The New York Times is returning the prestigious “Peabody Award” it won for a podcast series in 2018.
The podcast was called “Caliphate,” and told the story of a man named Shehroze Chaudhry.
An internal investigation concluded the podcast did not meet accuracy standards.
The New York Times announced that Canadian and US intelligence and law enforcement officials consider Chaudhry to be “a fabulist who spun jihadist tales about killing for the Islamic State in Syria.”
I caught the subject of our podcast lying about key aspects of his account and reported that. I also didn’t catch other lies he told us, and I should have. I added caveats to try to make clear what we knew and what we didn’t. It wasn’t enough.
New York Times podcast host Rukmini Callimachi
The New York Times has not returned the Pulitzer Prize awarded in 2018 for its coverage of “the Trump team’s connections with the Russians and attempts to sway the F.B.I. director, James Comey.” The Washington Post also won the Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the topic.
Pulitzer Prize Administrator Dana Canedy told USA Today, “We stand behind the Pulitzer selection process, which has endured for 103 years. And the winning work speaks for itself.”
The New York Times has previously issued a statement defending its Trump-Russia coverage stating, “Russia actively worked to upend the American elections in 2016 and there were multiple instances of Trump Transition and Administration officials having contact with Russia.”
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