Palko points to this post by journalist Lindsay Jones, who writes:
It’s flattering to see @nytimes rewrite my [Jones’s] feature on two Canadian men switched at birth. You can read the original, exclusively reported @globeandmail story I took months to research and write as a former freelancer here: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-switched-at-birth-manitoba/
The original article, published 10 Feb 2023 in the Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail, is called “A hospital’s mistake left two men estranged from their heritages. Now they fight for answers,” subtitled, “In 1955, a Manitoba hospital sent Richard Beauvais and Eddy Ambrose home with the wrong families. After DNA tests revealed the mix-up, both want an explanation and compensation.” It begins:
One winter evening in 2020, Richard Beauvais and his wife pored over the online results of a genealogical DNA kit.
“They screwed up,” Mr. Beauvais surmised, sitting at the kitchen island in his ranch style home near the coastal community of Sechelt, B.C.
According to the test, he was Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish. Mr. Beauvais was stupefied. Mr. Beauvais, whose mother was Cree, grew up in a Métis settlement on the shores of Lake Manitoba and was taken into foster care at age eight or nine. The kit was a gift from his eldest daughter to help Mr. Beauvais learn more about his roots, including his French father, who died when he was 3. But here in front of him was a list of names and nationalities that, he thought, couldn’t be his. . . .
The followup appeared in the New York Times on 2 Aug 2023 and is called “Switched at Birth, Two Canadians Discover Their Roots at 67,” with subtitle “Two Canadian men who were switched at birth to families of different ethnicities are now questioning who they really are and learning how racial heritage shapes identities.” It begins:
Richard Beauvais’s identity began unraveling two years ago, after one of his daughters became interested in his ancestry. She wanted to learn more about his Indigenous roots — she was even considering getting an Indigenous tattoo — and urged him to take an at-home DNA test. Mr. Beauvais, then 65, had spent a lifetime describing himself as “half French, half Indian,” or Métis, and he had grown up with his grandparents in a log house in a Métis settlement.
So when the test showed no Indigenous or French background but a mix of Ukrainian, Ashkenazi Jewish and Polish ancestry, he dismissed it as a mistake and went back to his life as a commercial fisherman and businessman in British Columbia.
It’s amusing to see where the two articles differ. The Globe and Mail is a Canadian newspaper so they don’t need to keep reminding us in their headlines that the men are “Canadian.” They can jump right to “Manitoba” and “B.C.,” and they can just use the word “Métis” without defining him. For the Times, on the other hand, the “Jewish” part of the roots wasn’t enough—they needed to clarify for their readers that it was “Ashkenazi Jewish.”
What happened?
Did the Times article rip off the Globe and Mail article? We may never know. There are lots of similarities, but ultimately the two articles are telling the same story, so it makes sense the articles will be similar too. For example, the Times article mentions a tattoo that the daughter was considering, and the original Globe and Mail article has a photo of the tattoo she finally chose.
So what happened? One possibility is that the NYT reporter, who covers Canada and is based in Montreal, read the Globe and Mail story when it came out and decided to follow it up further. If I were a news reporter covering Canada, I’d probably read many newspapers each day from beginning to end—including the Globe and Mail. Another possibility is that the NYT reporter heard about the story from someone who’d read the Globe and Mail story, he decided to follow up . . . in either case, it seems plausible that it would take a few months for it to get written and published.
It’s extremely hard to believe that the NYT reporter was unaware of the Globe and Mail article. If you’re writing a news article, you’ll google its subjects to make sure there’s nothing major that you’re missing. Here’s what comes up—I restricted the search to end on 31 July 2023 to avoid anything that came after the Times article appeared:
The first link above is the Globe and Mail article in question. The second link comes from something called Global News. They don’t link to or mention the Globe and Mail article either, but I guess they, like the Times a few months later, did some reporting of their own because they include a quote that was not in the original article.
Given that no Google links to the two names appeared before 10 Feb, I’m guessing that the Globe and Mail article from that date was the first time the story appeared. I wonder how Lindsay Jones, the author of that original article, came up with the story? At the end of the article it says:
Last year, reporter Lindsay Jones unravelled the mystery of how two baby girls got switched at a Newfoundland hospital in 1969.
And, at the end of that article, it says:
Freelance journalist Lindsay Jones spoke with The Decibel about unravelling the mystery of how Arlene Lush and Caroline Weir-Greene were switched at birth.
Unfortunately, The Decibel only seems to be audio with no transcript, so I’ll leave it to any of you to listen through for the whole story.
Standard practice
I think it’s standard practice in journalism to avoid referring or linking to whoever reported on the story before you. I agree with Jones that this is bad practice. Even beyond the issue of giving credit to the reporter who broke the story and the newspaper that gave space to publish it, it can be helpful to the reader to know the source.
This is not as bad as the story of the math professor who wrote a general-interest book about chess in which he took stories from other sources without attribution and introduced errors in the process. As I wrote at the time, that’s soooo frustrating, when you copy without clear attribution but you bungle it. I think that the act of hiding the sourcing makes it that much tougher to find the problem. Fewer eyes, less transparency.
Nor is at as bad as when a statistics professor copied without attribution from Wikipedia, again introducing his own errors. Yes, some faculty do add value—it’s just negative value.
The articles from Global News and the New York Times seem better than those cases, in that the authors did their own reporting. Still, it does a disservice to readers, as well as the reporter of the original story, to hide the source. Even if it’s standard practice, I still think it’s tacky.
My casual observation leads me to believe that standard practice in journalism is to identify sources, even if they are other reporters. But I notice that the NY Times article is paywalled – perhaps you pay extra to be deprived of the sources for the stories? Sort of like medical journals (or economics journals or…) making you pay for research that deprives you of access to the data.
Dale, I believe you are correct. Andrew is incorrect about this:
My reference for any sort of question about news reporting is Reuters Journalistic Standards, as it is so comprehensive. First, see this in the Accuracy section:
“Attribution… it is essential for transparency that material we did not gather ourselves is clearly attributed in stories to the source, including when that source is a rival organisation. Failure to do so may open us to charges of plagiarism.”
Better yet is this, from the Integrity section:
“Dealing with competitors: Reuters engages in vigorous competition to report the news first and best. It is helpful to obtain information about what our competitors are covering, but we must take care that the way we collect that information, and how we share it and use it is not improper or illegal. We acknowledge when our competitors obtain exclusive news that is of value to our customers by attributing it to them clearly in pickups, just as we would expect from them.”
So, it definitely matters who gets the news story first. Often that is signified by the word “Exclusive” as the first word of the headline.
Mark Palko is correct too, about the loss of Margaret Sullivan as the New York Times public editor, or rather, the decision to eliminate her role. She was great! And she also had a vital role in ensuring integrity.
You make a reference to the NYTimes article saying she was considering a tattoo and then in the Globe and Mail they have a picture. Wouldn’t that imply the NYTimes article had the info first? Is that a typo?
John:
No, it’s not a typo. The consideration of a tattoo was in the past. The New York Times article reported that the daughter had considered a certain tattoo. The Globe and Mail article had a recent photo of a different tattoo that she got.
The NYT has long had a reputation for coming to a story late then acting as if they broke it. I’ve heard lots of journalists complain about this and I’ve seen plenty of examples.
It’s the sort of thing you can get away with when you’re the paper of record.
In a way, they treat everywhere, including this country, as if they are foreign correspondents in it and can just write up for their own audience what the locals have been discussing among themselves.
pretty much
Mark:
For some really repulsive congratulations along those lines, see here and, even worse, here: “Times reporter @onishinyt is responsible for more extraordinary stories than any other journalist I can think of. The guy is an absolute legend.”
An absolute legend, indeed.
And this: “Beautiful writing by @onishinyt for @NYTimes.” And this: “Incredible read by master of the craft.”
“Master of the craft.” That’s one way to put it.
It’s kinda tough, though, the way this one reporter is being singled out, given that it’s standard practice for news organizations to not cite earlier reporting by others.
Again, I question your observation that it is standard for new organizations to not cite earlier reporting. I believe it is standard for them to do so. Certainly ProPublica both cites the reporters and is cited by other organizations that pick up their stories. And, the Associated Press is always appropriately cited. Can you provide examples supporting your statement that it is standard practice to not do so? Of course, if I am correct then this example is particularly egregious.
The NYT is in a unique position to get away with this sort of thing. They have a huge readership. They are everybody’s default citation. They come up first on Google searches.
Add to that culture of self-congratulations (“powered by the journalism of the New York Times”) and the decision to eliminate their public editor (Margaret Sullivan really used to hold their feet to the fire).
To the extent that this is typical NY Times behavior, I think it is important to highlight that and not brand all news organizations guilty. It lets them off the hook by just behaving like all the others. I don’t really know if this is unique to the Times, but thus far they seem the main culprit. There was a similar issue a few weeks back where Andrew talked about his experience with the Times, and that also was unclear (to me) how specific the issue was to the Times.
The NYT also has a notable but not unique teacher’s pet problem. Though generally more editor rather than reporter driven than most papers (see below), it also has a history of letting certain star reporters lead them into compromising situations. Judith Miller, Leslie Kean, The Whitewater guy whose name escapes me. Climate change skeptic John Tierney. Alessandra Stanley (https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/wrong_wrong_wrong_wrong_wrong.php)
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https://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york-times-finds-time-for-soul-searching-1201852490/
For starters, it’s important to accept that the New York Times has always — or at least for many decades — been a far more editor-driven, and self-conscious, publication than many of those with which it competes. Historically, the Los Angeles Times, where I worked twice, for instance, was a reporter-driven, bottom-up newspaper. Most editors wanted to know, every day, before the first morning meeting: “What are you hearing? What have you got?”
It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Andrew, Professor Gelman, it is NOT standard practice for news organizations to not cite earlier reporting by others.
Please see my prior response to Dale Lehman, confirming his comment and citing Reuters journalism standards. Also, because you are my second favorite statistician, I dredged up a citation from the Internet. (My favorite statistician is my Swarthmore College advisor Gudmund Iversen: he’s an alumnus of Harvard just like you! He grew up in Trondheim, Norway, during the German occupation, so I think he got his statistics PhD after you.) I can’t get through the New York Times paywall, so this was the best I could do! See section “Pursuing the News” of Ethical Journalism – The New York Times:
Global is a Canadian TV network and the linked story is probably a text version of a TV news story they ran. No doubt picked up after the Globe and Mail story. It is strange how rarely you read or hear, “as first reported by…”
This habit of the Times is apparently well known – see https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywaeg5/at-the-times-a-hesitance-to-hyperlink for some details. The response of the Times is interesting in that they appear to agree that citation is important. However, I think it reveals priorities (or, rather, lack thereof) in that the culture at the Times is apparently at odds with this “important” principle. It reminds me so much of Cornell and Wansink, Harvard and a hoard of problems, Stanford,…. (pardon me for omitting so many offenders). At some point, if it is important then it shouldn’t be that hard to instill proper citation, proper laboratory practices, proper data protection, etc. The world is complicated and not everything can be prioritized, but that is why priorities are important. I guess we can conclude that this is just not a priority at the Times.
The NYT does fairly often credit other sources. Searching just now, the phrase “first reported by” occurs 8 times from Aug. 1-13. Checking each instance, the first reporters include the Washington Post, the Detroit News, and Patch.com. Several of these include links; one “first report” is a credit to a previous NYT article. That such credits occur every other day or so shows they are frequent, but it does not show how often they *should* occur; if it should be occurring several times a day, then they are frequent but insufficient.
The George Santos mishigas was first reported, prior to the 2022 election by a small Long Island paper, the North Shore Leader, but it got no traction. The NYT got most of the credit when it began writing about him *after* the election.