In retrospect, the National Review might have been better off not going after the Jayson Blair and Scott Thomas Beauchamp stories with so much enthusiasm. As Tom Edsall reports, the conservative political magazine has been publishing stories about events in the Middle East that were apparently fabricated.
There is a growing dispute over the veracity of reporting from Lebanon by former Marine W. Thomas Smith, Jr. who is posting reports on his blog, The Tank, published by the conservative website, National Review Online (NRO). Smith is a supporter of the war in Iraq, and is affiliated with two politically conservative organizations, the Counterterrorism Research Center and the Family Security Foundation. He is the executive editor of World Defense Review, and the co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design.
At question are two reports filed by Smith on The Tank — reports which appear to be designed to bolster support for the ongoing presence of U.S troops in the Mideast.
Edsall focuses specifically on a series of reports about Hezbollah activities that not only fail to withstand scrutiny, but may even “endanger the press corps in the troubled region.”
The Huffington Post contacted four professional journalists in the area, all of whom condemned Smith for publishing a variety of false reports. Michael Prothero, who has reported for Fortune, the Washington Times, and Slate, described Smith’s journalistic practices as “insane.” Chris Allbritton, who has reported from the Middle East since 2002 for Time, Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Times, and the Newark Star-Ledger, said Smith is a “fabulist,” whose reports document events that never occurred. A third journalist said, “Mr. Smith’s reporting contain[s] pure fabrications.”
Confronted with reality, Smith, who repeatedly blasted TNR and Beauchamp’s dubious reports, tried to backpedal.
“Now, should I have been more specific in my writing in terms of what I physically witnessed as opposed to what I learned from sources regarding the tent city? I wish I had, but it was a blog, which tends to be less formal. However, when blogs contain original reporting, that reporting needs to be sourced. In the future, I’ll provide more context.”
“Context” does not appear to be the problem here; reporting on fictional events as if they occurred in reality goes beyond simple questions of “context.”
Smith’s editors are also on the defensive.
NRO editor Kathryn Jean Lopez acknowledged that some of Smith’s work is “misleading.” In an email to the Huffington Post, Lopez said:
“Having done an internal review of his posts prompted by your queries (contacting experts here and on the ground, both his sources and independents), my sense is we should have provided readers more context in some of his Lebanon posts. Without malice – wanting to give a sense of the scene – the author gave an incomplete and therefore misleading picture in at least one post.”
What a tangled web they weave….
Update: Glenn Greenwald has a gem on all of this, including an exploration of the right’s breathtaking hypocrisy.