I can't put myself in the minds of the reporters or editors, but looking at all these instances of shoddy reporting stacking up to a pretty significant pile, one can only come to the conclusion that it was a smear.
ES has been on the education beat at the NYT since 2018, so many of her previous articles are on schools in the covid era.
BR won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for a series on the New York taxi industry.
It's not as if they hired Ilhan Omar to write this.
Reporters with this background aim to produce Pulitzer-worthy work, not a piece of easily disproved garbage, so I think their
intention is to address a problem that really exists. Having said that, I agree that this piece doesn't reach that standard.
This was an *investigation*. That requires ample data, with rigorous fact checking, and correct framing. Each of those facets was lacking in glaring ways. I can't put myself in the minds of the reporters or editors, but looking at all these instances of shoddy reporting stacking up to a pretty significant pile, one can only come to the conclusion that it was a smear.
a. Honest intention, excellent research = Investigative Report, well done
b. Honest intention, shoddy research = Investigative Report, poorly done
c. Malicious intention, excellent research = Smear
d. Malicious intention, shoddy research = Smear
I say b. and you say d. and we probably agree that it's not worth discussing definitions any more.