TNR's silence
It's been more than two months since The New Republic's Baghdad Diarist, Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, was exposed as a fraud, and the magazines editors have been silent.
Why?
Because they now know that Beauchamp is a liar and they don't want to expose the joke that is their credibility. Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee reports:
TNR interviewed Scott Thomas Beauchamp over a month ago. TNR interviewed investigating officer Major John Cross after I interviewed him for Pajamas Media roughly a week later.
At this stage of the game, one must wonder how much longer Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle, and the other TNR editors involved in this farcical investigation can continue to hide the obvious fact that this was a series of stories that has not been corroborated, are partially or entirely fictional in nature, and poorly (or never) fact-checked, probably because of the author's relationship with a TNR staffer that he later married.
One must begin to wonder just how ethical Editor-In-Chief Martin Peretz and Executive Editor J. Peter Scoblic are in not reacting to the obvious facts that key elements of the stories written by Scott Beauchamp were not fact checked, and that Franklin Foer and Jason Zengerle are running what appears to be a purposefully deceptive investigation to cover up the lack of fact-checking prior to publication, while apparently lying to readers, experts, critics, and perhaps even their own employers at TNR and CanWest Mediaworks.
I'd love to know what Scott Thomas and Major Cross had to say to TNR, but The New Republic seems content to continue to answer questions about their credibility and ethics with silence.
Amusingly, it appears that TNR may be shutting down -- and is refunding subscribers for the prorated cost of their subscriptions.
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Maybe I am overly cynical, but I am waitimg for Mr. Beauchamp to finish his tour/enlistment and then rally the left with horrifying tales of being forced to sign a false statement(his recant) and then a demand(direct order?) to remain silent "for his own good". The left will trumpet this atrocity from the roof tops and the hapless TNR gang will be redeemed.