'Kudos'! Let's all give the NYT props for having the moral fortitude to withdraw Pulitzer Prize entry that didn't meet their rigorous 'standards'

Sarah D | 1:06 PM on December 23, 2020

Last week, the New York Times was once again in full-on damage-control mode, this time over the star subject of their hit “Caliphate” podcast serious being charged in Canada with “perpetrating a terrorism hoax.” Oops, right? Happens to the best of us.

My interview with NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet on what went wrong with the hit podcast series "Caliphate": "We wanted to believe."

Listen to him on my piece for NPR's @MorningEdition, then read the full story. https://t.co/ZVxCWz22wY

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) December 18, 2020

The Times did not remove 'Caliphate' from its site or feeds. Asked whether its actions constitute a retraction, Baquet paused and told me, "I guess for the parts that were about Chaudhry and his history and his background. Yeah, I think it is. Sure does."https://t.co/N6YQeARVLL

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) December 18, 2020

Dean Baquet admitted that “we didn’t listen hard enough” to the evidence that Shehroze Chaudhry, aka Abu Huzayfah, was lying through his teeth.

And now, the New York Times has made the moral decision to withdraw their entry for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. They really wanted to get out ahead of this thing.

Thanks to Tablet’s Wesley Yang for bringing this to our attention:

When the NYT seeks honors for a journalistic project that reveals itself to be flawed and in need of correction, it has the integrity to rescind its pursuit of recognition for that flawed work… pic.twitter.com/vvnuLFsT5M

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) December 23, 2020