NEW YORK (AP) – Following an internal investigation, The New York Times said Friday it was wrong to trust a Canadian man whose account of the Islamic State’s atrocities was central to his 2018 podcast “Caliphate”, but that could not be verified.
The series had won a Peabody Award, the first-ever for a podcast produced by the newspaper, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
But the Times began re-investigating the 12-part podcast after Canadian police arrested Shehroze Chaudhry, who used the alias Abu Huzayfah, for committing a terrorist hoax. His account of taking part in executions and seeing other atrocities was included in the podcast.
“In the absence of more solid evidence, ‘Caliphate’ should have been substantially revised to exclude the material related to Mr Chaudhry,” The Times said in a note from the editor on Friday. “The podcast as a whole should not have been produced with Mr. Chaudhry as the central narrative character.”
The Times had every reason to distrust Chaudhry’s story, as an episode of “Caliphate” was devoted to discrepancies in his story and his own fact-finding.
But the newspaper said on Friday it should have worked harder to verify the claims before deciding to make Chaudhry a central character.
The journalists were “too gullible about the verification steps taken and rejected the lack of confirmation of essential aspects” of Chaudhry’s story, the paper said.
The Times said it should have had an editor experienced in the subject matter of the series from the start. The podcast’s main reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, will remain with the newspaper but will be reassigned, the paper said.
Callimachi said Friday it was “blunting” to leave her colleagues. She said she should have caught more of the lies Chaudhry had told her, and tried to clarify what the paper did and didn’t know.
“It wasn’t enough,” she said in a statement. “I apologize to our listeners for what we missed and what we did wrong. We are correcting the record and I promise to do better in the future. “
Dean Baquet, the Times editor, said in a podcast to be posted later Friday that he and other leaders at the newspaper should blame the incident.
Callimachi worked at the Associated Press from 2003 to 2014. The news organization said Friday that its coverage of terrorism “went through a rigorous editorial process at all stages of reporting and prior to publication. We stand behind the stories. “
The episode raises questions about whether the Times’s audio unit, which became more active about four years ago, was set up to apply the same journalistic rigor to stories as the textual version of the newspaper. The audio unit produces “The Daily”, one of the most successful podcasts on the market.
The paper published its own investigation into Chaudhry’s claims on Friday, concluding that he was a ‘fabulist’ making up stories like an escape from his more mundane life in a Toronto suburb or with grandparents in Pakistan.
There is still some disagreement as to whether he even traveled to Syria. Canadian officials say he never did, and never joined the Islamic State, though US intelligence officials still have some doubts, the paper said. Investigators found that Chaudhry had passed on photos of others in Syria as his own.
No evidence has emerged to support his claims of participating in atrocities – shooting one man in the head and stabbing another in the heart before hanging his body on a cross, the paper said. Chaudhry’s attorney, Nader Hasen, said his client “will defend himself vigorously” against the Canadian charges. He did not comment on the Times’ actions.
Judges for the Peabody Awards are discussing what to do about the honor, executive director Jeffrey Jones said Friday.