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Update on errors in New York Times piece

Remember our post a couple days ago about problems in a New York Times magazine piece about “2-D Love”? It looks like Lisa Katayama, the author of the article, has returned from her vacation and seen Adamu’s fact-checking post.

Unfortunately, Katayama has chosen to announce to the world via twitter that she won’t respond to it:

Update: She wrote the following on her blog.

This always happens when I write an article about Japan. People get mad and question the authenticity of my sources, and then start criticizing what kind of person I am, etc. But it’s not my job to monitor how people read into things or to divulge my sources to the world. Like all professional writers, I only use primary sources unless they’re absolutely unavailable, and I don’t write about topics I have biases about unless it’s an explicitly subjective piece. I think it’s great for people to hold opinions about my writing, but if you say something mean on my blog or elsewhere, or harass me on Twitter, I’m not gonna write back to you. The NY Times has a fact-check department, and they’ll correct anything that’s wrong.

Update 2: I have been informed that it is standard journalistic policy for writers to let newspapers handle fact-checking issues and corrections after an article has been printed. Apparently this means that the author is supposed to refer complaints to the newspaper instead of directly responding to them. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how the New York Times handles this case.

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31 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - July 30, 2009 at 8:44 am

Categories: General Japan Tags: journalism, Lisa Katayama, New York Times, twitter

Dennis

Isn’t this responding to the comments of Her article and not the fact checking article.
People found it hard to believe but knowing my fellow Otaku it’s all too believable
http://mopedronin.tumblr.com Made in DNA

Frankly, this sounds much too much of much ado about nothing.

I understand there is journalistic intregrity to uphold here, but Lisa is Japanese, I’ve met her, she is well-heeled, and I don’t think she would lie.

When it all comes down to it, it’s an article about a dude hugging a pillow… how seriously does it have be taken?

The Overthinker

”Lisa is Japanese, I’ve met her, she is well-heeled”

And this is relevant to her accuracy? This is not about blatant lying, but about sloppiness and lack of accountability in presenting freaks as anything remotely representative.

“how seriously does it have be taken?”
As seriously as the people who read it in the US and consider it representative of more than one person.

BZ

She seems to think that having Japanese DNA gives her some special ability to interpret Japan better than white people -

“I started Tokyomango as a dumping ground for stories that wouldn’t get published in the magazine, and also for a place to debunk common myths and sensationalized conceptions of Japanese pop culture and lifestyle. A lot of people write about Japan, but most of them aren’t Japanese.”
binsentokun

I agree because if a person bases their main point in an article based on personal experience yet try to sound as if it is a known fact, then you have problems. I once had a Japanese History professor announce to the whole class that Japanese-whale hunting is an outrage because there are no more Japanese who eat whale meat. When I asked her how she knows this is so, she cited her “research”. When I kept asking for a reference, she finally admitted that her comment was based on her Japanese friends who don’t eat whale meat. I see Lisa’s article as being just as bad as the professor’s comment because it influences the audience’s perception of the people being discussed.

http://overoften.wordpress.com overoften

“I understand there is journalistic intregrity to uphold here, but [...] she is well-heeled, and I don’t think she would lie.”

Do you really mean that? I can’t see what her being wealthy has to do with her integrity. Are the rich inherently more trustworthy then?
Even Better…

Interesting take on the issue…
“When it all comes down to it, it’s an article about a dude hugging a pillow… how seriously does it have be taken?”

I think the extrapolation of a few people (or even one if we consider the focus was ‘Nisan’) that is then used to colour a nation is some what important and serious.

Continued stories like this on the Mainichi news website WaiWai column certainly created enough outrage. The implied frivolous nature of the articles created a perception of “damage to a nations standing” by J-netizens and action to close the site and fire the staff.
helical

The Japanese media themselves run by Japanese people with “Japanese DNA” gleefully holds the otakus as the prime exhibit of their freak shows.

First sounding the alarm that they were a dangerous army of pedophile predators lurking in all corners of society after the Miyazaki Tsutomu incident.
Then largely ignoring them though occasionally refreshing the message that they were dangerous freaks on the loose.
Then suddenly thrusting them back in the limelight in a slightly more favorable after light Densha Otoko became a big hit, but still in a very unflattering way (not that it’s entirely undeserved or untrue). After all, the socially inept and introverted otakus with their countless idiosyncrasies so alien to the mainstream “cool” crowd, are *such* an easy target for caricaturization and comical exaggeration …

So any argument of how Lisa Katayama would know better about these topics just because she is Japanese holds no water in anecdotal evidence as well as how it’s been pointed out already that, this issue is about her journalistic accountability and not any form of “worthiness”.

kanoe81

Digging up sensationalist stories and flagging them for the western media to see as part of its view of Japan isn’t helping anyone, but I can also see why she wouldn’t want to answer all these comments.

I used to write for a gaming website and wrote a brief article about Tokyo after a vacation I took, dumbing it down quite a bit since I knew the readers of the site I wrote for were mostly teenage boys. As soon as the article got published, it got picked up by F*cked Gaijin and other japanophile sites as “another newbie reporter discovers Japan” and I got personally raked through the coals.

The Overthinker

FG is not remotely as erudite as Mutant Frog however. Being raked through the coals by random comments is not the same as a reasoned analysis.

rupert wilson

Dude wtf is with all this hate? As somebody else said, this is all much ado about nothing. If you’ve followed anything Katayama does, you’ll know her integrity. I wouldn’t believe for a second that she pulled facts out of her ass. This fact checking sounds more like there are a few geeks who wish they didn’t love their pillows so much.

Go meet a girl and get laid.

The Overthinker

Then why not respond with integrity instead of whining?
And yeah, those pesky facts. Always get in the way of a good story.

yogaboy

She’s whining because she has been caught with her pants down and has no other way to respond. Her blog and writings are simply trashy at best. Hard to believe someone could build a ‘career’ on this.

http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

It’s generally not about what you write/produce but about how you try to sell it. The majority of people doesn’t even acare about getting the facts right, they want to be entertained. Lust have a look at the boulevard press and the tabloid magazines. Now many people say that those tabloids are just stupid and those are the people that will happily read things like the NYT article in question to entertain themselves.

kay Sato

i was reading the comments online, of the original article on NYtimes website. most of the comments there are not so much about hugging a pillow… but the age of the girl on the pillow

and how pedophilia is one thing or another
Kyle M.

“She seems to think that having Japanese DNA gives her some special ability to interpret Japan better than white people -”

Hold on there, cowboy. True, like many of us she has Japanese DNA. (Do I smell a little jealousy there, bud?) That having been said, I believe she was born in Japan and has spent a considerable amount of time there. I know she knows the country better than I do, and maybe she does know it better than you. But I’ve seen nothing to suggest that she thinks that her ancestry gives her any sort of special ability.

Yeah, I think I do sniff a little jealousy there…

Otherwise, like someone else said, this is a whole lot of to-do about nothing. And I think someone else is living up to his handle here.

RMilner

If someone is a regular writer for a newspaper they are a journalist and should operate with the same standards of integrity whether writing a column for their newspaper or a blog on the same topics as their specialism in journalism. Both are part of their professional life.

Such a jounralist should expect readers to take them seriously and sometimes complain. They should be prepared to answer those complaints, not brush them off with a junior school pouty excuse.

Miss Katayama weakens her case by refusing to reply. If she did check her facts properly, she would be able to strike down complainers with a swift statement about her sources.

If the blog is something separate — based on a hobby, for instance — the same ethical standards do not apply either way.
helical

I don’t understand why “jealousy” is relevant at all, or why you’d even mention it at all in the first place.
Are you jealous of Japanese DNA?

Kyle M.

Helical…I was responding to BZ’s post.

helical

Yes I realize that.

BZ accuses Lisa Katayama of thinking having Japanese DNA gives her some special mystical insight into the inner workings of the Japanese mind that other races don’t … on the (rational and reasonable) assumption that it doesn’t.

You accuse BZ of being jealous of Japanese DNA for making that accusation, perhaps in the course of misinterpreting BZ’s comment as saying the opposite of what he was saying. Or perhaps indicating that, with the premise that there IS something to be jealous of, you maybe do believe there is some racially inherited insight abilities although you say you don’t.

And I accused you of being jealous yourself on the creative speculation that perhaps your response to BZ was prompted by your own inner jealousy.

Sorry if I’m just ranting nonsense, but I still don’t get why you’d mention jealousy in the first place.
me

Kyle M.is one of those guys who thinks “Why wasn’t I born in Glorious Japan as a Japanese? Why was I born as a baka white gaijin? DOUSHITE?”
BZ

DNA jokes aside, I really can’t see how you can read that Katayama quote as meaning anything other than – I’m Japanese so I can interpret Japan better. It sure didn’t work out that way in practice.

The Overthinker

She has apparently replied privately to Adamu on Mutant Frog.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Yes. She wrote to both of us – Update 2 comes from her.

Even Better…

What strikes me about Update 2 is that writers “let newspapers handle fact-checking issues and corrections after an article has been printed”.
1. So journalists can work of whatever facts they like and let others do the grunt of checking validity? This sounds like a cop-out.

2. “…after it is printed”? Surely not! Their pages would be full of retractions, columns devoted to “We were wrong” corrections.

Perhaps it is apt that his update was supplied by the journalist in question.

A quick read of these might help with what should be done.
USA: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
Australia: http://www.australian-news.com.au/codethics.htm

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards

Key points from this…
Journalists should:
— Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.
…
— Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.

and there is so much more. Please read it.
This I think is where the failing is in this article and the response to criticism.

http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

I guess if the newspaper that employs you has to clean up a lot after you then your job will go to someone else, so that makes sure that jounarlists don’t just publish whatever they want. Also usually a story goes through the handy of an editor who can also apply some common sense to the text.

Anon

I’m glad she’s being held responsible for the stuff she writes. This needs to happen to ALL journalists.
http://www.tokyomango.com/tokyo_mango/2009/01/dog-ownership-is-just-as-therapeutic-as-child-rearing.html therapeutic

tokyomango.com/tokyo_mango/2009/01/dog-ownership-is-just-as-therapeutic-as-child-rearing.html

Deepspacebeans

I would consider child-rearing to be many things but “therapeutic” is not among them. To be honest, it sounds frightfully egotistical.

This point aside, I still think that anyone who owns a doggy stroller should be locked away in a loony bin.

therapeutic

The ironic part of this post is you have to look at the picture to see what is really therapeutic

I’ll give you a hint. look for the pot pipe.

kgo

Wow deleted all the comments from her blog.

Poor journalism indeed.

Update on errors in New York Times piece

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