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October 12th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
The New York Times is trying again to whitewash its dishonest, sensationalist 2018 podcast, called “Caliphate,” but the paper’s coverup attempt can’t withstand even a quick inspection.
The Times yesterday ran a report about a hapless Canadian who admitted in a courtroom that he had made up bloodthirsty stories about being an executioner for the Islamic State in Syria. In fact, he had never left Canada.
The bulk of the article — 19 out of 28 paragraphs — concentrated on the fabulist, Shehroze Chaudhry, an inexplicable editorial decision given that Canadian authorities dropped the criminal charges once he admitted everything.
The paper downplayed or hid the real news — which is that reporter Rukmini Callimachi and some of the Times staff are getting away with one of the biggest episodes of journalistic malpractice ever. The “Caliphate” podcast was downloaded millions of times, a fact nowhere mentioned in this article, and Chaudry was the central figure in the 10-part series. Even more astonishing, “Caliphate” is still up on the paper’s website, albeit introduced by a perfunctory disclaimer about Chaudry’s dishonesty.
Just as surprising is that Callimachi still has a job at the paper, although she’s been moved off the “jihadism” beat. And the Times didn’t even bother to ask her for detailed comment about her role in the hoax.
Which it should have, because if you pick through the article you learn that Callimachi’s own malpractice was even worse than reported so far. Read down to paragraph 13, and you learn from Chaudhry’s statement to the Canadian court that “Rukmini Callimachi pushed Mr. Chaudhry to spin his false narrative.”
Here’s the next revealing paragraph:
‘At times during the podcast, Ms. Callimachi expressly encouraged Mr. Chaudhry to discuss violent acts,’ the statement says. ‘When Mr. Chaudhry expressed reluctance to do so, she responded, ‘You need to talk about the killings.’ (Callimachi denies saying this.)
Another intriguing fact is buried even lower in the article, after more pointless details about Chaudhry’s own story. It turns out that the hoax started after the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), based in Washington, D.C., was following the Canadian’s Instagram posts. MEMRI “compiled Mr. Chaudry’s online claims of terrorist activity into a report that was distributed to Ms. Callimachi. . .”
Anyone who follows the Mideast learns quickly that MEMRI is — let’s be diplomatic — close to the Israeli government, and is notorious for mistranslating items in the Arab press and publicizing the most extreme statements to give a distorted view of the Arab and Muslim world. But Callimachi must have been happy to hear from MEMRI, and the Times admits that she “soon traveled to Toronto to record interviews that were used for “Caliphate.’”
Here’s one example of what Chaudry told her. Again, this podcast was downloaded by millions, and initially won awards:
The blood — it was warm and it sprayed everywhere. And the guy cried — was crying and screaming. It’s hard. I had to stab him multiple times. And then we put him up on a cross. And I had to leave the dagger in his heart.”
Knowledgeable critics suspected “Caliphate” was fake right from the start. Back in 2018, the writer Rafia Zakaria warned that the story did not ring true, and she went on:
For Callimachi, the hunched and hooded Abu Huzaifa (the name Chaudhry is given in the podcast) appears forbidding and lethal precisely because he doesn’t appear to be either of those things. It’s his ‘everyday-ness,’ she tells us again and again; any brown man could be a terrorist, is the implication.
In the end, Callimachi is not the only person to blame. She was just responding to the incentives in a mainstream media world that is still disfigured by Orientalist sensationalism and honors such work. “Caliphate” won several awards, (although they were rescinded once the scandal broke). Callimachi herself is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, even though reporters on her own paper had raised doubts about her veracity.
That the Times continues to downplay this scandal, and continues to maintain “Caliphate” on its website, guarantees that there will be another.
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