"He said, she said false equivalency"

Someone called the "Public Editor" at The New York Times pulls head from ass (Did you hear the "pop"?) & notices the real world.:

“The article clearly damages Perlstein,” Mr. Salmon wrote to me. “The New York Times is basically a co-conspirator here, in a concerted Swift-boating of Rick Perlstein. For shame.”

[...]

Yes, the claim was “out there” but so are smears of all kinds as well as claims that the earth is flat and that climate change is unfounded. This one comes from the author of a book on the same subject with an opposing political orientation. By taking it seriously, The Times conferred a legitimacy on the accusation it would not otherwise have had.

And while it is true that Mr. Perlstein and his publisher were given plenty of opportunity to respond, that doesn’t help much. It’s as if The Times is saying: Here’s an accusation; here’s a denial; and, heck, we don’t really know. We’re staying out of it. Readers frequently complain to me about this he said, she said false equivalency — and for good reason.

So I’m with the critics. The Times article amplified a damaging accusation of plagiarism without establishing its validity and doing so in a way that is transparent to the reader. The standard has to be higher.

I'd love to hear just how the sad hack who typed the article has been warned, punished, counseled, fired, demoted, suspended, wrist-slapped or had a letter placed in her personnel file or if any attempt to remove the head of typist Alexandra Alter from her ass has been made.

If you were wondering, here's the outrage: