Showing posts with label ny times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ny times. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Did NY Times standards editor Greg Brock & public editor Liz Spayd violate Integrity Guidelines? I've asked the paper's attorney who handles employee concerns

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On January 31, the Washington Post ran Media outlets choke on Heimlich obituaries by Erik Wemple about my string of successful requests for published corrections for errors in obituaries about my father.

He suggested that the corrections/amendments I got "from some of the biggest names in the news business, over a single news topic" may be a record.

Needless to say, journalists can be reluctant to publish corrections, therefore I was impressed by the professionalism and courtesy I experienced at most of those news outlets.

Then there's the New York Times.

Robert D. McFadden's December 17, 2016 Times obituary about my father included some factual errors along with what I considered to be some reportorial errors.

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In response to polite, thoroughly-documented inquiries and my patient follow-ups that dragged on for weeks, I got the bum's rush, first from standards editor Greg Brock and then from public editor Liz Spayd, both of whom refused to discuss any of the facts. They both just told me to take a hike.

So I hiked over to Mr. Wemple at the Post.

After he followed up on my behalf, Mr. Brock was shamed into doing his job -- at least part of it.

That is, the Times published one correction, but failed to address another factual error as well as some reportorial concerns I brought to their attention.

According to the paper’s Guidelines on Integrity
Reporters, editors, photographers and all members of the news staff of The New York Times share a common and essential interest in protecting the integrity of the newspaper. As the news, editorial and business leadership of the newspaper declared jointly in 1998: "Our greatest strength is the authority and reputation of The Times. We must do nothing that would undermine or dilute it and everything possible to enhance it."

...(It) means that the journalism we practice daily must be beyond reproach.

Corrections. Because our voice is loud and far-reaching, The Times recognizes an ethical responsibility to correct all its factual errors, large and small. The paper regrets every error, but it applauds the integrity of a writer who volunteers a correction of his or her own published story. Whatever the origin, though, any complaint should be relayed to a responsible supervising editor and investigated quickly. If a correction is warranted, fairness demands that it be published immediately. In case of reasonable doubt or disagreement about the facts, we can acknowledge that a statement was "imprecise" or "incomplete" even if we are not sure it was wrong
Re: the processing of my corrections request, I wanted to learn if Mr. Brock, Ms. Spayd, or others had violated those or other employee guidelines, so today I sent this inquiry to Marcijane Kraft, an attorney at the paper who handles concerns about employees.

After I receive her response, I'll report it.

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

"Animal-rights activist and proponent of a vegan diet" Neil Barnard MD hoisted in hilarious NY Times book review -- and his organization's memorium to my father

Neal Barnard MD

Via And a Thinner New Year: Five New Books About Food and Diets by Judith Newman in today's New York Times
Reading THE CHEESE TRAP: How Breaking a Surprising Addiction Will Help You Lose Weight, Gain Energy and Get Healthy (Grand Central Life & Style, $27) is like going to a horror movie, only instead of the killer being Chucky, it’s cheese. (O how I slay myself.) Neal D. Barnard even tosses out a line in the intro that would be perfect for the trailer of the movie: “You love cheese. But I’m sorry to tell you, it does not love you back.” Cue ominous cello music.

While cheese may be, as the legendary editor Clifton Fadiman called it, “milk’s leap toward immortality,” here it is death on a plate. Barnard, the founder of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, is an animal-rights activist and proponent of a vegan diet who has courted controversy before...Barnard does his best to make cheese not only terrifying (comparing its dangers to eating poisonous puffer fish) but gross: At one point he cites a performance artist who sat in a gallery and offered patrons three types of cheese made out of donated breast milk. Maybe you don’t find that disgusting, in which case you probably like performance art.
By the end of the book I was sufficiently freaked out to go and buy something calling itself paleo mozzarella-style cheese. It is vegan, and it tastes like tapioca flavored with coconut. Not bad! But you know what it doesn’t taste like? Cheese.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine salutes the life and career of Henry J. Heimlich, M.D., a tremendously innovative and creative scientist.

...In 2005, he gave his name for the Physicians Committee’s Henry J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine, an award that recognizes the ability to see innovative and surprisingly simple solutions to seemingly insurmountable medical issues.

“Dr. Heimlich was the embodiment of innovation, compassion, and getting the job done,” says Physicians Committee president Neal Barnard, M.D., F.A.C.C. “His work has inspired researchers and medical students to break convention, think creatively, and focus on what counts: saving lives.”​
The last time PCRM presented their Heimlich Award was in 2010 when the LA Weekly published Paul Teetor's scorching expose about Dr. Barnard and his organization turning a blind eye to the Heimlich Institute's notorious "malariotherapy" experiments in US and foreign patients suffering from cancer, Lyme Disease, and AIDS were deliberately infected with malaria.

More about the Barnard/Heimlich relationship via my website.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

The Long Crawl-back, Part I: After being punk'd by my 96-year-old father, Cincinnati ABC-TV affiliate publishes decent update -- "health problems" prevent Dr. Maneuver from answering questions

Via veteran reporter Ben Kaufman's media column in the June 8, 2016 Cincinnati CityBeat, the Queen City's longtime newsweekly:
A recent Cincinnati Enquirer story went global, aided and abetted by the Associated Press. It was perfect click bait. The story said that at 96, Cincinnatian Henry Heimlich used his Maneuver for the first time to save a life (of a purported choking victim, 87-year-old Patty Ris, at the Deupree House senior residence*).
...After Peter Heimlich alerted The Enquirer and others to a similar claim (his father had made) years ago, the paper backed away from the novelty. It assigned a second reporter to redo the story, adding and explaining doubts about the “first” in the longest crawl-back I can remember.

Peter Heimlich told me that in addition to The Enquirer and AP, “these are some of the news outlets I filed corrections requests with last week: CNN, NBC News, The New York Daily News, and WCPO-TV. At this writing, none have corrected the errors.”
This is the first part of a series about my corrections requests.

* Reporters at McKnight's and Slate have questioned the veracity of the Deupree House story. So have I.

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Since Spring 2003, my father has been thoroughly exposed as a medical charlatan, a serial liar, and a con man in scores of media reports, two of the first being these Sunday front-pagers in the Cincinnati Enquirer (based on research by my wife Karen and me).

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Here's my point.

Could there be a veteran journalist in the 'Nati who'd take anything my father said at face value and report it?

Reporter Scott Wegener, WCPO-TV News (source)

According to his bio on the website of WCPO-TV (Cincinnati's ABC affiliate), reporter Scott Wegener has been working in the Queen City since 1986 and has won some journalism awards.

On May 27, WCPO aired Wegener's story, Heimlich maneuver inventor uses it for the first time... at age 96, based on this lie told by my father:



That day and again on June 1, I sent e-mails to Wegener about the error.

I received his confirmations of receipt but no reply.

Reporter Joe Rosemeyer, WCPO-TV (source)

On June 27 I took it to WCPO.com News Editor Mike Canan and the next day, Heimlich's first time using maneuver? Maybe not by Joe Rosemeyer, was published on the station's website.

It's tough to prove someone intentionally lied and Rosemeyer's story included some verbal acrobatics perhaps intended to step around that dead elephant in the room:
Maybe Henry Heimlich simply misremembered. Or maybe news reports from the early 2000s simply weren't true.

Either way, there's an irresolvable conflict: When did Dr. Heimlich first perform his namesake maneuver?

A month ago, just a few days before National Heimlich Maneuver Day, the Cincinnati doctor said he'd finally used it for the first time. He's 96 years old, and he invented the move to help choking victims more than 40 years ago.

Pretty incredible that he hadn't used it before then, right?

Except Heimlich apparently told the BBC in 2003 he'd performed it three years earlier, in 2000.

...Several other media outlets also covered that earlier story.

...The doctor's son, Phil Heimlich, said he, his sister and father have no recollection of the incident 16 years ago.
"It would have been a major news story, so we would have remembered," he said.
Presumably the "irresolvable conflict" could be resolved by asking my father, but the story didn't include any quotes from Dr. Maneuver or any indication that he'd been contacted, so I asked Rosemeyer about that.

He replied, "Phil said Henry had some health problems since last month, so he was calling me back instead."

Is this the first time Dr. Heimlich has ever used the maneuver to save a life?

“Yes, this is,” he said Friday. “I originally did my research studies that led to my developing it, which was in 1974, and I never considered that I would be doing it myself.”

The record is murky in that regard. A BBC article in 2003 quoted the doctor, then 83, describing a similar encounter where he tried the maneuver on a fellow diner, a man, although the story lacked details such as a precise date, location and name. A New Yorker article in 2006 made reference to a similar incident, also without details. But a son, Phil Heimlich, said his father had never mentioned any previous incidents to him. The doctor himself did not return a follow-up call.
Finally, if my father's ill, I wish him a speedy recovery.

And when he's better, I'd encourage reporters to interview him to perhaps resolve the "irresolvable conflict."

And if any reporters need someone on the record calling him a liar, I'm available.

This item has been slightly updated.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Choking on Jane Brody's recent Heimlich article; my inquiry today to the NY Times public editor

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Re: her September 14, 2015 New York Times article, What Comes After the Heimlich Maneuver, can "trusted authority on health" Jane Brody back up her own claims?

Ms. Brody didn't reply to my e-mails, so I've asked Margaret Sullivan, the paper's public editor, to jump in.

Click here to download a copy.