The Wire Intends to Review Its Reporting on Meta ⇥ thewire.in

L’affaire the Wire sure has taken a turn since yesterday. First, Kanishk Karan, one of the security researchers ostensibly contacted by reporters, has denied ever doing so:

It has come to my attention that I’ve been listed as one of the “independent security researchers” who supposedly “verified” the Wire’s report on FB ‘Xcheck’ in India. I would like to confirm that I did NOT DO the DKIM verification for them.

Aditi Agrawal, of Newslaundry, confirmed the non-participation of both researchers cited by the Wire:

The first expert was initially cited in the Wire’s Saturday report to have verified the DKIM signature of a contested internal email. He is a Microsoft employee. Although his name was redacted from the initial story, his employer and his positions in the company were mentioned.

This expert – who was later identified by [Wire founding editor Siddharth] Varadarajan in a tweet – told Newslaundry he “did not participate in any such thing”.

Those factors plus lingering doubts about its reporting have led to this un-bylined note from the Wire:

In the light of doubts and concerns from experts about some of this material, and about the verification processes we used — including messages to us by two experts denying making assessments of that process directly and indirectly attributed to them in our third story — we are undertaking an internal review of the materials at our disposal. This will include a review of all documents, source material and sources used for our stories on Meta. Based on our sources’ consent, we are also exploring the option of sharing original files with trusted and reputed domain experts as part of this process.

An internal review is a good start, but the Wire damaged its credibility when it stood by its reporting for a week as outside observers raised questions. This was a serious process failure that stemmed from a real issue — a post was removed for erroneous reasons, though it has been silently reinstated. In trying to report it out, the best case scenario is that this publication relied on sources who appear to have fabricated evidence. This kind of scandal is rare but harmful to the press at large. An internal review may not be enough to overcome this breach of trust.