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Harper’s Credibility Issues Return
Dec 28th, 2007 by Bob Owens
Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:
Over at Powerline yesterday, John Hinderaker stated that Scott Horton of Harper’s libeled the U.S. Army with an anonymous smear on behalf of Iraqi terrorism suspect and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein.
It’s as incredible an attempt at libel as I’ve ever seen. No one with any common sense could believe a word of it. That qualification, though, excludes Editor and Publisher, which yesterday republished Horton’s libel admiringly, under the headline “Harper’s Probes Case of Jailed AP Photog in Iraq. ” Some “probe! ” Editor and Publisher begins by saying that Horton is “the latest to look at the purported evidence” against Hussein, but that is false. Horton never discusses the evidence, of which he is, as far as his article discloses, entirely ignorant. Beyond that, E & P’s crack “staff, ” which is credited with its piece, fails to mention that Horton’s column is based entirely on an anonymous and highly dubious “source, ” and simply quotes Horton’s hit-job with evident approval.
Of course, no one expects the left-wing E & P to do any critical thinking, let alone investigation. But it would have taken very little research for them to discover that Scott Horton was, until January, a partner in the law firm that represents Bilal Hussein — a fact that Horton did not find it necessary to disclose to his readers. There is indeed a story here, and one that relates directly to journalism–the kind of thing in which E & P might be expected to take an interest. But political loyalty trumps journalistic standards at E & P.
To sum up: Scott Horton claims to have an anonymous “source” inside the Pentagon, who relayed to him the contents of a DOD briefing on the Hussein case. I think this is plainly false. I believe that Horton has a source, but is it a source inside the Pentagon, or inside Hussein’s defense team, headed by Horton’s former law partner? If Horton has a “source” inside the Pentagon, who is it? Is this purported source someone with knowledge of the Hussein case, as Horton claims, or is it just another left-winger regurgitating anti-American talking points?
These questions are easily answerable. All Scott Horton has to do is identify his alleged source inside the Pentagon, and give us the details on the “briefing” that his column supposedly summarized. Unless and until this happens, it is reasonable to conclude that Horton, or his source, is lying.
If the name Scott Horton seems familiar to readers of Confederate Yankee, it should; On August 25 of this year, I called him out for a claim he made in an August 24 blog entry he wrote at Harper’s called Those Thuggish Neocons, in which he claimed:
I have no idea whether Beauchamp’s story was accurate. But at this point I have seen enough of the Neocon corner’s war fables to immediately discount anything that emerges from it. One example: back last spring, when I was living in Baghdad, on Haifa Street, I sat in the evening reading a report by one of the core Neocon pack. He was reporting from Baghdad, and recounted a day he had spent out on a patrol with U.S. troops on Haifa Street. He described a peaceful, pleasant, upscale community. Children were out playing on the street. Men and women were out going about their daily business. Well, in fact I had been forced to spend the day “in the submarine,” as they say, missing appointments I had in town. Why? This bucolic, marvelous Haifa Street that he described had erupted in gun battles the entire day. In the view of my security guards, with which I readily concurred, it was too unsafe. And yes, I could hear the gunfire and watch some of the exchanges from my position. No American patrol had passed by and there were certainly no children playing in the street. This was the point when I realized that many of these accounts were pure fabrications.
I challenged Horton to produce the “Neocon’s” article he claimed to have read in an August 24 email, stating:
I can’t claim that Harper’s is one of my normal stops, but I was very intrigued by your post today “Those Thuggish Neocons, ” particularly the paragraph about the reporter who fabricated the Haifa Street report you read.
If you are familiar with my small blog at all (and I’m sure you probably aren’t); I often run down false or inaccurate media claims, typically hitting the wire service reporting the hardest, though I’ve also captured fraud and inaccuracies in newspapers and magazines as well. And yes, I’d readily admit that I have a conservative perspective, but that does not make me so biased that I approach the world with ideological blinders, as this post burning a false pro-Iranian War argument should show.
I was hoping that you would provide me with the date of the story you related as specifically as you can recall, along with the news organization and individual reporter you said was making up this report.
This is pretty obviously unethical and possibly illegal, and I want this resolved quickly.
Horton never responded, prompting my subsequent blog entry the next day.
I repeatedly attempted to get a response from Harper’s and emailed Harper’s Editor Roger D. Hodge and Managing Editor Ellen Rosenbush on August 27, and again sent email to them, Horton, and Vice President of Public Relations Giulia Melucci on August 29, once more pressing for Horton to produce the report and reporter he claimed to have read during his time in Baghdad.
Again, they refused to respond.
I did not pursue Horton’s claims further at that point as I was immersed in the Scott Beauchamp story at the time, but with Beauchamp’s stories now retracted by The New Republic and Powerline once again poking holes in Horton’s credibility, it seems time to return to the issue once more.
Harper’s should come clean on Horton’s sourcing for both of these stories, and quickly. If they do not, they seem doomed to wander down the same humiliating path as Franklin Foer and The New Republic.
I appreciate your hard work and research on this, Bob. But who the hell reads Harper’s?
But who the hell reads Harper’s?
I read Harper’s for years. When the Harper’s Foundation ended up as the mainstay for the magazine, the articles went towards the left, and my reading of Harper’s diminished.
Would that be “Harper’s Bizarre”?
It’s a bit much to expect Horton to out his anonymous Pentagon source, for all the usual reasons (promises made, journalistic ethics, career risk to the source, the likelihood of ever getting future whistle-blowers, etc.). But we might expect that some editor at Harper’s should know this source, and can publicly vouch for his existence and claims. (Even “Deep Throat” was known to Ben Bradlee.)
What appears at first most likely to nail down Horton’s credibility, or lack thereof, is the total absence of a plausible reason for failing to identify a neocon’s story which Horton claimed to exist. He will likely claim to have remembered the story, but not exactly which neocon was responsible, or to which date he was referring, months later. You will be left at an impasse.
E&P and Harper’s should indeed be shamed into an addendum concerning his legal background, and Harper’s to trot out an editor, but you are not likely to get any further in obtaining a correction.
Horton has outdone Glenn Greenwald…Horton has _imaginary_ sockpuppets!
“I appreciate your hard work and research on this, Bob. But who the hell reads Harper’s?”
Second that,
I appreciate it also, but nobody’s read Harper’s since 1900. I genuinely wasn’t sure until pretty recently if the magazine even still existed or not.
Oh, come on, Harper’s is the best companion while on the throne, and the pages are plenty dry so it doesn’t leave a mark.
Like most lefty publications, they are more concerned with advancing the ’cause’ rather than advancing the truth. I expect to see this clown editing the LA Times soon, his ‘credentials’ are impeccable.
“Journalism” isn’t even my job and I remember reports I’ve read from the embedded bloggers (is that who Horton might be referring to?) over the past couple years — Roggio, Yon, Ardolino, etc….
If I made a living commenting and opining on such people and things I am certain I could find my notes some where …. Shoot, I can for other the far less significant work I do.
Is there anyone in the “profession” who can spell the word a-c-c-o-u-n-t-a-b-i-l-i-t-y anymore?
We want it in relationships, we want it is politics, we want it in information and news. Well informed — accurately informed — humans can manage their affairs pretty well individually and collectively. People like Horton, Beauchamps, Rather et. al. don’t seem to believe that. Their loss.
God bless the Internet.
I don’t think it’s particularly reasonable to expect Horton to out his informer or “to conclude that Horton, or his source, is lying” if he doesn’t. Absent a court order, almost no journalist will ever willingly jump through that hoop. As DWPittelli notes above, it is Harper’s editorial responsibility to vouch for Horton’s source. Powerline has produced a compelling deconstruction, but as Bob Owens suggests, Harper’s editorial judgment is also at issue here. In terms of accountability, I’d even call it the larger issue.
Anonymous sources are here to stay, but they are a double-edged sword, and their use demands assiduous, pro-active editorial oversight. Harper’s failure to disclose that Horton’s former law firm represents Bilal Hussein is, on its own, a basic ethical breach which is downright discouraging on the editorial front. Individual authors come and go; it is editors who ultimately shape both the news and the quality of the reporting we get.
Harper’s is the premier socio-political journal in the country and it outsells “The Weekly Standard” and “National Review” combined 10-1. Unlike the fat boys with asthma talking tough neocons- it presents a virile unabridged mirror on the real events as they occur. It’s a magazine favored by Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, Harold Pinter, Stephen Hawking, Philip Roth, Admiral William Fallon head of Centcom and innumerable other international movers and shakers. Of course, Hugh Hewitt reads “The Weekly Standard” and John Podhoretz “The National Review” so I guess it’s even.
Trevor is correct, as are the other posters. Harper’s took a dive to the Left and never looked back. As a magazine that looks to promote it’s “narrative”, more ethical lapses were bound to emerge. Nevertheless, it is still well-read by the intellectual Left. But it is seen as more credible still than Mothoer Jones or American Prospect.
Harper’s is the premier socio-political journal in the country and it outsells “The Weekly Standard” and “National Review” combined 10-1.
It has a current circulation of 210,000. National Review’s circulation is about 160,000 and has varied between 140 and 200,000 in the past few years. The weekly Standard has a circulation of about 80,000 - so that’s pretty much a statistic you just made up.
More importantly, whatever its circulation is - when’s the last time anybody, on the right or left, ever uttered the sentence “did you see the article in Harper’s?”
I’ll answer that - 1900.
It’s cool to be able to cite a big name, but the author’s you’re listing are well past their prime (Thomas Pynch is what? 70?) and the other two, while being great men, were never known for their engaging writing ability. These men may have been heroes to you at some point, but there came a time when guys who were popular in the ’60s kept doing the same damn thing over and over again and became boring as hell. (I like Tom Wolfe, but even I’ll admit he’s lagged in recent years - you expect me to get excited about John Updike?). For some reason Harper’s insists on publishing those people. Too bad.
Because of its age and it’s former prominence, I’m sure it can still get libraries and other institutions to subscribe to it and inflate those numbers, but - this isn’t even a leftwing vs. conservative thing - I can’t think of anybody on the left or the right who’s ever given a damn within the past couple decades what they publish, because they don’t read it.
I guess the corollary to who reads Harpers is why don’t people read Harpers. It’s because it is a leftwing partisan rag. A step up over The Nation which is a step up over Mother Jones…. Ergo, I doubt they’ll move on this. Their credibility was never a issue (to them or their readers). Only people who agree with them (regardless) buy their mag anyway… they don’t really care if its made up.
I’d add, the New Republic is better than any of them… and you saw how long it took to get them to move on a retraction… I’m betting Harpers will totally ignore you.
10JM Hanes
“I don’t think it’s particularly reasonable to expect Horton to out his informer or “to conclude that Horton, or his source, is lying” if he doesn’t. Absent a court order, almost no journalist will ever willingly jump through that hoop.”
I totally agree. But the editors could ask to know who person is and/or to chat with them… to verify they exist and have the position implied… and then report back to us on whether the source exists and/or was represented properly… It’s what editors do. It’s why the old media is supposedly so great. All those editors verifying the stories in their publicans for us….
Trevor:
LOL! You mean “virile unabridged mirror on the real events as they occur” like this?
I’ll leave you to duke it out with Roger Kimball
I subscribed to Harper’s back around 1978-79, when it briefly ran some neocon-style cover stories, and a much younger Lewis Lapham pointed it in a more iconoclastic direction (before he returned to the PC fold himself).
Three I remember particularly were “The Wealth of Washington”, by Tom Bethell (describing how highly paid govt employees and the support system of “Beltway Bandit” consultants were making the DC area the highest in per capita income in the country), “Environmentalism and the Leisure Class, by William Tucker (one of the first exposes of the Green Movement’s surreptitious efforts to undermine development and thereby keep their inferiors in their proper places–the cover photo featured an environmental logo flag flying from the mast of a yacht), and “Politics in the Woods” by Gene Lyons (an expose of hippies in Bolinas, CA doing the same–surprising from a writer who went on to become a major Clinton sycophant).
Unfortunately, it didn’t last long, and neither did my subscription.
What’s up with my 2nd comment stuck “awaiting moderation”? Is it the links?
What a sad twilight for historic Harpers!
When one thinks of Harpers history, for it to end up as just one more left-wing propaganda broadsheet is an ignominious ending to what was once America’s premier magazine.