increasing, even if this is not the case.'" Media Matters has previously noted the academy's December 19, 2003, letter to the Social Security trustees, which criticized the use of infinite time projections in the trustees report:

  [T]he new measures of OASDI's [Social Security] unfunded obligations included in the 2003 report provide little if any useful information about the program's long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise in the demographic, economic and actuarial aspects of the program's finances into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated.

• April 30: Tierney characterized President Bush's April 29 Social Security proposal in a way that was, in fact, "at odds" with other news accounts. Tierney claimed that when Bush proposed cutting Social Security benefits for everyone except low-income (under $20,000) workers, he "sounded ... like Robin Hood" because he "promised to improve benefits for the poor while limiting them for everyone else." By contrast, The Washington Post reported that under a plan by Robert C. Pozen, upon which Bush's plan is reportedly based, the current method for calculating initial benefits "would remain in effect for the bottom 30 percent of earners, who are currently making less than about $20,000 a year." In other words, contrary to Tierney's claim, the poor would see no improvement in benefits. The Los Angeles Times also discussed how Pozen's plan proposed no change, either up or down, in initial benefit levels for low-income retirees:

  As matters now stand, when working people retire, their initial Social Security benefits are calculated according to a formula that ensures they receive about 40% of their pre-retirement income. Their past wages are converted into current dollars using a wage index, a measure of how much average wages have risen during their work lives.

  Under Pozen's plan, the benefits of the bottom 30% of wage earners would continue to be calculated in this way. But the remaining 70% would have their benefits calculated using a "price index" or some mix of wage and price index. A price index measures how much prices have risen during a person's work life.

  An analysis of Pozen's plan by Social Security Administration chief actuary Stephen C. Goss supports what The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times had reported. In a February 10 memorandum to Pozen on his plan's "financial effects," Goss noted that the Pozen plan "provides for a modification of the basic benefit formula except for the lowest 30 percent of career-average earners whose basic benefits would be unchanged under the plan."

Media Matters also identified two columns by Tierney on the Chilean pension system that portrayed a far different outlook than that described in Times news stories.

• April 26 and May 7: As Media Matters noted at the time, Tierney's April 26 and May 7 columns extolled the virtues of Chile's privatized retirement system, but those rosy assertions conflicted with the Times' own, more sober, reporting on the topic. For example, in the April 26 column, Tierney lavished praise on the Chilean system, while conceding that "Chileans may someday long for a system like Social Security if the stock market crashes and takes their pensions down with it." But an August 16, 1998, Times news report noted that, during the economic downturn at that time, Chileans had experienced sharp benefit cuts. And a January 27 Times article suggested that "someday" had already come -- or may never have left: The Times quoted an unnamed government official as saying, "If people really had freedom of choice, 90 percent of them would opt to go back to the old system."

David Brooks's columns

Times columnist David Brooks has also made assertions in his columns that conflict with the record. As Media Matters has noted, Brooks distorted Sen. John Kerry's remarks three separate times during the 2004 campaign.

• October 30, 2004: Brooks used an out-of-context Kerry quotation from CNN's Larry King Live to claim that "Kerry supported the strategy of using Afghans to hunt [Osama bin Laden] down." In fact, Kerry was not discussing the use of Afghanis to hunt bin Laden; he was supporting the military's decision to not use napalm or flamethrowers to search the caves of Tora Bora, Afghanistan. Brooks later apologized for the distortion, but the apology came after the election (which, as Brooks noted on November 13, 2004, did not do Kerry much good).
• September 21, 2004: Brooks mischaracterized a Kerry speech from the previous day, writing that "Kerry declared that it is time to get out [of Iraq], beginning next summer" and that Kerry is "picking the withdrawal camp." In fact, Kerry had laid out his conditions that would allow a withdrawal: increased international involvement, trained Iraqi security forces, a reconstruction plan and credible elections. Given those conditions, Kerry said, he hoped to begin to withdraw troops in summer 2005 and finish the withdrawal in four years.
• August 24, 2004: Brooks mangled Kerry's remarks from the January 6, 2004, edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews to say that Kerry had "both called himself an antiwar candidate and said he would even today vote for the war resolution," echoing similar misquotes by Bush campaign principals, including the president. Host Chris Matthews had previously criticized Bush-Cheney '04 chief campaign strategist Matthew Dowd for the distortion, commenting, "You say what he [Kerry] said on my show and he didn't say that."