New York Times violated its own principles

According to magyaridok.hu, The New York Times violated its own ethics manual when it published untrue and unverified allegations in connection with Hungary, citing anonymous sources – the internal rules of the American paper revealed. An employee of the newspaper wrote – referring to a Syrian woman – that a Hungarian prison guard severely assaulted her because she rejected him. The Hungarian Prison Service denied this information. They said there could be no immigrant women in the Hungarian prisons, so they could not get into contact with any prison staff.

The Hungarian Consulate-General in New York has formally initiated the newspaper to correct the false allegation of the article. The fact of the failure was also justified by Katrin Bennhold – author of the article – who admitted that she had not verified the veracity of the claim. Thus she violated the ethics manual of the American newspaper.

According to the code the main value of the paper is credibility, and the editorial staff has to do everything to strengthen that. The key objective is to ensure impartiality and neutrality. The code also mentions the necessary distancing in case of anonymous sources. The journalists have to provide the most complete information possible. If they make a mistake, they have to fix it immediately, magyaridok.hu wrote.