New York Times retracts Caliphate podcast after finding main character’s story was hoax

The New York Times said  that its award-winning podcast "Caliphate" failed to meet editorial standards

Credit: AFP

The New York Times has been forced to retract parts of its award-winning podcast Caliphate, after establishing a featured story of a Canadian man who boasted about being an Islamic State executioner was a hoax.

The podcast was downloaded more than 25 million times and made a huge splash for The Times, winning the paper numerous awards, acclaim, and a host of new paying subscribers. 

However, questions were soon raised about the protagonist’s fantastical story of participating in executions and witnessing other atrocities in Syria before smuggling himself back to Canada undetected.

The paper announced in October that it would reexamine the 12-part series after Canadian police arrested Shehroze Chaudhry, who used the alias Abu Huzayfah, for lying about being involved with the terrorist group. 

The podcast led to a public backlash against the return of IS fighters and their families at the time it was released in 2018.

Andy Mills, left, and Rukmini Callimachi hold the award for their 2018 podcast Caliphate at the 78th annual Peabody Awards in New York 

Credit: AP

On the floor of Parliament in Ottawa, Candice Bergen, a leading opposition lawmaker, questioned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s efforts to reintegrate former terrorists into society.

The government then quietly halted the repatriation of a number of Canadian children of IS members who were trapped in a displacement camp in Syria.

In the interview with NPR, Dean Baquet, New York Times executive editor, said it did not have evidence Chaudhry had ever been to Syria, much less fought for IS.

The man’s account proved to be riddled with holes and contradictions. Even when confronting some of them, the reporting and production team sought ways to show his story could still turn out to be true, he admitted.

"We fell in love with the fact that we had gotten a member of ISIS who would describe his life in the caliphate and would describe his crimes," said Mr Baquet."I think we were so in love with it that when we saw evidence that maybe he was a fabulist, when we saw evidence that he was making some of it up, we didn’t listen hard enough."

The paper said it would “retract” the core of the podcast and would be reassigning its star terrorism reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, who hosted the series.

Colleagues at the paper told The Telegraph they had raised concerns with senior editors about Ms Callimachi’s reporting dating back to 2014, but were dismissed.

Ms Callimachi said she had Chaudhry “lying about key aspects of his account and reported it,” but faulted herself for missing other falsehoods, adding that the caveats were not “enough.” She also defended the other stories she has written about the Islamic State.

“But as journalists, we demand transparency from our sources, so we should expect it from ourselves,” she said in her statement. “Reflecting on what I missed in reporting our podcast is humbling. Thinking of the colleagues and the newsroom I let down is gutting.”