Sunday Times Editor: If You Have Questions About Our Snowden Story, Address Them To UK Government

Journalism

from the you're-making-this-worse dept

So we already wrote about the absolutely ridiculous Sunday Times piece which claimed that Russia and China had “cracked” the encryption Snowden used on his documents (or, maybe, he gave them to them…) and thus all hell had broken loose and the UK had to remove “agents” from Moscow. Of course there were all sorts of holes in the story, which didn’t make much sense. All of the “evidence” was just anonymous quotes from government officials, much of which contradicted itself. And, of course, there were the outright factual errors. When finally confronted about this, the reporter who wrote the story, Tom Harper, admitted straight up, that he was just “just publishing what we believe to be the position of the British government.” When questioned about the evidence, he said that you shouldn’t challenge him, but the UK government — as if his job as a “reporter” was just to write down what they said, not actually search for the truth.

It appears that this attitude — “we are stenographers for the government, rather than reporters seeking evidence and truth” — comes straight from the top at the Sunday Times. Someone emailed Sunday Times editor Martin Ivens pointing out the many problems with the article, and got a short reply that says that all of these questions should be taken up with the British government, rather than the Sunday Times. Really.

Dear Mr Douglas,

I think you should address your remarks to 10 Downing St. If you think they have lied to us then so be it.

Yours faithfully

Martin

There are… so many problems with this, but let’s just address the two big ones. First, in suggesting that they ask the British Government (10 Downing St.), Ivens is flat out admitting what his reporter said earlier in the week: they were just acting as stenographers, and have no independent evidence to back up the story they wrote. That’s not the role of a journalist. A journalist is supposed to be seeking out the truth. Yet, here, Ivens is basically saying that the Sunday Times has no evidence to back up its claims.

The second big problem is the “if you think they have lied to us then so be it.” That, also, is an astounding statement for a journalist to take. If someone tells a journalist that you got a story wrong and your sources lied to you, the last reaction you should have is “so be it.” The reaction should be “oh shit” and then revisiting the issue carefully to make sure you actually got the story right. Instead, here, the Sunday Times position is “meh, who cares.” Incredible.

Filed Under: ed snowden, journalism, martin ivens, sunday times, surveillance, tom harper, uk
Companies: sunday times