Kristof: Some 'splain To Do

UPDATE  Sullivan just now returned to the subject and comments on Kristof's belated 2nd blog post over the weekend.  She thinks it's a good thing but some readers far from satisfied.  Note he ignores celebrating Mam in his doc.

Earlier: I missed this yesterday afternoon but here's NYT public ed demanding (as others had done for days online) that columnist Nick Kristof explain his role in yet another hero-scam. 

In Nicholas Kristof’s columns in the New York Times, he portrayed Ms. Mam in an extraordinarily positive light. He was not alone in doing so. Ms. Mam attracted many high-profile supporters, from Susan Sarandon to John Kerry to Sheryl Sandberg.

In a 2009 column, Mr. Kristof told the story of Long Pross, a teenager (also known as Somana) who said that her eye had been gouged out by a pimp, after she was forced into prostitution. Newsweek has reported, based on medical records, that the girl’s missing eye is the result of surgery to remove a non-malignant tumor when she was 13.

A great deal of money has been raised to combat sex-trafficking, in part as a result of Mr. Kristof’s writing about Ms. Mam on multiple occasions. And there’s little doubt that sex-trafficking is a problem worth paying attention to, and working to end. But now that Ms. Mam has stepped down from the foundation that bears her name — following not only the Newsweek story but the foundation’s internal investigation — many readers, on Twitter and in emails to my office, are asking what Mr. Kristof’s responsibility is for setting the record straight.

More here on Kristof's response  via Erik Wemple at Wash Post.