An obituary of the journalist Michael Hastings missed an opportunity to convey to Times readers what a distinctive figure he was in American journalism.
The obituary, which has drawn criticism - most notably in a strongly worded e-mail from Mr. Hastings' widow, Elise Jordan, to the executive editor, Jill Abramson, and others at The Times, including the public editor's office - is not factually inaccurate, as far as I can tell.
But it doesn't adequately get across the essence of Mr. Hastings' journalism or the regard in which he was held. And, in the way it presents the Pentagon's response to his most celebrated article in Rolling Stone, which brought down Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the obituary seems to diminish his work's legitimacy.
That section of t he short obituary reads:
An inquiry into the article by the Defense Department inspector general the next year found “insufficient†evidence of wrongdoing by the general, his military aides and civilian advisers. The inspector general's report also questioned the accuracy of some aspects of the article, which was repeatedly defended by Mr. Hastings and Rolling Stone.
It provides a link to a 2011 Times article, the headline of which many find overstated and misleading: “Pentagon Inquiry Into Article Clears McChrystal and Aides.â€
Ms. Jordan noted that the Pentagon also accepted the validity of some of Mr. Hastings' findings, and she made this salient point about the headline of the earlier article: “Insufficient evidence to prosecute is not the same as ‘clearing' someone of a misdeed.â€
I asked the obituaries editor, Bill McDonald, to respon d to the complaints that the obituary gave the Pentagon inquiry undue emphasis. He disagreed:
In a 12-paragraph obit, that aspect of his story came up in paragraphs 6 and 7, after calling him in the lead paragraph “intrepid,†noting the Polk Award for his work and recounting the considerable impact his article had. Only then did we report - as we must, if we're going to write an honest obit about him - that the article triggered a Pentagon investigation and an inspector general's report, which challenged Mr. Hastings' reporting. That was a pretty newsworthy development and an inescapable part of his story, and in an obit of 425 words or so, we dealt with it in about 50.
Granted, an obituary is not intended to be a tribute. It is a news story about the life of a notable person. And because of The Times's reputation and its reach, its obituaries carry great weight for establishing a person's legacy. They matter.
In this case, the Pentagon references, suggesting a debunking of the Rolling Stone article's conclusions, got more space than what many consider to be essential information about Mr. Hastings: that he was a fearless disturber of the peace who believed not in playing along with those in power, but in radical truth-telling.
A quotation from the BuzzFeed Web site appeared initially in the online version of the article. It read:
Michael Hastings was really only interested in writing stories someone didn't want him to write - often his subjects; occasionally his editor. While there is no template for a great reporter, he was one for reasons that were intrinsic to who he was: ambitious, skeptical of power and conventional wisdom, and incredibly brave.
The quotation was cut for space reasons in the print edition, and that version is the one that is archived.
The obituary wouldn't have needed a lot of space to get that point across. On Twitter - a form that discourages rambling - a Freedom of the Press Foundation message made the point succinctly:
