New York Times prints retraction after Maureen Dowd caught doctoring quotes from NYC mayoral race

[kpete]

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was forced to publish a retraction on Wednesday after falsely attributing anti-gay remarks to the wife of New York City mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. According to New York magazine, Dowd decontextualized a quote by de Blasio’s wife Chirlane McCray to read like an indictment of mayoral candidate Christine Quinn’s lesbianism. Dowd, for her part, blamed the misunderstanding on the fact that she interviewed McCray in a noisy coffee shop, but a recording of the interview tape now being circulated makes it clear that what McCray was saying was actually quite intelligible.

In a Tuesday column for the Times, Dowd wrote about a sit-down interview she had with de Blasio and McCray at the Good Times coffee house in Greenwich Village. She quoted McCray as saying that Quinn is “not accessible…She’s not the kind of person I feel I can go up to and talk to about issues like taking care of children at a young age and paid sick leave.”

Quinn, who is a lesbian with no children at present, took immediate offense at the remark, perceiving it as a slight aimed straight at her sexual orientation.

“[To] criticize me as not understanding what young families go through because I might not have children is over the line,” she said in a statement.

When one listens to the audio, however, what McCray actually said was, “Well, I am a woman, and she is not speaking to the issues I care about, and I think a lot of women feel the same way. I don’t see her speaking to the concerns of women who have to take care of children at a young age or send them to school and after school, paid sick days, workplace; she is not speaking to any of those issues. What can I say? And she’s not accessible, she’s not the kind of person that, I feel, that you can go up and talk to and have a conversation with about those things. And I suspect that other women feel the same thing I’m feeling.”

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/maureen-dowd-misquote-gave-quinn-an-opening.html
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/21/new-york-times-prints-retraction-after-maureen-dowd-caught-doctoring-quotes-from-nyc-mayoral-race/

[DonCoquixote]

1. quelle surprise

but she will get her halo back once she starts backing Clinton.

[Kelvin Mace]

2. And yet Dowd still has a six figure job

that allows her to smear people she doesn't like.

[HappyMe]

3. Oy.

They should have fired her.

[FourScore]

4. Dowd is a completely overrated tool. n/t

[Aerows]

8. You could have stopped at tool. n/t

[FourScore]

9. :-)

[sufrommich]

5. Why does Maureen Dowd still have a job ?

That's not sloppy journalism,that's yellow journalism.

[Downtown Hound]

6. As far as I'm concerned Down pretty much embodies the New York Times

Shallow, egomaniacal, and a waste of breath.

[Aerows]

7. Maureen Dowd shading the facts!?

There's a novelty.

[Jim Lane]

10. I'll stick my neck out and defend Dowd here.

Yes, she paraphrased, but it's a fair paraphrase. McCray did specifically refer to "the concerns of women who have to take care of children...." McCray also did say of Quinn that "she’s not accessible, she’s not the kind of person that, I feel, that you can go up and talk to and have a conversation with about those things."

This isn't a "you didn't build that" case. Romney distorted Obama's remarks by leaving out the part where Obama gave the antecedent to the pronoun "that", thus changing Obama's meaning. Here, Dowd has shortened McCray's comment by changing "have a conversation with about those things" to "tak to about issues like taking care of children at a young age...." In context, though, it's clear that taking care of young children was part of McCray's intended antecedent to "those things".

There may well be an issue about putting quotation marks around a paraphrase, even an accurate one -- although I think it's considerable acceptable journalistic practice to a certain extent. Still, even if Dowd could be faulted there, it's comparatively minor. She did not convey an inaccurate impression of what McCray said.