Franklin Foer
A TNR Editor's Covert Conversation With Scott Beauchamp
As The Observer wrote yesterday, one of the main reasons New Republic editor Franklin Foer decided to end the magazine's effort to verify Scott Beauchamp's "Baghdad Diarist" columns and issue a retraction was Mr. Foer's belief that Mr. Beauchamp—who was stationed in Iraq until last month—was not fully cooperating with TNR's investigation, and sometimes appeared uninterested in defending himself.
In a phone interview with The Observer Friday, Mr. Beauchamp's wife, former TNR reporter-researcher Elspeth Reeve, shed a bit more light on that aspect of the controversy.
In early August, the web site of The Weekly Standard, citing a military source close to the army's internal investigation, reported that Mr. Beauchamp had signed a sworn statement recanting much of what he'd described in his TNR pieces. TNR's editors were understandably troubled by the news, and set about trying to verify it—a task made much more difficult by the fact that, from late July until September, the Army would not allow Mr. Beauchamp to speak to TNR. read more »
Foer’s Foggy New Republic Retraction Doesn’t Please Everyone
“Yeah, it’s a bummer, but it’s hard to shed any tears over Frank,” Elspeth Reeve was telling The Observer in a phone interview Friday, the day before her husband, U.S. Army Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, joined her at her mother’s house in Missouri for his 30-day leave.
Earlier that week, Ms. Reeve’s former boss, The New Republic’s editor, Franklin Foer, had published a 7000-word piece that concluded by formally retracting three first-person columns that the 24-year-old Mr. Beauchamp had written for the magazine over the summer. Soon after their publication, a chorus of conservative bloggers had raised questions about the veracity of the columns, in which Mr. Beauchamp offered first-person accounts of American troops in Iraq engaging in shocking behavior, such as running over dogs with their Bradleys, and mocking a woman whose face had been disfigured in an explosion. After carrying out a nearly five-month investigation, which involved attempts to corroborate Mr. Beauchamp’s claims with other members of his unit, Mr. Foer had concluded that the stories could not be verified. read more »
Elspeth Reeve on Fact-Checking Her Husband's 'Baghdad Diarist' Stories at The New Republic
In an interview Friday, U.S. Army private Scott Thomas Beauchamp's wife Elspeth Reeve, a former reporter-researcher at The New Republic, told the Observer that she was excited when someone at the magazine assigned her to fact-check one of her husband's dispatches from Iraq.
“I was like, 'Sweet! I can talk to Scott on TNR’s dime!'” Ms. Reeve said.
Ms. Reeve was working at TNR when Mr. Beauchamp--whose articles described soldiers killing dogs and mocking wounded civilians--was accused by critics of fabricating some of his material.
Mr. Foer has since written and published a 7,000-word piece retracting Mr. Beauchamp's articles for TNR, noting that assigning Ms. Reeve to fact-check her husband's work was a mistake.
Make sure to read tomorrow's print edition of the Observer for more on Mr. Foer's retraction, as well as more from Ms. Reeve on what went wrong with her husband's controversial articles.
TNR's Foer on Beauchamp Retraction: 'There's a Baseline Level of Trust You Have in Writers'
New Republic editor Frank Foer's nearly 7,000-word retraction of his magazine's Scott Thomas Beauchamp stories has already received plenty of attention since appearing this weekend. But it's not immediately clear what precipitated its publication.
Based on Mr. Foer's account, it does not appear that TNR's four-and-a-half-month investigation turned up any new inconsistencies in Mr. Beauchamp's stories. Nor has Mr. Beauchamp confessed to making anything up.
So why is TNR backing off now?
In an interview this afternoon, Mr. Foer told Media Mob that while there was no evidence to suggest that Mr. Beauchamp had fabricated any of his Iraq dispatches, TNR’s editors had lost confidence in their correspondent over the course of the fall, and had reached a dead-end with their investigation. read more »
After Probe, New Republic Retracts Beauchamp Stories
New Republic editor Franklin Foer has offered an in-depth look at the magazine's painstaking efforts to verify its three Baghdad Diarist columns, written by Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a soldier in Iraq. Conservative bloggers had challenged some of the anecdotes described in the columns, and Mr. Foer now concludes:
In retrospect, we never should have put Beauchamp in this situation. He was a young soldier in a war zone, an untried writer without journalistic training. We published his accounts of sensitive events while granting him the shield of anonymity--which, in the wrong hands, can become license to exaggerate, if not fabricate.
When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.
The magazine may have erred by running the columns orginally, but it's hard not to conclude that, since then, it's been admirably forthright and energetic in its efforts to get to the truth.
TNR: Beauchamp Did Not Recant His Story, Investigation Ongoing (UPDATE)
The editors of The New Republic have posted a statement saying that Scott Beauchamp, the U.S. Army private whose unsigned TNR dispatches from Iraq came under scrutiny this summer, did not admit to fabricating any parts of his stories--contrary to an article posted on The Drudge Report Wednesday.
The Drudge Report posted several documents pertaining to the Army's investigation into the Beauchamp affair, including a transcript of telephone conversation from Sept. 6 in which Mr. Beauchamp refuses to confirm that his stories were true when asked by TNR editor Franklin Foer and executive editor Peter Scoblic.
That transcript--which, along with Drudge's article and the other documents, were removed from The Drudge Report after a few hours--sparked an uproar among TNR's conservative critics, who said the editors of the magazine should have informed their readers of the conversation. read more »
TNR's Foer: Drudge's Documents Could Have Come Only From the Army (UPDATE)
Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, said in an interview that the documents Matt Drudge posted this afternoon—and removed several hours later without explanation—could have only come from the Army.
Mr. Foer said he called TNR’s contact there, Major Kirk Luedeke, as soon as the documents appeared on Drudge’s Web site. According to Mr. Foer, Major Luedeke told him that the Army was “investigating the source of the leak,” though they did not explicitly take responsibility for it.
"It’s maddening to see the Army selectively leak to the Drudge Report things that we’ve been trying to obtain from them through Freedom of Information Act requests,” Mr. Foer said. “This fits a pattern in this case where the army has leaked a lot of stuff to right wing blogs.”
Mr. Foer said TNR had been trying since July to get access to some of the documents Mr. Drudge posted, but that the Army had not cooperated.
Among these was the Army’s final report on its investigation into Mr. Beauchamp’s TNR pieces. The report concludes that portions of those pieces had been “completely fabricated."
UPDATE: In an e-mail to the Media Mob, Major Luedeke of the 4th Brigade Public Affairs office said, “All I can tell you is that the leak did not originate with this office, and that the Army is looking into who is responsible. That process is being handled at levels above this brigade, however."
E-mails to Mr. Drudge have not been returned.
Drudge Calls Out TNR on Beauchamp, Takes It Back Hours Later
Until about ten minutes ago, Matt Drudge was reporting that he had obtained a damning internal document from The New Republic proving that “Baghdad diarist” Scott Beauchamp, who was accused of fabricating portions of war reports he published in the magazine over the summer, had refused to stand behind his stories when top editors questioned him over the phone on August 7th. The article, titled “SHOCK DOCS: THE NEW REPUBLIC 'SHOCK TROOPS' STORY COLLAPSES” was highlighted in red and placed prominently in the upper left hand corner of the site.
Now, the link is gone—no explanation is given for why—though you can still read the story if you click here.
Franklin Foer, the magazine's top editor, could not be reached for comment as he is in all-day meetings with executives from TNR's parent company, CanWest.
Foer: TNR Will Launch New Web Site on Tuesday (UPDATE)
Seven months have passed since The New Republic radically redesigned its print edition and switched to a biweekly publication schedule. Now, editor-in-chief Franklin Foer says it's time for the Web site to change as well.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Foer said that the new TNR.com will launch on Tuesday, October 23rd*; the redesign, he said, will give more play to blogs and web-only stories, and provide users with better "navigability" and "many more places to go out of each page."
"The most significant change is the way in which it sells blog items,” Mr. Foer said. “The blogs are very prominently promoted in the new design. The home page is kind of covered with them." read more »
Did New Republic Soldier-Writer Recant Grisly War Tales?
Last week, New Republic editor Franklin Foer released a statement detailing the results of an internal investigation of columns written by Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who is stationed in Iraq. read more »
New Republic Investigation Clears Military Columnist
Franklin Foer spoke to The Observer shortly after posting a statement on the disputed New Republic column written by Scott Thomas Beauchamp. read more »
New Republic Investigates Its Anonymous Baghdad Correspondent
New Republic editor Franklin Foer tells The New York Times today that the magazine is investigating articles written under the pen name Scott Thomas and billed as the magazine's "Baghdad Diarist."
Three articles have been attributed to Thomas in the magazine since February, describing gruesome events in Iraq from the point of view of an American soldier. read more »
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Beinart Out, Foer In at TNR
[Update: In a story for tomorrow's paper, posted on the Web this evening, The New York Times confirms that Foer is replacing Beinart.]
"I'm not going to confirm anything," New Republic owner and editor-in-chief Martin Peretz said by phone this afternoon, as he prepared to catch a flight to Israel. "Call me tomorrow."
Neither Beinart nor Foer returned calls seeking comment.
Beinart has been editor of the weekly since November of 1999. His presence has diminished recently, however. For much of the last year, he was on leave writing The Good Fight, a book based on a 6,000-word meditation on John Kerry's defeat he wrote for TNR in 2004. The book is due out from HarperCollins in June.
Foer has recently been courted by The New York Times, which hoped to hire him to write about the culture of Washington, D.C.
Some New Republic staffers said they were unaware of any pending masthead changes.
"I don't know what's going on," one staffer said. "Beinart is definitely back and 90 percent of where he was before. Before the book, he was committed 24 hours [a day] to TNR. Now it's 20 hours. He's still very committed, but with the understandable coda that he's writing his book."
--Gabriel Sherman
Off the Record
