{"id":175921,"date":"2020-10-23T18:54:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T23:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/10\/23\/all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print-huh\/"},"modified":"2020-10-23T18:54:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T23:54:00","slug":"all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print-huh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/10\/23\/all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print-huh\/","title":{"rendered":"All the News That’s Fit to Print, Huh?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems to be a routine thing. Some New York Times<\/i> reporter goes on safari and conduct man on the street interviews, and many of these so-called “Ordinary Folk” are actually Republican operatives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This happens over, and over, and over again.<\/p>\n

This is not accidental.  This is baked into the culture: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

The New York Times has been caught, once again, passing off Republican operatives as \u201cregular\u201d Republican voters in an article intended to show how effectively Trump is maintaining his support.<\/span><\/p>\n

It raises serious questions about whether Times editor and reporters, rather than actually trying to determine how voters feel, are setting out to find people to mouth the words they need for predetermined story lines that, not coincidentally, echo the Trump campaign\u2019s propaganda.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the latest case, an article posted on Wednesday headlined \u201cAround Atlanta, Many White Suburbanites Are Sticking With Trump<\/a>\u201d by Times national reporter Elaina Plott initially misidentified two of the four allegedly run-of-the-mill voters who supported the article\u2019s thesis: That Trump\u2019s unfounded fear-mongering along the lines that \u201cANTIFA THUGS WILL RUIN THE SUBURBS!<\/a>\u201d is working.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lead anecdote came courtesy of Natalie Pontius, who was simply identified as \u201can interior decorator, married with two children and a University of Georgia alumna.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Pontius, it turns out<\/a>, was a paid political consultant for a Republican candidate for Georgia\u2019s House of Representatives in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

Plott also quoted Jake Evans, initially identified simply as \u201can attorney in Atlanta.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Evans, it turns out<\/a>, chairs the state\u2019s branch of the Republican National Lawyers Association, is the immediate past president of the Atlanta Young Republicans, is a member of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp\u2019s election-security task force \u2014 and he\u2019s the son of Randy Evans, a Republican heavy-hitter rewarded by Trump with a cushy gig as ambassador to Luxembourg.<\/span><\/p>\n

And this isn\u2019t the first Times story like this to feature ringers. In a notorious June 2018 story by political reporter Jeremy Peters \u2013 headlined \u201cAs Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig In Deeper<\/a>,\u201d the supposedly ordinary Republican woman in the lead anecdote turned out to be<\/a> a board member of an ultra-conservative PAC.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n

Because the fact that the reporter couldn\u2019t find real people to support its thesis suggests that she was assigned to produce precisely the story she did. (So does the URL, which I suspect reflects the editor\u2019s original \u201cslug\u201d for the story: \u201catlanta-trump-voters-women.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span> <\/p>\n

This, I\u2019m afraid, is Dean Baquet\u2019s newsroom<\/a> in a nutshell, where the anachronistic notion of \u201cobjectivity<\/a>\u201d is horribly misapplied to produce both-sides stenography instead of calling out liars and racists.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n

Going forward, readers deserve to know exactly how the reporters found their way to the \u201caverage\u201d people they quote, to judge for themselves how typical or atypical they may be. How many people did the reporters talk to before they found the person they needed for their story? What questions did they ask?<\/span><\/p>\n

And finally, I need to bring up a point I\u2019ve made repeatedly before: Simply quoting Trump supporters who mouth crazy talking points (whether they\u2019re ringers or not) is a terrible disservice to the reader.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The hero in this story is Charles Bethea, a New Yorker staff writer \u2014 and Twitter. <\/span><\/p>\n

Bethea quickly recognized Jake Evans:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Here’s my 2018 mini-profile of Jake Evans, who is very much not a man-on-the-street. (Side note: Evans told me he was 31 years old in January of 2018, and NYT says he’s still 31 years old today. Not sure how that works.) https:\/\/t.co\/jdfm4xmWdG<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014 Charles.Bethea (@charlesbethea) October 21, 2020<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

That\u2019s because Bethea had actually written a short profile of Evans<\/a> for the New Yorker in 2018, when Evans was president of the Atlanta Young Republicans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually, after sleuthing by Zach Kopplin<\/a>, an investigator for the Government Accountability Project, and Georgia attorney Eric Teusink<\/a>, Bethea also announced:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Wow: Natalie Pontius was a paid political consultant for a Republican candidate for GA House of Reps in 2018.
Yet she remains in the shortened but still misleading @nytimes<\/a> story about voting in GA, described only as “an interior decorator” & UGA alumna. https:\/\/t.co\/aBYhvmgJ0G<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/c5UbZS8L4y<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/0leSKTCUeI<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014 Charles.Bethea (@charlesbethea) October 23, 2020<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seriously, there is something very toxic in the New York Times<\/i> newsroom, and while Dean Baquet makes the problem worse, as an institution, it has rot at its bones.<\/p>\n

The “Gray Lady” keeps screwing up these stories because senior editors send reporters into the field with the mission to serve predetermined narrative, and reporters know that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems to be a routine thing. Some New York Times reporter goes on safari and conduct man on the street interviews, and many of these so-called “Ordinary Folk” are actually Republican operatives. This happens over, and over, and over again. This is not accidental.  This is baked into the culture:  The New York Times …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[490,578,374],"class_list":["post-175921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-hack-journalism","tag-incompetence","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}