New York Times Issues Editor's Note About Article On El Salvador Abortion Law

The New York Times on Sunday issued an editor's note about an April 9, 2006, New York Times Magazine article about El Salvador's abortion law (New York Times, 1/7). Byron Calame, the Times' reader representative, in a column published last week wrote that although the article "provided a broad and intriguing look" at the law, "[a]ccuracy and fairness" in regard to a "key example" in the story "were not pursued with the vigor Times readers have the right to expect." The article included an account of how a woman named Carmen Climaco received a 30-year prison sentence after having an abortion at 18 weeks' gestation, Calame writes. According to Calame, "it turns out that trial testimony convinced a court in 2002 that Climaco's pregnancy had resulted in a full-term live birth and that she had strangled the 'recently born'." The court found her guilty of "aggravated homicide," Calame writes, adding that the article's author, Jack Hitt, "suggested that the 'truth' was different." Hitt "never checked" the ruling "while preparing for his story" and said "no editor or fact checker ever asked him if he had checked the court document containing the panel's decision," Calame writes (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 1/3). According to the note, Climaco was sentenced in a case "initially thought to be an abortion but was later ruled to be a homicide," adding that a picture caption with the article "misstated the facts of the ruling." The editor's note says that the Times "should have obtained the text" of the court's ruling before publishing the article, but it "did not vigorously pursue the document until details of the ruling were brought to the attention of editors" in late November 2006. Climaco is appealing the ruling and the Times continues to investigate the case, the note says (New York Times, 1/7).

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