The public editor for The New York Times said Saturday that the newspaper’s obituary on journalist Michael Hastings fell short.
Margaret Sullivan wrote in the Times that she does not believe the obituary was inaccurate, but conceded that the criticism it’s drawn is not unfounded.
“An obituary of the journalist Michael Hastings missed an opportunity to convey to Times readers what a distinctive figure he was in American journalism,” Sullivan wrote in her piece, titled “Hastings Obituary Did Not Capture His Adversarial Spirit.”
Hastings, the award winning journalist whose 2010 cover story in Rolling Stone was credited with ending Gen Stanley McChrystal’s career, died Tuesday in a car accident in Los Angeles. But many, including Hastings’ widow Elise Jordan, criticized the Times’ obituary for being dismissive of the fallout from the McChrystal piece.
The obituary, written by Margalit Fox, said that an inquiry into Hastings’ article by the Defense Department inspector general found “’insufficient’ evidence of wrongdoing” by McChrystal and his aides. In an email sent to Times’ editor Jill Abramson, and reported on by Huffington Post, Jordan criticized that portion of the obituary.
Sullivan appeared to concur with Jordan, writing that the obituary “seems to diminish” Hastings’ piece.
“But it doesn’t adequately get across the essence of Mr. Hastings’ journalism or the regard in which he was held,” Sullivan wrote. “And, in the way it presents the Pentagon’s response to his most celebrated article in Rolling Stone, which brought down Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the obituary seems to diminish his work’s legitimacy.”
