"The proper focus is the truth."

Said Jim Treacher in the comments to my post "What did the Charlie Hebdo terrorists say to Sigolène Vinson, the woman whose life they spared?," which is about his post "New York Times Reports On Muslim Proselytizing During Charlie Hebdo Attack, Then Deletes It."

My post calls attention to a third version of the NYT story, which lets us see that the first version was based on a quote from Vinson to the French radio website RFI, which Vinson now disowns. The Times did its own interview with Vinson and seems to have been trying to get the story straight. It doesn't say that RFI misquoted her, only that she disputes the quote and says something else now. Times readers are left to speculate on their own.

Treacher had attacked the NYT: "Your reporter hastily left that inconvenient truth in her story by accident, so you airbrushed it out, without any acknowledgment, to preserve the narrative." But I'd said, "The proper focus is the mind of Sigolène Vinson," so you can see why Treacher would respond: "The proper focus is the truth." He'd already spoken of an "inconvenient truth," and I'd tried to refocus on a process of editing that had happened not at the NYT but in the mind of Sigolène Vinson.

Of course, I believe I'm in pursuit of the truth, so, responding in my comments, I said that "I agree" that "The proper focus is the truth":

And the truth is that there is a third version, described in my post that sheds light on what happened.

You haven't updated your post to talk about it, so how are you following the proper focus?

He said:

I don't take orders from you. But as it so happens, I've just added another post about the NYT's "correction."

Treacher's new post — which doesn't cite my post— says:

So: If we’re to give the NYT the benefit of the doubt, which they absolutely have not earned, they were just correcting a quote that a French media outlet somehow got completely wrong. And apparently, the NYT just forgot to mention the discrepancy, ask her how she could have been misquoted so thoroughly, or make any note of the edit.

Maybe the edit should be noted — I'm not an expert on what the journalistic standard is about unfolding stories on the web — but I don't think the "benefit of the doubt" interpretation is that the NYT was "just correcting a quote that a French media outlet somehow got completely wrong."

In my view, the NYT deserves credit for doing an independent interview with Vinson, and it never asserts that RFI got the quote wrong. The NYT restricts itself to the direct pieces of evidence and withholds speculation about the reason for the discrepancy. It's my speculation that Vinson self-censored (out of fear of terrorists or social pressure from people around her). She was traumatized, and memory is imperfect. It's hard to provide verbatim quotes, and one's effort to produce a quote is complicated by the interpretation you had at the point of hearing it and as you thought about it later.

The discrepancy is about whether she was told to convert to Islam, read the Quran, and cover herself or whether she was told to think about what she's doing and to realize that it's not right. I think the version with more detail is more likely to be true, but it's also possible that she was only told to do what's "right" and she instinctively understood that man's "right" in terms of Islam.

Treacher's new post goes on to say that RFI should be be "furious" that "the biggest newspaper in America" is "accusing them of completely fabricating a key quote in a major story." But the NYT refrains from offering any theory for the discrepancy! If the proper focus is the truth, how on earth can Treacher say that the NYT is "accusing" RFI of "completely fabricating"?

One interpretation of the items of evidence provided by the NYT is that RFI completely fabricated the quote, but the NYT doesn't even suggest that could be the explanation, let alone accuse. You have to put the facts together yourself, and — as I noted in the previous paragraph — the most likely explanation is that poor Ms. Vinson is muddling the story for one reason or another.

Anyway, back to the comments thread in my earlier post, I responded to Treacher's "I don't take orders from you":

If you are dedicated to the truth, why characterize my question as an "order"? I'm not ordering you around, just seeking the truth — according to the "proper focus" — and asking good questions. Why do you portray me as doing something other than that? Do you regard a question as an "order" to answer?

Treacher said:

If you don't want to sound like you're ordering people around, stop ordering people around. I don't work for you.

I said:

Well, as I said, I just ask what I think are good questions.

But it's interesting that you refer to working for somebody who's not me. You criticize the NYT and you work for The Daily Caller. What should we infer about the orders you're getting from them? You seem awfully concerned about getting "orders"....

The proper focus is truth!