Tag: Hack Journalism

F%$#ed Up Headline of the Day

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At The Hill, they have a rather interesting headline, “Poll: Trump beats Warren, Biden in Iowa match-ups.”

It’s interesting for a number of reasons:

  • First, it’s a 51%-49% poll for both Biden and Warren trailing trump, with a 3.2% margin of error, so it’s a non story.
  • Second, and more importantly, is what we see in the 3rd paragraph:

    The reverse was the case for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Fifty-one percent of voters said they would pick him over Trump, who garnered 49 percent support.

This is a hacktacularly bad piece of reporting, and once again, as always, it cuts against Bernie Sanders.

Tweet of the Day

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A short little history of war propaganda:

Vietnam 1964 – Gulf of Tonkin incident

Gulf War 1990 – Incubator Babies

Iraq War 2003 – Imaginary WMDs

Libya 2011 – Nonexistent massacres in Benghazi#Syria 2019: Video from a Kentucky military show passed off as Syrian war footage https://t.co/AWS9QKBOMn

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) October 15, 2019

When issues of war and peace come up in America, the only way to get an accurate story is to find a foreign source.

Whistleblower Details Emerge

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We now know that the person who filed the report about Trump’s shakedown of the Ukrainian President was CIA agent who was assigned to the White House.

Given that Christine Blasey Ford had to go into hiding with her family because of death threats, I am not particularly sanguine with the New York Times revealing so much information about them.

It is reasonable for the Times to get this information, but I think that publishing in a story that is basically a time line of events was not necessary, and will likely face threats and intimidation as a result.

The White House learned that a C.I.A. officer had lodged allegations against President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine even as the officer’s whistle-blower complaint was moving through a process meant to protect him against reprisals, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The officer first shared information about potential abuse of power and a White House cover-up with the C.I.A.’s top lawyer through an anonymous process, some of the people said. She shared the officer’s concerns with White House and Justice Department officials, following policy. Around the same time, he also separately filed the whistle-blower complaint.

The revelations provide new insight about how the officer’s allegations moved through the bureaucracy of government. The Trump administration’s handling of the explosive accusations is certain to be scrutinized in the coming days and weeks, particularly by lawmakers weighing the impeachment of the president.

Lawyers for the whistle-blower refused to confirm that he worked for the C.I.A. and said that publishing information about him was dangerous.

“Any decision to report any perceived identifying information of the whistle-blower is deeply concerning and reckless, as it can place the individual in harm’s way,” said Andrew Bakaj, his lead counsel. “The whistle-blower has a right to anonymity.”

I believe that the Times published this (and other) information in this article because they believed that subjecting whoever this is to harassment was somehow a way of showing their “fair and balanced” bonafides.

There was no need to do this, because, as is stated in the article, “Multiple people had raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s call,” which should serve as an indicator of reliability.

The rest of the article is largely a time line, but it is a useful timeline.

The Washington Post Just Got a Bit Better

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OP/ED columnist Richard Cohen has left the Washington Post.

It appears that whatever happened, it was sudden.

My guess is that they discovered something bad, and had no choice.

Bad for him, good for the public discourse of the United States:

Richard Cohen will no longer write columns for the Washington Post, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt tells staffers in an unusually short email sent via editorial board executive assistant Nana Efua Mumford. Seriously, this is the whole thing:

After 43 years of writing a column for The Washington Post, Richard Cohen has decided to move on to other challenges. Whether he is writing about politics, movies, history or his glory days in the U.S. Army, Richard is a master of the form. Readers of The Post and the many other publications that carry his column will miss his insight, humor and occasional outrage. As Richard takes on new ventures, we wish him all the best and remain hopeful that he will come back to write for the oped page from time to time.
Fred

This was clearly sudden.

Just to remind you, some of Cohen’s greatest hits:

  • Suggesting that jewelry store owners are justified in not letting black people in his store.
  • Sexually harassed a staffer.
  • Suggested that interracial marriage made observing such couples ill.
  • Lauded Trayvon Martin’s murderer.
  • Suggested that the Steubenville rape was not “real” rape. 

Even by the egregious standards of the Washington Post OP/ED pages under Fred Hiatt, he was a toxic and stupid man.

NPR Navel Gazing

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I’m listening to the Cokie fest at NPR on the news of the death of Cokie Roberts of breast cancer.

I get that she is a significant figure from the early days of the network, and certainly her passing should be noted, but the wall-to-wall coverage was excessive.

If it had been Sy Hersh, or Bob Woodward, or Carl Bernstein, there would have been a 5 minute appreciation.

I understand that a number of people at National Public Radio feel this loss personally, but you are supposed to be journalists.

Suck it up, and leave space for other news.

Bret “Bedbug” Stephens

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The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens. https://t.co/k4qo6QzIBW

— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 26, 2019

Unfair to Bedbugs

The latest Twitter sh%$-storm comes courtesy of Brett Stevens.

There was a news report of (not kidding here) of a bedbug infestation at the New York Times offices, and GWU professorr David Karpf made what he himself admits was a throw away tweet that this was a metaphor for Times columnist Brett Stevens.

Until this all blew up, it had 9 likes and no retweets.

Then Stevens sent him an email, which was cc:ed to the university Provost, subject line, “From Bret Stephens, New York Times”, demanding that he show up and say it to his face.

This was clearly an attempt to use his position at the NYT to intimidate and threaten what he thought (incorrectly) was an non-tenured professor.

As a so-called journalist who has made the condemnation of safe spaces and hyper-sensitivity, (spoiler, it’s really about him justifying bigotry and lying) the hypocrisy is stunning:

David Karpf is a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University in D.C. On Monday night, he became a subject of great media interest himself after reading reports about the bedbug infestation at the New York Times and writing in a tweet that the bedbugs were perhaps a metaphor for the continuing presence, at the paper, of conservative columnist Bret Stephens. (Stephens has developed a reputation in certain circles for writing provocative but intellectually flimsy columns about climate change and the alleged threat of political intolerance on college campuses; Karpf, in addition to being an academic, is a former member of the Sierra Club board of directors.)

While the tweet might have seemed like an innocuous remark, Stephens apparently didn’t think so: He emailed Karpf—in a message with the subject line “From Bret Stephens, New York Times” on which George Washington provost Forrest Maltzman was CC’d—to accuse him of setting a “new standard” for online incivility and to challenge Karpf to “come to my home,” “meet my wife and kids,” and “call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face.” (Stephens wasn’t tagged in Karpf’s original post, so it wouldn’t have shown up in his Twitter notifications; he wrote in his email to Karpf that someone had “pointed out” the tweet to him.)

Karpf described Stephens’ email in a tweet without specifically naming the columnist, then, about an hour later, uploaded a screenshot of it that included Stephens’ name. The posts together created a frenzy of disbelief and derision that led Stephens to delete his own Twitter account, then, during a Tuesday morning appearance on MSNBC, to deny that he’d been trying to get Karpf in trouble with the university (Karpf, in any case, is tenured) and to claim that the “bedbug” remark resembled the kind of dehumanizing language that “totalitarian regimes” use toward ethnic outgroups. On Tuesday morning, I spoke to Karpf about the experience of being a viral figure and the state of bedbug discourse in the digital age. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Slate interviewed Karpf, who added some necessary perspective:

The two things that stand out are that it’s entertaining, and distracting. It does keep occurring to me the reason why this is actually pretty fun for me is that I’m a white guy with tenure, which means that—if he had sent this to me before I had a tenured job, that would have been a powerful and terrifying message, and I’m 100 percent sure that that’s what he expected it to do. When he writes a message where it says, “From Bret Stephens, New York Times,” from his New York Times account, it means that he’s trying to indicate that he’s above me in the social hierarchy. But I’m a professor of strategic political communication, and I have tenure, and I really didn’t do anything wrong. That makes the entire thing bizarre and fun. If I was pre-tenure or I was a woman and had to deal with harassment on Twitter all the time, then I imagine this would be a lot less fun.

………

If he hadn’t CC’d the provost, then I would think, “Wow, he took this far more personally than he should have.” But also that would mean that an op-ed writer from the New York Times was reaching out to me and wanted to discuss civility in the digital age. And I would have tried to reply to it and said, “First of all, is this a bit? I’m surprised you found this and were upset by it. But second of all, here’s the thinking behind it. Here’s why I thought it was a decent joke. And also here’s why I think it’s entirely appropriate because, being a public intellectual as you are, people get to make silly jokes about you on the internet like I did.”

But the fact that he was CCing the provost, and I assume that he doesn’t know I have tenure when he writes that message, means that he’s not actually asking, “Where is the civility?” He’s certainly not inviting me to come to his house and have this little conversation. What he’s trying to impress upon me is that he’s more powerful than me and I should feel fearful and ashamed.

Conservatives are such delicate snowflakes.

Also, Brett Stevens should be fired for abusing his position as a Times columnist.

This is about as flagrant abuse of his position, and journalistic ethics as I’ve seen since ……… checks notes ……… The entire career of Judith Miller.

Journalism Should Not Be All about Journalists

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The fact that conservative activist are looking into journalists’ history with an eye toward criticizing them is not the end of the world.

In fact, this sort of activity qualifies as journalism, but the mainstream press has never been sanguine about scrutiny being applied to them, just witness their meltdown over Bernie Sanders fairly anodyne condemnation of the pollution of media by finance and mergers:

Many journalists are very indignant that Trump allies are reportedly combing through social media to identify embarrassing things they may have posted long ago that can be used to discredit them. In this case, I’m afraid, the outrage seems to be missing the point.

What exactly is happening here? According to the New York Times, a “loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House” has “compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements” by lots of people who work at major media outlets. They plan to release these tidbits at politically advantageous times in order to discredit the employees and the media outlets themselves. This is all portrayed in formal and quite ominous language. There is a name for this that political reporters are all familiar with: opposition research.

But there is another name for this that is also accurate: media reporting.

Considering the fact that stupid tweets by New York Times (and Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, etc) journalists and columnists is something that crosses my twitter feed on a daily basis, the freakout over conservatives doing the same is silly.

Personally, I’m thinking that this is more an attempt to distract the press than it is to shame them:  Every time that some public figure criticizes the press, it seems that all other journalistic activity is subsumed in an orgy of defensiveness.

What the F%$# is Wrong with the New York Times?

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The New York Times, and by that I mean their editorial board, just published an editorial, which among other things, appeals to the conscience of the good Nazis and white supremacists out there.

This is unbelievably stupid.  There are no good Nazis, but they ask for their goodwill anyway:

Those who sympathize with the white nationalist ideology but who deplore the violence should work closely with law enforcement to see that fellow travelers who may be prone to violence do not have access to firearms like semiautomatic assault-style weapons that are massively destructive.

(emphasis mine)

There are no white supremacists who eschew violence.

Violence is inextricable from white supremacist and Nazi ideology.

You can enforce neither without violence and the threat of violence.

Think about it:  Without lynchings and shooting, Jim Crow would never have had any force.

Asking for a few good Nazis to do their civic duty is dangerously misguided.

H/t Atrios.

This is a Thing of Beauty

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I guarantee you that that Mr. Costa thought that he had a great “gotcha” question here, and Sanders owns his lame ass attempt to put half quotes in his mouth.

if you come at the king pic.twitter.com/uDaO0o02Lz

— Current Affairs (@curaffairs) July 16, 2019

An interviewer comes after Sanders with half a quote, and Sanders remembers the whole quote:

MR. COSTA: Let’s stick with that race point you just brought up. In 1974, you said that bussing policies were well meaning in theory but sometimes result in “racial hostility.”

 SEN. SANDERS: What else did I say in that?

 MR. COSTA: Tell me.

 SEN. SANDERS: No, you got it there. Read it. Read the whole quote.

 MR. COSTA: I don’t have the whole quote.

 [Laughter]

 SEN. SANDERS: The whole quote is the federal government doesn’t give a sh%$ about African Americans.

 MR. COSTA: Well, that is true. That’s why I didn’t include it.

 SEN. SANDERS: All right. Okay.

The point that Sanders was making, and the point that he remembered from 45 years ago, was that the Federal government was refusing to enforce fair housing laws.

Mixed Emotions

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I am heartened that some of the regime change mousketeers are finally turning their eyes toward the House of Saud, and seeing it, and particular its young scion Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as a threat to peace and stability.

On the other hand, I am terrifed that they are comparing him to Saddam Hussein, because this implies an eventual invasion, and invading Saudi Arabia, which would involve the “Infidel” in Medina and Mecca, would create a clusterf%$# that would make our little adventure in Iraq look like a game of Parcheesi.

We need to stop our incompetent meddling.

The Columbia Journalism Review States the Obvious

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With every day that passes, the drumbeat of war echoes a little more loudly through our media. Yesterday, officials in Iran said that the country will soon have produced and stockpiled more low-enriched uranium—of the type used in power plants—than it is permitted to possess under the 2015 nuclear deal, which the US ditched last year. In Washington, the Trump administration moved to dispatch 1,000 American troops to the Middle East, adding to the 1,500-strong deployment it sent last month. Tensions between the US and Iran, we are told, are rising.

………

Yesterday, the Trump administration declassified images it says back up its case that Iran was behind the tanker attacks. Many outlets relayed administration claims about the images in headlines; in a tweet, Politico said that, per the Pentagon, “the images provide ironclad evidence Iran was responsible.” The third paragraph of Politico’s linked story, however, notes that “nothing in the photos or accompanying documents reveal evidence of the placement of the magnetic mines on the ship.” Hardly “ironclad,” then. Last night, in an article for Task & Purpose, a military news site, Jeff Schogol argued that “not a single US official has provided a shred of proof linking Iran to the explosive devices found on the merchant ships.” Without air-tight evidence, news outlets really should not air administration claims without a heavy dose of context. “Pompeo/Bolton/Shanahan said” is not enough.

Again, it’s hard to generalize, but US coverage of the latest Iran episode seems to be falling into some old, bad habits. In recent coverage, “the media has generally been better at treating unproven accusations by the Trump administration as just that—accusations, and not facts,” Trita Parsi, a researcher and founder of the National Iranian American Council, told me last night in an email. “Yet, on numerous occasions, there has either been a failure to push back against blatantly false assertions by Trump officials, or Trump accusations have been presented as proven facts.” The problem is especially acute in headlines and tweets, Parsi notes.

I have lived though journalistic fails of this sort my entire life.

I don’t think that I’ve ever seen the press gets this right in my lifetime.

Tweet of the Day

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If you gave a billion dollars to the top 10 news companies, the chance of a dime being spent on news would be pretty slim. You might as well give a pound of hamburger to a shark and hope to get meat loaf.

How many billions have passed through their hands in the last decade?

— Steve Yelvington (@yelvington) June 10, 2019

Remember this whenever the big media starts whining about how Google News is so unfair to make money from directing readers to their websites.

These days, these organizations are run by finance types, and finance types don’t care about journalism.

Finance and journalism mix like Ebola and French kissing.

The New Normal is Profoundly Depressing

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Donald Trump has pardoned Conrad Black, the former media mogul who owned the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator before being jailed for fraud, shortly after he wrote a book praising the US president.

Black, a Canadian-born British citizen, was once known for his extravagant lifestyle as he ran an international newspaper empire that included the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post. But he ended up serving three and a half years in prison after he was convicted in 2007 of siphoning off millions of dollars from the sale of newspapers owned by the company he controlled.

………

Black was jailed after being found guilty of conspiring with fellow executives to siphon off funds from the sale of media businesses. Two of Black’s three fraud convictions were later voided, and his sentence was shortened. Black was released from a Florida prison in May 2012 and deported.

He said he thought it was a prank by British tabloid journalists when he received the call from the White House informing him that he was about to be pardoned.

This is so depressing on so many levels and in so many ways.

Bernie in the Lions’ Den

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Bernie Sanders kicked serious ass at the Fox News town hall.

He was on point, answered the questions, and was a forceful advocate of his policies.

The hostile hosts were owned.

Favorite bit: Fox drone host asks audience who has insurance through their employer. (Lots of hands go up)

Drone host then asks who among them wants Medicare for all. (ALL the hands stay up, and they begin to cheer)

It’s probably the best thing that has been on Fox News in years.

Things I Won’t Discuss in 2019

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Until 2020, I will no longer discuss the fundraising hauls of various candidates. (the link is about Bernie crushing it)

I understand that campaign donations numbers are a fixture in political coverage, but that is bad and lazy journalism.

This sort of coverage is more than bad, it is damaging.

It replaces the discussion of real issues with meaningful horse race coverage.

I fear that the press coverage this cycle will make 2016 coverage look like Edward R. Murrow.

What a Surprise, the Venezuela Aid Story Was a Lie

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There was a confrontation at the Columbia-Venezuelan border over the US aid convoy 2 weeks ago, and it appears that the narrative stating that the Venezuelan Army had burned the convoy was a lie.

I would note that, until dozens of alternate sources had, and revealed the footage, the New York Times had bought into the previous narrative:

The narrative seemed to fit Venezuela’s authoritarian rule: Security forces, on the order of President Nicolás Maduro, had torched a convoy of humanitarian aid as millions in his country were suffering from illness and hunger.

Vice President Mike Pence wrote that “the tyrant in Caracas danced” as his henchmen “burned food & medicine.” The State Department released a video saying Mr. Maduro had ordered the trucks burned. And Venezuela’s opposition held up the images of the burning aid, reproduced on dozens of news sites and television screens throughout Latin America, as evidence of Mr. Maduro’s cruelty.

But there is a problem: The opposition itself, not Mr. Maduro’s men, appears to have set the cargo alight accidentally.

Unpublished footage obtained by The New York Times and previously released tapes — including footage released by the Colombian government, which has blamed Mr. Maduro for the fire — allowed for a reconstruction of the incident. It suggests that a Molotov cocktail thrown by an antigovernment protester was the most likely trigger for the blaze.

At one point, a homemade bomb made from a bottle is hurled toward the police, who were blocking a bridge connecting Colombia and Venezuela to prevent the aid trucks from getting through.

But the rag used to light the Molotov cocktail separates from the bottle, flying toward the aid truck instead.

Half a minute later, that truck is in flames.

The same protester can be seen 20 minutes earlier, in a different video, hitting another truck with a Molotov cocktail, without setting it on fire.

Accidentally?

This guy threw Molotov Cocktails at at least 2 trucks over a period of 20 minutes, and you are calling it a f%$#ing, “Accident”?

More like a deliberate false flag.

BTW, in related news, another New York Times story, about the widespread power outages in Venezuela buries the lede:

The blackout will further depress Venezuela’s already collapsing economy, which is being squeezed by bad governance, graft and sanctions imposed by the United States. The sanctions have affected Venezuela’s ability to import and produce the fuel required by the thermal power plants that could have backed up the Guri plant once it failed.

(emphasis mine)

This is why, when I want accurate stories regarding US foreign policy, I go to the foreign press.