By: E&P Staff Recent criticism directed at The New York Times for how it handles the seamlessly edited one-page Sunday Q and A in its Sunday magazine, handled by Deborah Solomon, has resulted in a small but significant change coming this Sunday.
The page looks much the same -- it features former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton -- but it now has a new tag at the bottom: "Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Deborah Solomon."
The actual text still reads like a brief back and forth with no obvious editing, but the hope must be that the italic explanation -- or disclaimer -- at the end takes care of it.
The paper's public editor, Clark Hoyt, raised questions about the editing of the Solomon column in an October 14 column. Earlier, two of the interviewees from the past had complained about certain aspects to the New York Press. Hoyt wrote that they "said their published interviews with Solomon contained questions she never asked."
He explained that "the 700 or so words each week are boiled down from interviews that sometimes last more than an hour and run 10,000 words. Though presented in a way that suggests a verbatim transcript, the order of the interview is sometimes altered, and the wording of questions is changed ? for clarity or context, editors say....
"While the vast majority of Solomon?s interview subjects have never complained, these are not the first who have. Last year, The Times Magazine published an angry letter from NBC?s Tim Russert, who said that the portrayal of his interview with her was 'misleading, callous and hurtful.'?
In this week's interview, Bolton re-affirms his critical comments about the U.N., the likely need to attack Iran, raises doubts about global warming, and says of Iraq, "I think it's almost beyond dispute that we were right to overthrow Saddam and the threat his regime posed."
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