You have to read the whole thing, it isn't long, to see that even the Boston Herald has to hold its nose somewhat while blowing smoke to cover for TNR on the Beachamp affair. It absolutely glows at the top. TNR's readers could have been served better - you rarely see understatement employed in an editorial, but there it is. Sadly, they skirt any substantive criticism of TNR's actions over a period of months.
We salute The New Republic magazine for having bitten the bullet and disowned three articles this year by a soldier in Iraq that cast U.S. troops in a bad light.
Under the byline of the editor, Franklin Foer, and the title “Fog of War” in the Dec. 10 issue, the magazine recounts what seems to be every detail in its dealings with the author, from the first submission through his marriage to a fact-checker on the staff all the way to the end of the investigation of what had happened and the lessons the editors learned.
And yet, boy, it took an excruciatingly long time to get to the point.
The article runs 6,785 words (we didn’t count them; our computer did). Only at words 6,373-6,378 does the reader get a hint of what’s coming: “Some of our questions are still unanswered.” There follow a few tip-offs of what the conclusion will be, which comes at the very end, in the final six words, words number 6,780-6,785: “We cannot stand by these stories.”
Whatever the length, this piece would have served readers better had it employed the classic five-W formulation of the straightforward beginning of a news article: Who (we the editors), What (denounce some things we’ve published), When (in the past year), Where (from Iraq) and Why (because they don’t stand up under investigation).
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