The Failing Editors of The New York Times

The only logical explanation?

The editing notes were left in a live op-ed article in The New York Times -- an observation that led a few of the older folks on Facebook to engage in a round of tut-tutting. 

Those of us over age 40 remember a world in which there were assignment editors, copy editors, fact-checkers, proof-readers, and typesetters. 

There's little or none of that now; it's push-the-button writing, and maybe the newspaper or magazine will clean it up later if enough people actually notice and complain.

Gina Spadafori -- a former reporter, syndicated columnist, and actual dog expert -- took a screen shot of the offending copy before the first round of clean up.

Gina's post was on the copy-editing gaffe.  I am not sure how many folks went to actually read the article; I know I did not. 

I rectified that omission after Nathan Winograd read the piece for accuracy and found it "hopelessly contradictory and factually inaccurate".  

Eh?  Really?  I went back, found The New York Times piece, and then read Winograd's criticism of it.

Nathan Winograd was being kind.

To be clear, The New York Times piece was not a news article, but an opinion editorial written by Carol Mithers who The New York Times tell is us "is writing a book about dog rescue and poverty".

Right. 

That might not be a book I will rush out and buy, as this op-ed gets the basics of the "No Kill" movement so wrong that it is well and truly bizarre. If you don't know the basics of what "No Kill" shelters do and advocate, you are simply not doing the most basic leg work, or else you are deliberately misrepresenting the truth.

Winograd details the shoddy research, faulty thinking, and misrepresentation:

“Are We Loving Shelter Dogs to Death?” claims that adoption is overrated and that getting animals off of death row may harm animals. Specifically, she claims that events like Clear the Shelters, in which 78,332 animals found homes and no longer face an existential death threat, are a bad idea, citing the case of a dog who was adopted at one such event and subsequently died.

In a classic case of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story, the article appeared after the L.A.P.D. reported that both the treating and forensic veterinarians did not find evidence of sexual abuse or blunt force trauma and no evidence was found that the adopter gave false information to get the dog as originally reported. (After being rightly accused of peddling false information, the author updated the article only to say that the new information which contradicted her claims “did nothing to calm tempers,” a cop-out. Unreasonable tempers are irrelevant; feelings are irrelevant; what matters are the facts and that the author is using false information to call for the potential death of tens of thousands of animals.)

She also ignores the studies which prove that “no-fee” does not mean “no-screening” and that studies have shown that events like Clear the Shelters increase the number of animals who find homes without lowering the quality of those adoptive homes. She ignores that animals are safer under even “open adoptions” than they are remaining in pounds that kill. And she ignores that you can achieve No Kill without participating in events like Clear the Shelters.

After attacking No Kill programs like adoption, the article turns around and embraces programs like high-volume sterilization and pet retention efforts by: 1. Claiming they are not part of the No Kill philosophy even though they are (in fact, they are core programs of the No Kill Equation) and 2. Pretending they are mutually exclusive even though they are not. Obviously, you can sterilize animals to reduce overall numbers, employ pet retention programs to help people keep their animal companions, and also adopt the ones in the shelter.

The problem with not doing all three is obvious: sterilization ignores the needs of the animals that are already in the shelter and under an immediate death threat, leaving them with no protection from killing of any kind. Moreover, we don’t need animals to disappear from the Earth before we can do right by them (the hundreds of cities and towns placing upwards of 99% of the animals prove it).

Her conclusion? “Adoption becomes a feel-good ‘numbers’ game, in which we carefully and proudly track only how many animals have left the shelter. No one notes how many of them end up back in the system.” Her evidence? “The head of a well-established rescue group told me that just days after a ‘clear the shelters’ event, she saw three recently adopted dogs being returned to two Los Angeles-area shelters.” That’s the long and short of it.

I apologize to Mr. Winograd for lifting so much text directly from his blog; please go there and read the whole thing.

That said, I do not apologize too much, as I think the record needs correcting, and Carol Mithers got it SO very wrong in the pages of The New York Times

If someone can get it this wrong in less than 800 carefully proctored words, imagine how much they will get it wrong if given 75,000 more.

And if someone reaches past 100,000 examples of successes in order to find one example of failure, is that a lie or a truth?  Does it help dogs or hurt?  Does it illuminate or obfuscate?

Dogs deserve better, and so too do the readers of The New York Times.  This was a full editorial FAIL by a newspaper that, especially at this critical time in our nation's history, cannot afford this kind of shoddy work.