Esquire and California’s Center for Investigative Reporting published a story last month about the health-insurance struggles of a former Navy SEAL who author Phil Bronstein writes is the “man who shot and killed Osama bin Laden.”
Since then, the article has generated notes with the brio of a Scriabin score.
• February 12: An unbylined piece lays into Stars and Stripes reporter Megan McCloskey, who noted that “Like every combat veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the former SEAL…is automatically eligible for five years of free healthcare through the Department of Veterans Affairs.” Esquire said that fact was in its story and bemoaned the existence of journalists “who are too quick to incorrectly call another journalist’s work ‘wrong’ rather than doing their own work on the profound problems of returning veterans.”
• February 12: Esquire adorns the story dinging McCloskey with an editor’s note and a correction: The online version of its story did not, in fact, include the five-free-years thing.
Unfortunately, this omission on the online version, which has been corrected, has led to a misunderstanding, through no fault of her own, by reporter Megan McCloskey and others about some of the facts in our story regarding healthcare and our veterans.
• March 27: Esquire Editor-in-Chief David Granger responds to a CNN story by Peter Bergen (who famously interviewed bin Laden) that quotes another member of SEAL Team 6 as saying “The Shooter”‘s claim of killing bin Laden is “complete B-S.” Granger does not link to the CNN piece, but in his note he strongly defends Esquire’s piece:
By stark contrast with Bronstein’s thoroughgoing 15,000 word report, the CNN story constitutes a mere act of assertion. As far as can be gleaned from the report, it is based on the opinion of one current SEAL who was not on the bin Laden mission and who therefore could not have first-hand knowledge of it. It is little more than gossip.
Bergen’s source is the third — maybe the fourth — member of Seal Team 6 to emerge with an account of bin Laden’s death. At least two of those accounts are at odds with Bronstein’s. If Esquire runs more editor’s notes, we’ll update this piece.
