THE NEW YORK TIMES’ NAIL SALONS SERIES WAS FILLED WITH MISQUOTES AND FACTUAL ERRORS. Reason magazine’s Jim Epstein explains why it matters:
A two-part series in The New York Times on nail salons has brought sweeping changes to an industry dominated by Korean and Chinese immigrants. Written by reporter Sarah Maslin Nir, the series, which ran in print on May 10 and 11, focused on the plight of nail salon manicurists in New York City and Long Island. It depicted a community of immigrant workers paid shockingly low wages to beautify the fingers and toes of affluent New Yorkers while inhaling toxic fumes that cause miscarriages and cancer.
Nir, who spent 13 months on the project, said in an interview that she initially pitched the story as an “expose,” adding that the “great lesson” readers should come away with is that there’s “no such thing as a cheap luxury.” The only way “you can have something decadent for a cheap price is by someone being exploited.” (My Reason colleague, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, wrote a critique of Nir’s series shortly after it was published.)
The “great lesson” here is actually something different. I’ve spent the last several weeks re-reporting aspects of Nir’s story and interviewing her sources. Not only did Nir’s coverage broadly mischaracterize the nail salon industry, several of the men and women she spoke with say she misquoted or misrepresented them. In some cases, she interviewed sources without translators despite their poor English skills. When her sources’ testimonies ran counter to her narrative, she omitted them altogether.
Read the whole thing, which is a classic example of the late Michael Crichton’s Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect in action. If the Times has botched this story as badly as Epstein writes, imagine what other stories its hard left biases have muddled.
