NYT Admits Errors in Its A1 Gitmo 'Recidivism' Story

The New York Times has published an Editors' Note that in essence says its front-page story on Guantanamo recidivism written by Elisabeth Bumiller was not accurate in saying that one of seven Gitmo detainees who have been releases have returned to terrorist activities.

Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet told TPMmuckraker that it wouldn't have been a Page 1 story if the paper realized the errors that it contained. "It's something that we thought we needed to explain to readers to amplify the story and to correct something we got wrong," Baquet told the website. Given the factual errors, "I'm not sure it would have led the paper" but still believes that the piece was "a legitimate news story.

"I don't think it's a mistake that's comparable to Iraq or the pre-war buildup. I think that's ridiculous. I think that's a ludicrous and politicized comparison. I think we made a mistake and we owned up to it."

Justin Elliot explains the mistake in his TPMmuckraker.com story:

The original story declared: "1 In 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds." But the story, which ran on the front of the print edition on May 21, was changed online to "Later Terror Link Cited for 1 in 7 Freed Detainees."

TPMmuckraker originally flagged the story's questionable use of "recidivism" and underlying issues about the Pentagon's numbers.

The editors' note, which is pasted in full below, acknowledges use of terms like "rejoined" and "recidivism" "accepted a premise of the report that all the former prisoners had been engaged in terrorism before their detention."

The original formulation of the story -- that one in seven detainees had "returned" to jihad -- was endlessly repeated on cable, picked up on right-wing blogs, and even cited more than once by Dick Cheney.

McClatchy and others have reported on evidence that some detainees may have in fact been radicalized while imprisoned at Gitmo.

Here's the full editors' note:

A front-page article and headline on May 21 reported findings from an unreleased Pentagon report about prisoners who have been transferred abroad from the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The article said that the Pentagon had found about one in seven of former Guantánamo prisoners had "returned to terrorism or other militant activity," or as the headline put it, had "rejoined jihad."

Those phrases accepted a premise of the report that all the former prisoners had been engaged in terrorism before their detention. Because that premise remains unproved, the day the article appeared in the newspaper, editors changed the headline and the first paragraph on the Times Web site to refer to prisoners the report said had engaged in terrorism or militant activity since their release.

The article and headline also conflated two categories of former prisoners. In the Pentagon report, 27 former Guantánamo prisoners were described as having been confirmed as engaging in terrorism, with another 47 suspected of doing so without substantiation. The article should have distinguished between the two categories, to say that about one in 20 of former Guantánamo prisoners described in the Pentagon report were now said to be engaging in terrorism. (The larger share -- about one in seven --applies to the total number described in the report as confirmed or suspected of engaging in terrorism.)