Via AP, Times Admits Incorrectly ID’ing Hooded Man

The New York Times acknowledged in Saturday’s editions that it incorrectly identified an Iraqi man in a front-page story as the hooded figure shown in a photograph from Abu Ghraib prison that became an icon of abuse by American captors.

An editor’s note accompanying a front-page story on Ali Shalal Qaissi said the paper ”did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi’s insistence that he was the man in the photograph.”

After the original story appeared March 11, the online magazine Salon.com challenged the man’s identity, based on an examination of 280 Abu Ghraib pictures it had been studying for weeks and an interview with an official from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. The Times said it was investigating the matter.

The Times said Qaissi and his lawyers maintain that he was photographed in a similar position and shocked with wires, but that Qaissi acknowledged he is not the man in the specific photograph.

Here’s the “Editor’s Note:”

A front-page article last Saturday profiled Ali Shalal Qaissi, identifying him as the hooded man forced to stand on a box, attached to wires, in a photograph from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal of 2003 and 2004. He was shown holding such a photograph. As an article on Page A1 today makes clear, Mr. Qaissi was not that man.

The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi’s insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi’s account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account. The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it.

Despite the previous reports, The Times should have been more persistent in seeking comment from the military. A more thorough examination of previous articles in The Times and other newspapers would have shown that in 2004 military investigators named another man as the one on the box, raising suspicions about Mr. Qaissi’s claim.

The Times also overstated the conviction with which representatives of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International expressed their view of whether Mr. Qaissi was the man in the photograph. While they said he could well be that man, they did not say they believed he was.

Related thoughts from Ed Driscoll on the inexorable decline of the Times.

Background: Regret the Error

Reader Daniel G. sends along another NYTimes chart showing that the company’s stock has hit its lowest point since 1998:

How about a new motto for the Times:

This document is of limited evidentiary value.