The NRO follies are just beginning

The right-wing seems unable to disengage from the Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy regardless of the fact that they have a situation of possibly greater proportions in their own lager.

There is no doubt The New Republic has a credibility problem, particularly now that editor Franklin Foer has basically cut Beauchamps loose and withdrawn editorial support for Beauchamps submissions.

While that should be the end of it, apparently some cannot let go and continue to flog the dead horse laying on the ground in front of them. The feeling seems to be that the entire episode will not be over until TNR editor Franklin Foer is dismissed from his position.

I agree, Foer should be fired. As editor he failed TNR by allowing Beauchamps submissions to be published without maintaining a satisfactory editorial standard.

The right-wing, however, has its own, nearly identical problem, and while they continue to demand the head of Franklin Foer on a plate, they should make sure that it's a platter to make room for the head of the National Review Online's Kathryn-Jean Lopez.

W. Thomas Smith, writing from Lebanon for the NRO Tank has been exposed as something of a "fabulist" and Lopez, after declaring that the accuracy of Smith's reports are questionable, continues to erect defenses which are becoming a story in themselves.

Lopez claims not to have been aware of any problems with Smith's submissions until she was made aware "deep into the second week of November".

Maybe.

Christopher Allbritton, a journalist who lives in Lebanon, sent an email to the NRO Tank six weeks ago. If Lopez didn't see it, as editor she should be grabbing a few people by the collar to find out who did receive it and how it is that it never got to her.

Smith himself has admitted that a good deal of what he wrote is not a result of his actually witnessing the unlikely events he posted to the Tank, but rather from "sources" without verification. A reader would not have known that until he finally fessed up. And he didn't confess the difference until he was exposed.

Lopez continues to defend Smith with some of the most ludicrous bobbing and weaving.

While I knew something was wrong before last week, I did not know about it six weeks ago, as some have reported, and while you can question all the calls I made, there was never any intention here to make excuses or hide anything.

Really? That's a little hard to wash when one reads this.

That’s why I wrote, in my first editor’s note on the subject, that we “should have provided readers with more context and caveats” – the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn’t always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

You mean the way the other reporters in Lebanon treat their sources?

There's a problem here. Was Lopez aware from the beginning that Smith wasn't actually witnessing the events he was writing about? If not, then she would not have been aware of the context and could have provided no caveats.

If, however, she was fully aware that Smith was not actually a witness to the events he was reporting on and was using sources to "fill in the blanks", why did she allow him to write up the stories as a first-person eyewitness? And why was she not exercising the appropriate editorial skepticism herself? More than one reporter has stated that if the events reported by Smith had actually ever occurred there would have been major international news reports.

Inasmuch as Franklin Foer should pay the price for the Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy, Kathryn-Jean Lopez shouldn't be dodging a bullet on W. Thomas Smith. She can claim the two situations are different until she's blue in the face. They're not. Both editors failed to do due diligence on questionable reporting from correspondents.

There's no difference at all. Except that Lopez and company are deep-red conservatives and with that banner comes a failure to accept responsibility for negligent behaviour. Just look at her role models.