The Spectator watches the Times crash, burn

The Columbia (University) Spectator exhibits higher journalistic standards than the New York Times.

The New York Sun was the first to investigate that issue, writing on March 31 that "In an effort to manage favorable coverage of its investigation into the complaints, the university disclosed a summary of the committee's report only to the Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper, and the New York Times. Those newspapers, sources indicated to the New York Sun last night, made an agreement with the central administration that they would not speak to the students who made the complaints against the professors." (The Times had initially agreed not to seek any outside comment, but later revised the deal in order to include a response from a professor who had been a target of complaints.)

As for the Spectator, the Web site CampusJ (which has been on top of the story since the beginning) reported that the independent campus paper was shown the report and offered the same deal as the Times, but editors never agreed to it and pushed ahead with student interviews. (In the interest of full disclosure: A Spectator staffer works as an intern at CJR.)

The mighty Times, however, kept its word. Unfortunately, that involved a promise that should never have been made (or maybe, for that matter, offered by Columbia in the first place. PR is PR, we concede, but Columbia is the home of the Pulitzers, a top journalism school, and CJR itself. It should know better. Even its flacks should know better.)

If you're looking for an example of irresponsible journalism, this is about as cut and dried as it gets. The Times itself admitted as much in an editor's note on April 6, saying that "Under the Times' policy on unidentified sources, writers are not permitted to forgo follow-up reporting in exchange for information. In this case, editors and the writer did not recall the policy and agreed to delay additional reporting until the document had become public ... Without a response from the complainants, the article was incomplete; it should not have appeared in that form."

Now, I am generally distrustful of the idea that there is a hostile atmosphere towards pro-Israel students at Columbia, and I am certainly distrustful of some of the groups behind the complaints, but the Times has played this controversy awfully close to the school's PR dept. talking points.