JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

This is a story about journalistic accountability.

Working as a reporter or editor at The New York Times is a great honor and privilege but carries with it tremendous risk and responsibility.

If you screw up at The Times, you will pay a price. Depending on the degree of the screw-up, it can be a career killer.

Several reporters and editors are now squirming as a result of a podcast series, called “Caliphate,” that went horribly awry.

Already, leadership of The Times’ audio department has changed; the chief reporter on the series has been reassigned; and just about everyone else who played a major role in the podcast is undoubtedly anxious about what further consequences there may be.

The two highest-profile people involved in the shipwreck are Michael Barbaro, who has shot to fame with the NYT’s popular podcast “The Daily,” and Sam Dolnick, an assistant managing editor who is a member of the Sulzberger family, which controls the paper.

Michael Barbaro

(A few years ago, Dolnick was one of three Sulzberger cousins who were the top candidates to become publisher. Dolnick lost out to A.G. Sulzberger, who, as many of you know, was once The Times’ Kansas City correspondent.)

First a synopsis and then the principals…

Synopsis

“Caliphate” was a 12-part, stand-alone podcast about ISIS. The central figure of the podcast was 25-year-old Shehroze Chaudhry, a Pakastani-Canadian who described atrocities, including executions, he claimed to have committed in Syria for ISIS. The “Caliphate” team made him the main character in the series despite red flags that indicated he was unreliable.

The Podcast won a Peabody Award and the Overseas Press Club of America Award in 2019, and the primary reporter was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

After doubts about Chaudhry’s veracity surfaced, The Times assigned a new team to re-report the story. The team found that Chaudhry was a fraud: There was no evidence he had killed anyone, joined ISIS or even traveled to Syria.

Last September, two and a half years after the podcast was released, Canadian police arrested Chaudhry and charged him with perpetrating a terrorist hoax.

On Dec. 18, Dean Baquet, executive editor of The Times, posted an editor’s note on the podcast saying, in a huge understatement, the series “did not meet our standards for accuracy.”

Among other things, Baquet said the series “should have had the regular participation of an editor experienced in the subject matter.”

“In addition,” he continued, “The Times should have pressed harder to verify Mr. Chaudhry’s claims before deciding to place so much emphasis on one individual’s account.”

The same day the editor’s note was published, The Times ran an episode of “The Daily,” in which Barbaro (pronounced Bar-bar-o) interviewed Baquet about the problems with “Caliphate.”

Completing its mea culpa, The Times returned the Peabody and Press Club awards and asked the Pulitzer board to rescind the main reporter’s 2019 finalist status.

Andy Mills and Rukmini Callimachi with the Peabody Award they won (and then had to return) for “Caliphate.”

The Principals

Rukmini Callimachi: Since arriving at The Times in 2014, she was the paper’s lead reporter on terrorism. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist three times — in 2009, 2014 and 2016 — before being a finalist for “Caliphate” in 2019. After “Caliphate” was exposed as a sham, Callimachi was reassigned. She hasn’t had a byline since. An NPR story said The Times had quietly acknowledged that some of her previous print reporting was found to be deficient.

Andy Mills: He was Callimachi’s producer and accompanied her during most of her reporting. He worked at WNYC’s Radiolab before going to The Times in 2016.

Lisa Tobin: She is The Times’ executive producer of audio, which means she supervised Callimachi and Mills, among others. Like Mills, Tobin joined The Times in 2016. Before that she was with WBUR, Boston’s NPR station, for six years.

Sam Dolnick

Sam Dolnick: Dolnick is a Times assistant managing editor, whose responsibilities include overseeing the audio department, meaning he’s over Callimachi, Mills, Tobin and Barbaro. Dolnick has  been a “masthead” editor, one of the dozen or so top executives at the paper, since 2017.

Michael Barbaro: Although his hands were not directly soiled by “Caliphate,” Barbaro came under intense criticism from a group of more than 20 public radio stations for his part in trying to mop up the damage. In a letter, the station executives said it was inappropriate for Barbaro to interview Baquet for two reasons. First, at the same time he was helping air the journalistic lapses, he had urged other journalists, through private messages on social media, to temper their criticism of the podcast. Second, he failed to divulge that he was engaged to Tobin. The NPR letter said, “We feel Barbaro’s actions are in direct conflict with our ethical guidelines and they call his general credibility into question.” In response to the letter, Dolnick defended Barbaro’s participation in the interview but said Barbaro had been chastised for pressuring other reporters to go easy on “Caliphate.”

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So, might this play out how for the principals?

Callimachi, who is 47, has probably seen her best days at The Times. I doubt she will be let go, but she might find her position uncomfortable enough that she decides to leave the paper in a year or two.

Mills, on the other hand, might well be eased out. In addition to failing to install guardrails around Callimachi on “Caliphate,” he has been the subject, according to NPR, “of repeated complaints from women over alleged demeaning or dismissive behavior,” both at The Times and at WNYC, which produces Radiolab.

Lisa Tobin

Tobin probably will survive, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she got transferred from the audio department.

Barbaro is likely to emerge relatively unscathed. “The Daily” has an audience of millions and is ranked No. 2 on Apple’s Top Charts for Podcasts. (No. 1 is “The Apology Line,” which I’ve never heard.”) Since its launch in 2017, “The Daily” has expanded from a staff of four to more than 17. The fact that he made a couple of errors in judgment, although serious errors, will not be enough to displace him as king of audio.

The stakes could be the highest for Dolnick. As a member of the Sulzberger family, he’s got close to lifetime-employment protection, but his position in the NYT hierarchy has become much more wobbly. Just this week, The Times elevated the metro editor, Cliff Levy, to the position of deputy managing editor — a notch above assistant managing editor — and put him, for the time being, over the audio department.

Cliff Levy

In a note to the newsroom, Baquet said Levy would temporarily advise the audio department before taking on a broader role, which Baquet did not elaborate on.

This could put Levy, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, in the leading position to succeed Baquet as executive editor in a couple of years. Baquet, who is 64, is expected to retire before he turns 67.

Levy, who has headed metro for two years, is just 53.

If Dolnick aspired to be executive editor, his prospects have dimmed. As a result of the calamity called “Caliphate,” he has been leapfrogged, and a lot of the spring has gone out of his legs.