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What Do You Think: Dowd and Out?

A new potential Times scandal, involving a star columnist, a presidential quote, and points of ellipsis.

By David S. Hirschman – May 29, 2003

In yesterday's New York Daily News, columnist Zev Chafets picked a bone with star New York Times op-ed'er Maureen Dowd. His problem: ellipses. In her May 14 column, Dowd excoriated President Bush for neglecting a resurgent Al-Qaeda. (On the Times website, the column is now in a pay-to-view archive. This free link, to a syndicated version, is slightly edited, but the relevant part remains the same.) Dowd quoted a recent Bush speech to make her point, and she used a "..." to replace a portion of his quote—an elision that, say Chafets and others on the right, makes a crucial difference in the quote. Here's what Dowd wrote:

Busy chasing off Saddam Hussein, the president and vice president had told us that Al Qaeda was spent.  ''Al Qaeda is on the run,'' President George W. Bush said last week.  ''That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated,'' he added.  ''They're not a problem anymore.''

As Andrew Sullivan first noted on his website, the transcript of Bush's May 5 speech in Little Rock, Arkansas, gives the full quote:

Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore.

What Chafets and others object to is that while Bush was clearly referring to the "top Al Qaeda operatives" who were "either jailed or dead" when he said they were no longer "a problem anymore," Dowd's version removed the subject of the sentence and made it sound as though Bush suggested Al-Qaeda had been wiped out entirely.

The Times is said to be looking into this nascent "scandal." But, post-Blair the Times is looking into every potential scandal. Then again—paging Rick Bragg—some of these new scandals seem to have merit. And Dowd, like Bragg, and like Blair, is a Raines favorite.

In her own column yesterday, Dowd tried a fix, inserting the complete text of the quote she had originally truncated in a new context, perhaps hoping that use of this full version of the quote will absolve her previous ellipsis. It's a startlingly obvious ploy from a writer known for her subtle and stylish verbiage.

So now the media jackals are salivating over a fresh scandal at the Times, and we're deputizing you as jackals-in-training. What do you think? Was the initial elision misleading? Or are Chafets and Sullivan just complaining over nothing? Why did Mo reuse the quote? Is she going down? And if she does, what will it mean for the Times?
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  Tell Us What You Think
Posted by Daffodil, 5/29/2003 8:02:21 AM
1) I do think that Maureen's misuse of ellipses was pretty lame. It changed the meaning of the quote way too much.

2) I don't see, though, why conservative commentators such as Sullivan worry so much about Maureen Dowd--although she is a good writer, she seems to me to be a very ill-equipped *thinker--with no political philosophy to speak of. Basically, she just reacts to things emotionally. In so doing, her columns can be (to me) momentarily convincing, but not lastingly so.

3) I don't think she's going down--but I do think she should be fact-checked.
Posted by georgeford978, 5/29/2003 8:25:55 AM
By way of comment, here is the text of an e-mail I wrote to Zev Chafets directly:

Dear Mr. Chafets,

I think, with all due respect, that your attack on Maureen Dowd is, at best, flippant and a little irresponsible. I don't know if you have some particular long-standing grudge against Ms. Dowd, but her cropping of the quotation, which any reasonable reader can see doesn't in fact turn the meaning "upside down," is minor, even negligible, compared to the journalistic sins of Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg.

Does the Times have a potentially widespread problem that they need to address? Yes, it seems that way. Will a columnist select quotations that highlight a particular point they're trying to make? Of course. Will they crop those quotations for more than just space-saving purposes? Yes, within reason: when that cropping doesn't obscure the interpretation of the quotation in its original. I believe what Ms. Dowd did falls cleanly into that description.

Here is your restored version of Bush's statement:

"Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."

Just the first two sentences on their own imply that Bush thinks the Al Qaeda threat is negligible (and I'm not trying to debate whether he's right or wrong in thinking this). Adding or deleting any of the rest of the quotation, I believe, does nothing at all either to reinforce or weaken that implication. Therefore, Ms. Dowd's alteration of the quotation, while perhaps opening herself up to criticisms such as yours, did not use it irresponsibly.

On the other hand, I don't think that your interpretation of the quote-cropping is completely out of left field, either. I just think that a more careful consideration of the matter might have inspired you not to write such a needlessly alarmist column, and I certainly hope it would have prevented you from reporting Dowd to the TIPS hotline.

It would be a shame if the Times were in fact investigating Ms. Dowd for such a silly reason, and an even greater shame if they were doing so based solely on "tips" provided by well-meaning but wrong-headed columnists writing for rival papers (no offense).
Posted by krecorr, 5/29/2003 10:33:15 AM
The Associated Press punctuation guide entry on ellipsis reads: Use an ellipsis to indicate the deletion of one or more words in condensing quotes, texts, and documents. Be especially careful to avoid deletions that would distort the meaning.

With that definition in hand, the debate becomes one of interpretation -- did Times' columnist Maureen Dowd believe that deleting the portion of the president's quote would not distort its meaning? The answer appears to be yes, at first, then no following criticism of her column. By eliminating a preceding sentence, Dowd changed the subject that the pronoun "They" referred to (In the president's quote, it was jailed or killed leaders of Al-Qaeda, in Dowd's column, it was Al-Qaeda in general).

This deletion, whether purposeful or inadvertent, changed the meaning of that quote. This is a problem, not of interpretation, but of altering a person's words in order to make a point. Though the president engages in overkill by saying "dead" Al-Qaeda members are "not a problem anymore," the grammar of his sentence stands firm in referring to the aforementioned deceased and also jailed terror leaders, and not the group as a whole.

It is through omissions such as this one that erode the trustworthiness and credibility of news and media organizations. Columnists are paid to present opinions, but this does not excuse them from presenting the truth as well, regardless of their interpretation.

Maureen Dowd has issued a correction on her column and rightfully so. News consumers should and do interpret quotes as they see fit. It is the media's responsibility that quotes are presented as they are spoken. The reader's trust must be earned by the reporter's proof.
Posted by dp8362, 5/29/2003 10:46:14 AM
Maureen's editor should have had a little chat with her before the ellipses got into print.
That said, she is a columnist who goes her own way (she bashed Clinton around some, too), and therefore does not fit the politically correct agenda of 2003. These guys will exploit the Blair problems at the Times to go after any columnist they perceive as the slightest bit liberal, merited or not. Sullivan, in particular, should remember that bromide about people who live in glass houses.
Posted by joemullich, 5/29/2003 12:32:00 PM
Dowd's truncation changed the quote subtly. But I can see how that could easily happen without sinister intentions. Except for all the other stuff that is happening at the Times, I don't think anyone would have noticed this.
Posted by frances97576, 5/29/2003 2:18:13 PM
I wrote to Chafets that I thought it was ridiculous. The triumphalist tone of the quote is overwhelmingly present whether the omitted words are in or out. And remember, Dowd did use an ellipsis. What a quibble!
Frances Chapman
Posted by anm1267, 5/31/2003 9:38:31 PM
The Dowd controversy is symptomatic of a larger problem at the Times: the editorial controls in place -- to the extent the exist -- are inadequate. Blair, Bragg, Dowd and whatever other time bombs are ticking on 43rd Street could not exist without lax policing from Raines. Make no mistake, Raines is the problem here. To paraphrase John Landman, the Metro desk editor who tried in vain to get Blair bounced over one year ago: Raines must stop editing the Times. Right now.
Posted by wwjdadoronrondadoronron, 6/10/2003 6:15:19 PM
Please see my full response in Forums
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