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It’s a tenet of independent journalism: Always offer the people you’re writing about a chance to provide comment. It’s fundamentally about accuracy.
But what happens if they ignore you? Or post your questions on social media before you’ve written a word? Or decline to comment, then respond to a story with their own version and attack your credibility?
All of that has happened to New York Times reporters. But it hasn’t changed our approach to pursuing the truth.
To better understand why this work matters and how we approach it, I turned to three members of The Times’s Tech team based in California: Pui-Wing Tam, a deputy business editor, and two reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac. They report on extremely fast-changing, lucrative and challenging elements of the business world. And that can mean tense conversations with the people they cover.
These are edited excerpts from our conversation.
Pui-Wing, can you talk about how you work with reporters to consider outreach, particularly to those who are known to brush off reporters or who default to familiar talking points?
PUI-WING TAM: We always want to reach out — even to people who we think will not respond — because we don’t want to surprise anybody and we want to fact check for accuracy. We want to give subjects of our stories a fair chance to comment, add their perspective and correct anything that might be wrong. It can really make a difference for readers to hear what subjects of our reporting have to say. And you never know: People can always surprise you by calling back and providing guidance on an issue.
The strategy for outreach usually depends on the story. Sometimes it makes sense to reach out with an open-ended question and an open invitation for an interview at the outset of reporting. Other times, it makes more sense to reach out later in the reporting process, when we have more information.
Can you talk about a time when a call for comment changed your view of a story?
SHEERA FRENKEL: Some of the larger tech companies we deal with will offer to speak with us off the record, or on background, to give information or nuance on an issue we are reporting. These types of conversations are often a jumping-off point for us to do more reporting. There was one moment last year when a tech company told me I was on the wrong track with a story. They kept using a very strange phrase about their company’s work policies to steer me away, but I realized the story was in what they were avoiding saying.
MIKE ISAAC: Pui-Wing has hammered the phrase “no surprises” into my head since we started working together a decade ago, and I think it’s something every journalist needs to internalize. Fair’s fair, and everyone deserves a chance for comment, especially when appearing in a publication with as large an audience as The Times.
I’m often surprised at how forthcoming some folks can be when I call them on a hard story. My favorite examples are when a person or company knows I have them dead to rights, and levels with me. I think they realize — smartly, I would add — that it’s better to talk it out sometimes than to stonewall.
TAM: The most recent example was a scoop we had on Microsoft’s water projections in the age of A.I. We reached out to the company, which asked for time to respond and then told us they had a new set of projections. What that showed us was how much estimates of water usage in data centers were subject to change. We incorporated both the new numbers and the earlier projections, as well as Microsoft’s explanation of the change. What was ultimately indisputable was that water usage was going up.
Let’s talk about that idea of being open-minded. How does that help you check facts and evaluate potential gaps in reporting?
TAM: It’s very important that we are open to new information, as most situations are not black and white. There’s often nuance that can add texture and layers to what we report, and a broader context that we have to be aware of to understand history and how that might have led to where we are now.
ISAAC: I mean look, there’s a reason we go to companies or people for comment beyond the obvious desire to be fair: We want to get it right!
That is the other appeal I make to people who normally would prefer to keep our relationship antagonistic at best, nonexistent at worst. Perhaps there is context a subject can provide to give a different point of view, which we’re happy to incorporate if it is relevant to the story. The stories go where the reporting leads us, including what we hear when we request a comment.
FRENKEL: I will often open my conversation with sources by saying, “My goal is to get this right.” The more perspectives I can get, the stronger my story is.
Has your effort to push for comment ever backfired?
TAM: We have seen tech companies front-run stories when The Times reached out for comment. Probably the most well-known example is when The Times reported on the Cambridge Analytica scandal with Facebook in 2018. Facebook blasted out a statement ahead of the story in an effort to take the sting out of it. We go to the company for comment each and every time, but are sometimes concerned it will pull the same move with sensitive stories.
ISAAC: Early on in my career, I realized how dangerous it can be for your story to go for comment too soon. Some companies scramble to contain what they assume will be a bad story, so they start sending out scary emails to employees to get them to clam up and stop leaking. And I would argue that the public potentially loses out on further details I might have gleaned in my reporting.
Something annoying that happens more often than I’d like: I’ll call a company for comment, and they’ll call a competing outlet to tell a more positive version of the same scoop I’m working on in order to shape the narrative in their favor. But the smarter communications executives know this is bad form for them in the long run.
FRENKEL: I have had my emails or text messages asking for comment posted on social media several times in recent years. I now consider that possibility when I write requests for comment.
How do you handle it when a subject uses social media like that to try to discredit our work, sometimes after declining or ignoring our efforts to speak to them?
ISAAC: It’s funny, this is a big thing in Silicon Valley right now, the idea of “going direct” and ignoring the influence of large publications while tarring us on social media. There are entire communications agencies pushing the idea that media is irrelevant, and all tech companies should just tweet out news and bypass reporters entirely.
This is an attractive idea for executives who are frustrated that we aren’t acting as stenographers. But I don’t think this will work out for them.
My protection from getting smeared online is what I do in every case: button up the reporting. So if I’m challenged, I can back it up.
FRENKEL: Years ago, I would post my side of the story on social media and try to explain the journalistic process we follow. At least twice, I was accused of not reaching out for comment, so I posted screenshots of my requests for comment to discredit that claim.
I have stopped doing that. I found that it often led to more mudslinging and brought out the worst of the trolls on social media. Now, I let The Times handle it through its social media accounts and entirely stay off platforms like X.
Our recent reporting on David Sacks, the Trump administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, prompted a lot of pushback from him. That article explored policies he had helped formulate that aid his Silicon Valley friends and his own tech investments. He took to social media and his podcast to criticize the coverage and our reporting. In one post, he described The Times as a “hoax factory.” What was your view of that situation?
TAM: We gave Sacks many weeks to respond and fact-checked everything thoroughly, so there were no surprises. He chose to attack us afterward, but we found no errors in our reporting requiring correction.
In December, Charles Ornstein of ProPublica wrote about reporting challenges. In some cases, subjects have ignored routine requests to comment and later accused reporters of stalking and harassing them. Has the relationship between reporters and sources changed?
ISAAC: Something I try to stress to people when calling for comment — especially those who may have never dealt with being written about before — is that there is nothing quite like being written about in the The New York Times.
We bear a responsibility to give our subjects a fair chance to comment and to make sure we have the facts right. Some people don’t really understand all that comes with being named in a piece, and I attempt to convey as much in as respectful a way possible while trying not to frighten anyone.
We can be annoying! Even alarming or abrupt. But I never want anyone to think I didn’t give it my absolute best attempt to talk to them before putting them in the report.
FRENKEL: I wish people knew how hard we work to not just get a comment, but to have a thorough no-surprises process so that the subjects of our stories aren’t caught unaware by anything post-publication. I have had company spokespeople privately tell me how thankful they are to get my no-surprises emails, only to have executives from that same company slam me on social media for my story.
I don’t think the relationship between sources and reporters has necessarily changed. I like to think my sources still come to me because they know I give them a fair shake.
How do you decide how much of a comment or statement to include?
FRENKEL: We always try to include as much of the statement as possible that is relevant to the story.
ISAAC: One game companies like to play is to send a wall of words that have nothing to do with the subject of the story, then complain when we didn’t put some or all of it in the piece. I usually tell them it would be better to engage directly than try to redirect attention from the story’s central claims.
If that’s the case, I usually press them to send a response to the actual questions I’m asking.
Some companies get it. Some don’t. We’ll keep trying either way.
Mike Abrams is the deputy editor for Trust, working to help readers understand The Times and its journalistic values.
The post Reporters Seek Comment. What Happens Next May Surprise You. appeared first on New York Times.
