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Trump's retaliation 'Revenge Tour' has sparked a national emergency: NYT

AN 8 26 DOJ

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U.S. Installs a Trump Loyalist to Lead ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Case Into Trump Foes

A former lawyer for President Trump’s campaign, Joseph diGenova, is said to be planning to split time between Miami and Fort Pierce, where a grand jury overseen by a Trump-favored judge sits.

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Joseph diGenova, 81, who served as a U.S. attorney in the Reagan era, has been given the title of counselor to the attorney general and detailed to the Southern District of Florida.Credit...Tom Williams

Charlie SavageAlan Feuer

By Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer

Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer write about the Justice Department.

April 18, 2026

See more of our coverage in your search results.

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As a sprawling inquiry expands into whether former federal officials committed crimes in investigating President Trump, two unusual factors could ease the way toward securing the indictments he craves.

A former lawyer for Mr. Trump’s campaign, Joseph diGenova, has been selected to lead the inquiry after a career prosecutor in Miami was removed from that post this week, a senior law enforcement official said on Saturday.

And at least part of the investigation appears to be using a grand jury based in Fort Pierce, Fla., overseen by a federal judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who issued rulings favorable to Mr. Trump during the classified documents case against him, the official added. Mr. diGenova is expected to split his time between Miami and Fort Pierce.

Together, the moves show how the Justice Department under Mr. Trump’s control has been willing to embrace politically charged tactics and unorthodox personnel decisions in its efforts to satisfy his demands to prosecute his perceived foes — even as other prosecutors loyal to him have encountered forceful pushback from courts against his wide-ranging retribution campaign.

Mr. diGenova, 81, who served as a U.S. attorney in the Reagan era, has been given the title of counselor to the attorney general and detailed to the Southern District of Florida, where the U.S. attorney, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, another Trump loyalist, is supervising the inquiry.

Mr. diGenova’s appointment comes after Maria Medetis Long, a senior career prosecutor in Miami who had been in charge of the investigation, was abruptly removed from the case. Ms. Medetis Long, who leads national security investigations for Mr. Quiñones’s office, is said to have objected to moving forward with a portion of the inquiry focused on John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director.

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SEE DRILLED

BRENT B TIPPING PT; THUGSWARM INCL ROSS DOUTHAT? NO DIFF FROM BRKOUT

PRESS SUPPRESS

AN 7 26 5 NYT REPORTERS SERVED AT HOME ON AF 1 STORY? NO CTR-MEAS

CNN's Jake Tapper issued a strong fact-check after claims from President Donald Trump's secretary of defense alleged there were people leaking information from the department.

According to Secretary Pete Hegseth, leaks put their brave American soldiers in danger.

"I have delegated tasking authority to ⁠the [Department of Defense's] Office of ⁠General Counsel, empowering OGC to request and ⁠receive all information, records and support across the department concerning media leak investigations," Hegseth said ⁠in an X video.

Tapper responded with, "I know of one leak that put our brave pilots at risk!"

He posted a link to the full inspector general's report revealing that Hegseth used the Signal app to leak classified information to his family outside the Pentagon.

He specifically quoted the significant finding that "The Secretary sent nonpublic DOD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes. Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DOD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DOD personnel and mission objectives."

The full report also had screen captures of the secretary's message that outlined every detail about conditions and the mission ahead of the U.S. strike in Yemen against Houthi rebels.

Hegseth risked "endangering U.S. troops by using the Signal messaging app to share military plans before the first attack in Yemen," the IG ruled.

Tapper went on to cite the reports finding that "if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes…”

“Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots," Tapper added from the report.

"Some call them whistleblowers. When they’re alerting the public to government lies and malfeasance, for instance," Tapper later added.

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MMA

On Fox, Trump says NY Times coverage of the Iran war has been “treasonous”

July 13, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

DONALD TRUMP (GUEST): You know, I get a kick when The New York Times and CNN — so you got to understand: Their entire military is gone. They got nothing. They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, it's all gone. Their anti-aircraft is gone. Their leaders have all been killed. Their best leaders have been killed. They're gone. Khamenei is gone. The son is 90% gone — and The New York Times writes an article, 'They're doing better today.' Oh and they have inflation that's 350%, that used to be at 5% six months ago. They have have 350% inflation and The New York Times writes an article, 'They're stronger today than they were four months ago.' These people are sick. The New York Times is sick.

LAWRENCE JONES (CO-HOST): Obviously the American people don't believe that Mr. President, they understand who is winning this war. Really quickly Mr. President —

TRUMP: I actually think it's treasonous, Lawrence. I think it — by the way, how good is Lawrence doing? Okay, is he doing a good job?

50k Jul 2, 2026

Tommy talks to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof about Elon Musk’s lies about DOGE and USAID. Want Pod Save the World ad-free? Subscribe to Friends of the Pod: https://www.crooked.com/friendsFor a transcript of an episode of Pod Save the World, please email transcripts@crooked.com.

not even show orphan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-znjjUWXb9Y&t=36s)

2:08

2 minutes, 8 seconds

Yeah, it is. I want to ask you about that reporting. Yeah, I think all all total like 83% of USA ID programs were canceled. 94% of the staff were laid

2:15

2 minutes, 15 seconds

off. Some were rehired by the State Department, but that was after a long independent process. So, the suggestion that, you know, it they destroyed it.

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2 minutes, 23 seconds

They fed into the wood chipper. Exactly what Elon said. That's right.

mom bled no fuel ambo, mal bed net holes, no rx, dr nirse grow casavas

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AN 5 26

Ex-Bush official sounds alarm on Trump's 'open fire hydrant' of grift - Alternet.org

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The New York Times Editorial Board, in a strongly worded editorial, says “there has never been an example of presidential corruption like this.”

The paper of record is accusing President Donald Trump not only of “presidential corruption,” but also of “political self-dealing,” and “destroying the pillars of American democracy to empower himself.”

At issue is what the Times calls the Trump Justice Department’s “$1.8 billion political slush fund.”

“Ostensibly set up to compensate those who the department claims have ‘suffered weaponization and lawfare,’ it will in fact reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president,” the editors charge.

They allege that the fund actually encompasses three of Trump’s “most alarming behaviors”: corruption, using the DOJ “as an enforcer to punish his perceived opponents and protect his friends and allies,” and attempting to rewrite history “about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.”

How is Trump destroying pillars of American democracy?

“He claims elections are legitimate only if he wins,” they write. “He uses federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute his perceived enemies. He purges his party of officials who defy him. He describes members of the other party and civil society as traitors and enemies.” Trump “incentivizes his supporters to break the law on his behalf and rewards them when they do,” and he “directs his allies to change election rules to keep his party in power.”

The agreement to create the fund came after Trump dropped a highly-controversial $10 billion lawsuit which reports say IRS lawyers were intending to contest.

In exchange for dropping the lawsuit, Trump and his supporters would receive “government handouts,” the Times says.

Trump and his family would gain immunity from IRS audits, and his supporters who were allegedly victimized by government lawfare would receive payments.

Times editors note that the fund holds another purpose: encouraging “future lawlessness on Mr. Trump’s behalf.”

“It sends the message that he will use his power not only to shield people who break the law from accountability,” they say, “but also to shower benefits on them. Just as punishment is a deterrent, rewards are an incentive.”

The editors urge Americans to be “cleareyed” about what Trump is actually doing: “taking their money and showering it on criminals.”

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trump-domestic-violence-authoritarian

5 26 nyt op ed

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05/01/2026 RWW

by

Kyle Mantyla

President Donald Trump dismissed the idea of seeking congressional approval for his Iran war as “totally unconstitutional” on Friday, calling those asking for it unpatriotic.

The president lashed out at the newspaper after it published a scathing op-ed on Thursday, criticizing the U.S. military's readiness for the war in Iran.

HUFFPO NO LNX

President Donald Trump went on a lengthy tirade against The New York Times on Thursday, accusing the newspaper of being “seditious” after its editorial board published a piece titled “The U.S. Military Was Losing Its Edge. After Iran, Everyone Knows It.”

During his rant, Trump continued to insist that Iranian forces had been “militarily decapitated” before accusing both the Times and CNN of reporting that Iran was winning the war.

“...And yet I read in The New York Times, I see it on that stupid CNN, which I only watch because you have to watch a little bit of the enemy,” Trump said. “So I watch it for a very short period. But you have to, you know, you have to be smart. And if you see CNN, you’d think they’re winning the war. If you read The New York Times, it’s actually seditious in my opinion. You read The New York Times, you actually think they’re winning the war.”

It’s unclear which specific CNN report the president was referencing. As for the Times piece, it, among other things, argued that Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz was the linchpin in the conflict thus far, and that the United States’ trillion-dollar military was “ineffective against cheaper, mass-produced weapons,” such as Iran’s vast drone supply.

“But the problem is bigger than any single commander-in-chief. The United States has left itself unprepared for modern war,” the Times wrote.

What the NYT didn’t do in its article was “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” which is how seditious conspiracy is defined under 18 U.S. Code § 2384.

The last people convicted of seditious conspiracy in the U.S. were leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who stormed the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Trump pardoned all those convicted in connection with the insurrection on his first day back in office.

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AN 5 26

Chief Justice John Roberts made a rare public appearance last year to defend his Supreme Court colleagues from criticism that they were overturning decades-old precedent, according to CNN reporter John Fritze.

Roberts has sought to rebut accusations that the court is partisan, pointing to its record since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. However, Fritze examined Roberts' claims against the court's actions.

The court has overruled Humphrey's Executor, which protected federal employees from being fired by the president without cause; aspects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which addressed discriminatory gerrymandering; and Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which empowered federal agencies to interpret vague laws. The court also appears poised to overturn Employment Division v. Smith, which held that the First Amendment does not protect people engaged in illegal acts as part of religious activity.

Roberts stated that the court has not explicitly overturned more than two precedents per year. Fritze noted this is accurate when using a narrow definition of "overturning precedents."

"Those numbers don't account for instances in which the court has significantly departed from a precedent without explicitly overruling it," Fritze wrote. "In recent years, the conservative majority has also moved away from precedents involving religious freedom."

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie offered a broader critique of the court's direction. Bouie stated that the court is "acting as a super legislature: an unelected group of people who have taken it upon themselves to revise Congress's work."

Bouie pointed to the court's decisions on Reconstruction amendments, presidential power, corporate speech, and campaign finance as evidence of a consistent direction in prioritizing particular outcomes over textual analysis.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjuD0nACraM

It's Not Both Sides. It Never Was.

Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie

74.3K subscribers

April 22, 2026.

Around 2012, two veteran Washington analysts — Thomas Mann of Brookings and Norman Ornstein of AEI — published a book arguing that American political dysfunction wasn't a "both sides" problem.

They argued that the Republican Party, had veered hard to the right, abandoned norms of fair play, and embraced a winner-take-all politics aimed at delegitimizing the opposition. Washington largely ignored them. More than a decade later, their diagnosis looks not just correct but understated.

Democrats have moved left on economics and culture — that's real — but they remain committed to elections, democratic norms, and governing for the whole country. The Republican Party, meanwhile, has gone completely off the rails, exemplified by the rise of Donald Trump.

To frame the core problems in American politics as a question of "both sides" is a failure of basic observation. One party is trying to preserve American democracy. The other isn't.

...

If you want more of my work you can read me over at the New York Times or subscribe to my podcast Unclear and Present Danger on the political and military thrillers of the 1990s.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/jamelle-bouie

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

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an edit bd 4 26

The press has actually been pretty skeptical about the Iran war. There's some egregious cheerleading from people like New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and other neoconservative hacks, but it's nothing like with the Iraq War. I don't think the press would just shrug and go along with it if Trump declares victory.

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AN 3 26

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie says White House advisor Stephen Miller is cruising to create “subordinate class” by ending public education funding for undocumented children in red states. But this is about more than keeping some kids less learned than others.

Miller spirited Texas lawmakers away to a closed-door meeting in Washington last week, according to two sources in the meeting, where he commenced to challenge a decades-old U.S. Supreme Court precedent. That case, Plyler v. Doe, holds that it was a violation of the equal protection clause for states to deny undocumented children the same free public education state leaders provide to legal immigrants’ children — who are themselves citizens.

According to the Times, Miller wants to take advantage of partisan gridlock in Congress to encourage state lawmakers to pass the attacks on Plyler. But why is Miller so determined to “whittle down the 14th Amendment to essentially nothing,” asked Bouie.

In Bouie’s argument the 14th Amendment is “tied directly to the 13th.”

“The 13th Amendment states that ‘Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.’ It then adds, in section 2, that ‘Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.’”

But the 13th Amendment was about more than just slavery, said Bouie. To the authors, it was “the foundation for the society they hoped to build” by outlawing “hereditary caste as much as” the end of chattel slavery.” Immediately after ratifying it, anti-slavery forces in Congress used it as an open door to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established birthright citizenship and nullified the “Black Codes.”

The racist Supreme Court at the time neutered much of that good intent “as part of a larger political project to reconcile the white citizens of the United States” and give the white South the power to manage its own ‘affairs,’ and impose “imperial domination,” Bouie argued.

“Both Miller and the MAGA right are engaged in the same kind of work as their political forebears,” added Bouie. “It is no wonder, then, that they want to gut the 14th Amendment, which was revitalized by the struggles of Black Americans and other groups throughout the 20th century. Theirs is a project of subordination at home and abroad; of the re-inscription of caste and the recreation of tiered citizenship based on race and nationality. And now, as then, the 14th Amendment stands in the way.”

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gmail 3 26 HEATED

Fossil fuel propaganda is evolving

A new analysis of nearly 2,000 fossil fuel ads finds Big Oil has moved from green promises to insisting oil and gas are inevitable. (They're not).

A side effect of the war in Iran is that fossil fuels are falling out of favor. People are starting to realize that sunlight can’t get stuck in the Strait of Hormuz; that EVs can’t have their fuel supply held hostage on a tanker; and that there’s no such thing as a barrel of wind.

It’s probably no coincidence, then, that Big Oil is working overtime to polish its reputation as prices surge and black clouds of poison fill Tehran’s skies. Take this ad from the American Petroleum Institute that aired last week on The New York Times podcast The Daily, during an interview with climate writer and activist Rebecca Solnit.

@ayanaeliza

[

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on Instagram: "A++ greenwashing for…

“Today, America’s natural gas and oil keeps the country moving, growing and building, and makes every day a little easier,” the ad’s narrator says. “But energy demand is growing, and the infrastructure built today will help secure a more affordable, reliable future, with enough energy to go around.”

It’s strange, given the current geopolitical situation, hearing the oil industry tell us that the only way we’re going to have an affordable, safe, and consistent future is to continue to invest in fossil fuels (reminder: even “American” oil is still priced on a volatile global market).

But this type of messaging is not just limited to this political moment, or toThe Daily.A new report from the advocacy group Clean Creatives reveals that the oil industry has systematically reshaped its advertising over the past four years to portray fossil fuels as permanent, indispensable, and necessary for economic stability and national security.

Put another way, fossil fuel companies are no longer trying to convince us they are good-faith partners in the fight to preserve a safe and stable climate.

Now, they are focused on convincing us that the world is only safe and stable if they are in charge.

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an 2 26

Back in 1982, the Federalist Society was founded with the goal of pushing U.S. courts to the right. And their efforts have been successful: Although Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the United States' last nine presidential elections, six of the U.S. Supreme Court's justices are GOP appointees. Three of them — Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — were championed by the Federalist Society and appointed by Donald Trump during his first presidency.

Not all of the conservatives who have been active in the Federalist Society over the years, however, are pro-MAGA. Attorney George Conway and retired Judge J. Michael Luttig are on the right but very much in the Never Trump camp.

Meanwhile, the American Constitution Society (ACS), founded at Georgetown University in Washington, DC in 2001, was modeled after the Federalist Society, but with the goal of moving the U.S. courts in a more liberal/progressive direction.

In an op-ed/essay published by the New York Times on February 16, legal expert Jeffrey Toobin stresses that the "new leadership" at ACS has "a new goal: to expand the use of the courts to oppose President Trump's agenda."

New ACS President Phil Brest, Toobin notes, helped former President Joe Biden "nominate and win confirmation of 235 federal judges."

"Those judges — and others appointed by Democratic presidents — have proved that the most effective resistance to Mr. Trump has come not from Democratic politicians, but rather, from federal judges," Toobin explains. "In the last several weeks alone, these judges, many of them Biden appointees, have ordered the release from immigration custody of five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father and their return to their home in Minnesota; blocked the Trump Administration from ending temporary protections from deportation that had been granted to thousands of Ethiopians living in the United States; and directed the Trump Administration to allow members of Congress to make unannounced visits to ICE detention facilities."

Toobin adds, "According to a Times analysis of federal appeals court rulings in 2025, judges nominated by Mr. Biden ruled in support of Mr. Trump’s policies 25 percent of the time, while those appointed by Mr. Trump supported him 92 percent of the time.

Toobin notes that when the Federalist Society was created in 1982, the "liberalism of the Warren Court era still influenced the Supreme Court." Chief Justice Earl Warren was a Republican nominee of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, yet many decisions applauded by liberal and progressives — from New York Times v. Sullivan to Griswold v. Connecticut to Stanley v. Georgia — came from the Warren Court.

In 2026, Toobin argues, Democrats need to understand what worked for the Federalist Society and use their methods to move the federal courts to the left.

"The members of the Federalist Society took the risk that Democratic legal thinkers have so far avoided," Toobin observes. "Though the Federalist Society does not as a group take formal positions on issues, the Federalists gave a platform for their clear agenda and absorbed the criticism that came with it. But when they won elections and thus seats on the Supreme Court, they knew what they wanted to do and why, and they changed the face of American law. Democrats can do the same, but first they have to try."

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an 2 26

Trump deletes Obama video after 'Republican lawmakers called him directly': CNN sources

New York Times slammed for 'providing cover' to Trump over racist Obama ape video

The New York Times is being destroyed over a since-deleted excerpt in its report on President Donald Trump sharing racist imagery online.

Trump shared an AI video spreading conspiracies about voter fraud that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys, a trope often used refer to Black Americans in a disparaging context.

The Times report included the passage: "It was unclear if Mr. Trump was aware that the clip had been included in the video before he shared it. It was unclear how the clip was made, although it appeared to have been generated by A.I. The clip appeared to have been taken from a video that was shared in October by a user on X whose watermark is shown with the caption 'President Trump: King of the Jungle,' and an emoji of a lion."

The beginning of that paragraph has since been removed by The Times, but not before activist Oliver Willis copied it and posted the initial screenshot online.

"The New York Times has finally covered the Trump video of Obama as an ape — and they are still providing cover for him. F—— the Times," Willis added as a comment.

Long-time attorney Max Kennerly wrote, "Love how the presumption here is that the President doesn't know what he's sharing and that's fine and normal. Sorry, no, if the President doesn't know what he's sending out, then that is indisputable proof of gross incompetence, cognitive unfitness, or both."

White House delivers jaw-dropping excuse for Trump’s racist AI Obama post

'Most racist thing I’ve seen': Even GOP’s Tim Scott is calling out Trump’s AI Obama post

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AN 1 26 2026

Trump fires off post accusing Fox News of 'criminal offense' over plummeting poll numbers

Donald Trump on Monday renewed his attack on polling operations as his approval ratings continue to plummet, this time even roping in conservative stalwarts like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

Throughout his second term, the president has consistently argued that stories and poll results that paint him in an overtly negative light are "fake." While this has been a common tactic over the course of his entire political career, more recently, he has started claiming that these stories and polls should be criminal acts, a move that would violate the Constitution's protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

In his Truth Social post from Monday, he reiterated these assertions and argued that his false claim that he won the 2020 election proves the current polling wrong.

"Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense," Trump's post read. "As an example, all of the Anti Trump Media that covered me during the 2020 Election showed Polls that were knowingly wrong. They knew what they were doing, trying to influence the Election, but I won in a Landslide, including winning the Popular Vote, all 7 of the 7 Swing States, the Electoral College was a route [sic], and 2,750 Counties to 525."

He continued: "You can’t do much better than that, and yet if people examined The Failing New York Times, ABC Fake News, NBC Fake News, CBS Fake News, Low Ratings CNN, or the now defunct MSDNC, Polls were all fraudulent, and bore nothing even close to the final results. Something has to be done about Fraudulent Polling. Even the Polls of FoxNews and The Wall Street Journal have been, over the years, terrible! There are great Pollsters that called the Election right, but the Media does not want to use them in any way, shape, or form. Isn’t it sad what has happened to American Journalism, but I am going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!"

Despite Trump's claim in the post, the left-leaning news network MSNBC is not defunct, but recently rebranded as MS NOW.

While conservative outlets like Fox News have generally been known to publish more flattering polls of Trump, his sagging popularity has proven too much for these polls to overcome. In November, a survey from the network found the president's approval was at its lowest point on record.

Trump's latest round of grievance over negative polling appears to have been brought on by the most recent poll from the New York Times and Sienna College, which found that approval rating was down to 40 percent, a three-point drop since their last poll. It also found that over two-thirds of respondents felt the country was not better off than it was a year ago, while a little over half said that Trump's policies were actively making life less affordable, the latter representing the biggest issue on voters' minds heading into the 2026 midterms.

Lashing out against the results, Trump added the poll to his defamation lawsuit against the Times. In September, a judge tossed out the original suit for being too long and taking too many pages to get to its actual allegations, accusing the administration of using the filing as a platform lob more abusive language at the paper. Trump's legal team refiled the following month.

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January 6: One year later, Americans still view the Capitol takeover with dismay | YouGov

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nyt

Trump Still Pushing Conspiracies

False Narrative Posted

A Day of Rage

Presidential Rally Turned Rampage

Pardoned Rioters Rally

White House Posts False Jan. 6 Narrative on Riot’s 5th Anniversary

A new web page on the official White House site blames the Capitol Police and Democrats for the pro-Trump mob riot, absolving the president of responsibility and calling participants “innocent.”

Rioters enter the capitol building in riot gear.

Rioters walking through the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Luke BroadwaterAlan Feuer

By Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer

Luke Broadwater is a White House reporter who helped cover the Jan. 6 riot. Alan Feuer has reported on the hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the riot.

Jan. 6, 2026

On the fifth anniversary of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, the Trump administration created a new page on the official White House website that represented the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility.

The site blames Capitol Police officers, who defended lawmakers that day, for starting the assault; Democrats, who were the rioters’ main targets, for failing to prevent it; and former Vice President Mike Pence, who rejected falsehoods about the 2020 election, for allowing the results to be certified.

Mr. Trump has long sought to whitewash the violence and vandalism committed on Jan. 6, 2021, and reject responsibility for having instigated it. But the webpage, promoted on government social media accounts, put the official imprimatur of the White House on an astonishingly misleading account of the Capitol attack.

In one section, the webpage mentions several members of the pro-Trump mob who died during or in connection with the assault, identifying them by name. But it excises altogether any reference to the nearly 140 police officers who were injured when they were assaulted that day with weapons that included bear spray, stun guns, hockey sticks, fireworks, broken pieces of furniture and at least one flagpole flying the American flag. Nor does the page mention any of the officers who died in its aftermath. In fact, at one point, the timeline asserts: “Zero law enforcement officers lost their lives.”

Image

Demonstrators and police officers both pull at a guard rail. People in the background are waving Trump and American flags.

The violent rampage that unfolded over nearly five hours on that day caused injuries to roughly 140 police officers and left five people dead.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

Image

A door with its windows damaged. Rioters are gathered on the other side.

The attackers used a wide variety of weapons: bear spray, stun guns, hockey sticks, fireworks, broken pieces of furniture and even a flagpole holding a U.S. flag.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

The webpage includes a timeline of events on Jan. 6 that accuses the Capitol Police, who were attacked by the rioters for hours, of instigating the violence, and blames Mr. Pence for refusing to subvert the will of the voters to keep Mr. Trump in power.

“Vice President Mike Pence, who had the opportunity to return disputed electoral slates to state legislatures for review and decertification under the United States Constitution, chooses not to exercise that power in an act of cowardice and sabotage,” the webpage states.

“Stolen Election Certified,” another section says.

In a breathtaking reversal of reality, the site accuses Democrats of creating a “gaslighting narrative” about Jan. 6 in their efforts to certify “a fraud-ridden election” and to “persecute innocent Americans,” though those who were prosecuted for storming the Capitol were caught on video taken either by surveillance cameras or by other participants.

Instead, it is the White House account that twists the facts of the riot.

The timeline asserts, for example, that Mr. Trump invited his followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6 for “a peaceful and historic protest” over the 2020 election. It fails to mention that he also tweeted, “Be there, will be wild!” — a presidential imperative that, within hours of its posting, prompted scores of his supporters to issue calls for violence, even to post online images of the weapons, including assault rifles, that they said they planned to bring to the rally.

Image

President Donald J. Trump speaking to a crowd. The White House is behind him.

President Trump spoke at a rally in the Ellipse on the morning of the riot. Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Image

A man with his face masked with a U.S. flag and holding a pole with a flag, stands by the Capitol as others clamber up one of its walls.

The riot began after those at the rally streamed from the Ellipse to the Capitol. The violent attack lasted for hours. Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

The White House’s timeline also fails to take note of how far-right extremist groups, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia, reacted to Mr. Trump’s summons: quickly setting up encrypted communications channels, acquiring protective gear and, in one instance, preparing heavily armed “quick reaction forces” to be staged outside Washington. Many later took the lead in attacking officers and breaching police security lines.

A separate section of the timeline, beginning at 1:10 p.m., asserts that the Capitol Police “aggressively” fired tear gas and other crowd control munitions at the crowd, suggesting falsely that the authorities had acted without cause and saying they “turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos.” But that account leaves out entirely what happened in the minutes leading up to the police response.

Shortly before 1 p.m. that day, a small group of pro-Trump protesters confronted and attacked police officers at metal barricades set up at an area outside the Capitol known as the Peace Circle. Once the barricades fell, thousands of protesters trampled over them and were able to gain access to a plaza where they massed, greatly outnumbering the police officers defending the building.

The webpage also contains blatant falsehoods about the Justice Department’s efforts to hold the rioters accountable. In a section the timeline titled, “Mass Arrests of Patriotic Protesters,” it says that the “Biden DOJ” began “a coordinated nationwide dragnet” leading to the arrest of more than 1,500 rioters.

In fact, the arrests began well before Mr. Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, and the investigation was carried out for weeks by Justice Department leaders that he had put in place.

Moreover, the webpage claims that hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants were held as “political prisoners for years” and were given “lengthy sentences.” In reality, far fewer rioters were held in pretrial detention than in cases brought against drug or immigration violation defendants, and the median sentence for the rioters was about 60 days in prison.

Mr. Trump, in one of the first official acts of his second term, issued a sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged.

Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.

See more on: Donald Trump, United States Capitol Police

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an 12 25

President Donald Trump continues to suffer low approval ratings in poll after poll. An NPR/PBS/Marist poll released in late December, for example, finds his approval at only 36 percent.

Nonetheless, Trump is still popular among his hardcore MAGA base, which views him as someone who isn't afraid to tackle elites on his behalf. But in an in-depth opinion column/essay published on December 23, the New York Times' Thomas B. Edsall lays out some reasons why Trump's policies will hurt his MAGA base more than anyone.

"The Trump Administration (has) adopted policies condemning a sizable group of its core MAGA supporters — miners, firemen, manufacturing workers — to slow deaths from diseases that cut off their ability to breathe," Edsall explains. "President Trump’s attacks on the regulation of toxic chemicals in the air and water, on strong vaccination policies, on rules restricting power plant pollution are part and parcel of what amounts to a killing spree cloaked as deregulation."

Trump's "deregulation policies," Edsall warns, will lead to "rising numbers of preventable deaths in the United States from increased rates of respiratory disease, illnesses of the unvaccinated and elevated exposure to toxic chemicals and lethal pollutants emanating from coal-powered plants."

According to Harvard University economics professor David M. Cutler, Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 "will lead to less insurance coverage and consequently health losses."

Cutler told Edsall, "The most recent estimates are 10 million uninsured. The (Affordable Care Act) subsidies, if not extended, are projected to reduce insurance coverage by another four million."

Harvard professor Benjamin Sommers, who focuses on health care economics, told Edsall, "The Trump Administration is aggressively rolling back decades of progress in expanding health insurance and improving prevention through vaccination, which will lead to financial strain, barriers to care, and preventable deaths for many Americans."

According to the Times, the Trump Administration's MAHA (Make American Healthy Again) agenda is a "pipe dream" that will only cause major suffering among MAGA voters.

"One thing stands out in Trump's loosening of regulations of toxic chemicals, his anti-vaccination policies and his health care cuts," Edsall laments. "He is inflicting a disproportionate share of the worst kind of harms on the families of the men and women who love him the most: white working-class voters, especially those living in the industrial Midwest and Appalachia."

*Thomas B. Edsall's full column/essay for The New York Times is available at this link (subscription required).

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an 12 25

NYT slammed after giving Erika Kirk a platform for 'anti-feminist grift'

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an 10 25

Using case studies from dead democracies, theNew York Timeseditorial board compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied the collapse of democracies. According to the board, under President Donald Trump the United States is staggeringly similar to such cases.

First, a modern authoritarian stifles dissent and speech. Like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump and his allies have pressured television stations to stop airing comedians who hurt his feelings. He has also revoked the visas of foreign students for sharing their views on the genocide in Gaza and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups.

Second, autocrats use the power of law enforcement to investigate and imprison people who oppose them, similar to how Trump has ordered his Justice Department to target people who have made him angry with “dubious” accusations, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former F.B.I. Director James Comey. And Trump has also ordered investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), among others.

Third, a modern autocrat finds ways to neuter their nation’s legislature, similar to the way Trump commands a legion of lockstep allies in the modern Republican Party, who rubber stamp his every decision.

Number 4, according to the Times, is an autocrat’s need to use the military to control opposition in dissent. Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles, over the outcry of local leaders, and he has made similar attempts in Portland, Ore. and Chicago.

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Likewise, the Editorial Board draws similarities to Trump’s defiance of national courts and his penchant for declaring national emergencies to a push his agenda. Like despots elsewhere, Trump has “vilified transgender Americans and barred them from military service,” said the Board. “He has fired women and people of color from leadership posts and ended programs that promote workplace diversity.”

He has also labored to erase Black history by removing books on slavery and segregation from military libraries and pressuring Smithsonian museums to minimize those subjects.

“At the same time, he has suggested that white people and Christians are victims, which echoes the autocratic habit of claiming that majority groups are in fact oppressed,” said the Board.

Also, like a despot, Trump rails against accurate information to guide decision-making, and he works to suppress inconvenient truths. He has already fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for truthfully reporting disappointing job growth, and he has shut down federal data collection efforts related to climate change.

Throw that in with No. 9: An authoritarian’s predictable effort to take over universities and suppress dissident scholars, which Trump has also begun to do by cutting millions of dollars in school grants and attempting to dictate hiring methods and school policies.

Nos. 10, 11, and 12 involve an authoritarian’s cult of personality; his effort to use government levers to personally enrich himself and his family; and his unending crusade to manipulate law to stay in power.

“Authoritarians change election rules to help their party, and they rewrite laws — or violate their spirit — to ignore term limits,” writes the Board, and although Trump’s biggest attempt to follow this playbook failed when he was “unable to undo his election defeat” in 2020, the Board says “he has shown worrisome signs of using his power to entrench the Republican Party’s hold on the government” through gerrymandering extremes and an executive order to interfere with state elections.

“These moves increase the chances that Republicans will keep control of Congress even if most voters want to oust them,” the Board writes, creating a one-party government similar to the single-party misery of the U.S.S.R, which eventually led to Putin.

“The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse,” the Board said.

Read the New York Times report at this link.

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an 9 25

On September 1 in the Caribbean, U.S. Navy forces attacked, on orders from President Donald Trump, a Venezuelan boat he alleges was operated by members of the dangerous Tren de Aragua gang and contained drugs that were headed for the United States. The boat was in international waters, and everyone on board was killed.

The Trump administration continues to aggressively defend that attack and subsequent attacks on boats carried out September 15-19.

But the New York Times' editorial board, in a scathing editorial published on September 24, stresses that Trump acted without concrete proof that people on those boats were smuggling drugs.

"Somewhere mingled in the foam and debris of the Caribbean Sea are the remains of at least 17 people who were killed this month by U.S. military forces on the orders of President Trump," the Times editorial board writes. "They were aboard three speedboats that the Trump Administration said were carrying drugs and smugglers from Venezuela. Perhaps they were. Yet the administration has produced no evidence for its claims. And even if the allegations are correct, blowing up the boats is a lawless exercise in the use of deadly force."

Trump, the Times editorial board notes, "assured the public that the passengers were not only drug traffickers, but also, 'narcoterrorists' and members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, which he said was under the control of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela."

"The self-defense justification looks especially weak after The Times reported that the first of the three boats turned away from the United States before being destroyed," the board warns. "With these attacks, Mr. Trump has ordered the summary execution of people who are not at war with the United States in any traditional sense of the term and who may not even have been committing the crime of which he accused them. It is a violation of legal due process that should alarm all Americans. It is even more extreme than his policy of sending migrants to a brutal prison in El Salvador, based on questionable claims that they belonged to Tren de Aragua and without any chance to contest the government's claims."

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The Times board continues, "The United States, created in opposition to monarchy, should never become a country where the president can order the indefinite imprisonment or the unilateral killing of people merely because he has deemed them to be criminals."

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uae chips deal?! LOOMER?!

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an 9 25

Far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist and self-described "proud Islamophobe" Laura Loomer was critical of Charlie Kirk near the end of his life. As Loomer saw it, the Turning Point USA founder wasn't pro-Donald Trump enough — even though Kirk was, in fact, an ardent Trump supporter.

In a July 13, 2025 post on X, formerly Twitter, Loomer wrote, "I don't ever want to hear @charliekirk11 claim he is pro-Trump ever again. After this weekend, I'd say he has revealed himself as political opportunist and I have had a front row seat to witness the mental gymnastics these last 10 years. Lately, Charlie has decided to behave like a charlatan, claiming to be pro-Trump one day while he stabs Trump in the back the next."

But after his fatal shooting, Loomer called for the imprisonment of anyone who criticizes Kirk — a proposal that former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan is calling out as "fascism."

READ MORE:'Didn't work for you': CNN analyst confronts Trump's favorite pundit on political violence

In a September 13 post on X, Loomer wrote, "I have to say, I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is, and I want the right to be as devoted to locking up and silencing our violent political enemies as they say we are. I've had enough of the Left only thinking we will defund them, prosecute them, lock them up and dismantle their power for generations to come. It just needs to happen."

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Hasan gave a forceful response to that post on September 17, tweeting, "If this isn't a call for open, violent, unadulterated fascism and authoritarianism, from a top adviser to the president, then what is it? Seriously, what the hell is it?"

Hasan isn't the only one on X who is sounding the alarm about Loomer calling for Trump to act like a "dictator."

Journalist Bastian Brauns posted, "It's already well past 10 after 12. 'I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is.' This is written by Laura Loomer, the woman who is allowed to personally whisper to Trump which 'traitors' he should fire from the government next."

READ MORE: 'I'm the one asking the questions': CNN host cuts off Ted Cruz after he shouts over her

Iowa-based writer Raymond Baker tweeted, "You know @LauraLoomer has never studied history nor does she understand what drives men like Stalin, Putin, Kim Jong II, Pol Pot, or Donald Trump. Authoritarian dictators are cruel and once they assume power, they no longer want or need supporters like Loomer."

Activist William Richards wrote, "Laura Loomer wants Trump to be a dictator? She wants to lock up the Left because she believes they are all violent. Mirror politics & projection is what Laura is up to! It's easily demonstrated that the Right are the purveyors of violence in our Country, not the Left.

READ MORE:'Undisputed idiot king': Former NBC journalist calls Eric Trump 'the epitome of stupidity'

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AN 9 25

To many of President Donald Trump's hardcore MAGA supporters, his second presidency is bringing about a variety of reforms at a rapid pace — from downsizing federal government agencies to carrying out mass deportations. But Trump's opponents on both the left and the right counter that his policies are inflicting considerable damage on the United States in a wide variety of areas, including the economy, health care, civil liberties, and national security.

One of those opponents is New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall.

In his September 9 column, Edsall draws a distinction between "damage" that is permanent and "damage" that can be fixed.

READ MORE:'Come over here weenie': Video shows GOP congressman taunting protester before altercation

"As President Trump continues his march through America's democratic institutions," Edsall warns, "trampling constitutional restraints and silencing dissent, one of the most pressing questions is: What damage is beyond repair, and what can still be undone?"

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To answer that question, Edsall interviewed political experts ranging from New York University law professor Sam Issacharoff to the Brookings Institution's William Galston.

Issacharoff told Edsall, "The dismissal of career experts, the dismantling of long horizon science projects are examples of what cannot be recreated. What happens if tensions resurface between North and South Korea or between India and Pakistan? Who guides policy if the state and defense departments lose their experts? This is something where the next administration cannot simply reopen the spigot and recreate. Expertise is long to create and fast to destroy."

Galston believes that Trump has inflicted "irreparable" damage on everything from international relations to science.

READ MORE:This could end the galling stupidity that keeps Trump in power

"Most of what's irreparable has occurred in programs and policies that affect our relations with the rest of the world," Galston told Edsall. "Trump has upended the system of multilateral trade relations that the United States created and sustained after World War II, and there's no going back. Most serious of all, Trump has destroyed the trust the United States built up over decades as the guarantor of European security, of support for democracy and human rights, and provider of global public goods such as freedom of the seas…. There has been some irreparable damage on the home front as well."

Galston continued, "The most serious, in my judgment — the destruction of America's reputation as the best place in the world for the most promising scientists and innovators of various kinds to conduct research. The evisceration of funding for basic research will be hard to reverse without restoring some bipartisan agreement about the importance of knowledge and expertise. I'm not holding my breath."

Trump insists that his administration's downsizing of federal government agencies is targeting "waste, fraud and abuse," but Max Stier — chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service — counters that Trump's policies are depriving the federal government of a considerable amount of expertise.

The federal government, Stier noted, has lost "200,000 civil servants with an expected 100,000 more by end of year."

Stier told Edsall, "We have been deprived of both the most experienced public servants and the next generation we so desperately need. The harm to our nation is incalculable…. At least as damaging, they have made clear through mass firings that federal employees risk losing their jobs for speaking truth and for choosing the law or constitution over an order from a political appointee."

According to Edsall, Brookings' Robert E. Litman was even more "pessimistic" than the other interviewees.

Litman told Edsall, "By the end of Trump's term…. even if he dies and (Vice President JD) Vance takes over, there will be nothing left of the America we knew four years before. All institutions, norms, government — you name it, all of it gone. The political-societal equivalent of a neutron bomb. It will take far more than the next four years, if Democrats get a chance, to rebuild it."

READ MORE: 'Disturbing': Top Dem says new Trump-Epstein photo 'more incriminating' than birthday book

*Thomas Edsall's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).

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nyt attacked for gaza pix 8 25

Media Matters

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SEE TRAITOR BS 7 25

NY Times reported John Durham found the “Clinton Plan” emails were likely created by Russian spies. Right-wing media are running with them as legitimate.

Figures have suggested Clinton should be “behind bars,” argued the debunked scandal will “make Watergate look like a jaywalking ticket,” and likened it to a “soft coup attempt” and “treason”

Written by Noah Dowe, Pete Tsipis & Lis Power

:{Published 08/01/25

The right-wing media ecosystem has exploded with false claims about a newly-declassified annex to special counsel John Durham’s report on Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 campaign. Right-wing media are claiming that the annex provides evidence of a “plot” by the Clinton campaign to undermine then-candidate Donald Trump. However, the newly-declassified assessment found that the documents in question were “not credible” and “likely made by Russian spies.”

Conservative media figures have ignored this assessment, instead calling for Hillary Clinton to be put “behind bars” for coordinating a “soft coup attempt.” And although they previously heralded Durham’s efforts, some in right-wing media are now arguing he “failed the American people.”

Citation

Fox News

Citation

Fox Business

Citation

Fox News

//

  1. ### Fox News has mentioned Obama over 3 times more than Epstein since Tulsi Gabbard released her report

07/23/25 4:07 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News since Monday: 85 minutes talking about Sydney Sweeney, 3 minutes talking about Epstein

07/31/25 2:12 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News has aired 168 segments about Tulsi Gabbard's revisionist claims regarding Russia, Obama, and the 2016 election

07/30/25

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FAIL? JRNL?

AN 7 25

The New York Times on Thursday published a story questioning New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's past statements about his racial background based on a tip it received from a proponent of "race science."

The Times piece in question focused on Mamdani's college application to Columbia University in which he listed both "Asian" and "Black or African American" as his race.

Although both of Mamdani's parents are of Indian descent, he was born in the African country of Uganda and lived there for the first five years of his life. Mamdani told the Times that he checked the box on the application for "Black or African American" because he considers himself an American who was born in Africa. He emphasized that he does not identify as Black and argued that he found it difficult to express the complexity of his racial background given the options on the application.

However, what is stirring controversy about the Times piece isn't so much its content but the source of its information. The Times acknowledges that the information on Mamdani was culled from a large hack of a Columbia database and that it received a copy of Mamdani's application from "an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux on Substack and X," whom it describes as "an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race."

A report from The Guardian's Jason Wilson published earlier this year shows that the Times is vastly underselling its source's extreme views on race. As Wilson documented, the "Crémieux" cited by the Times is a man named Jordan Lasker, whose writings regularly defend the work of "race scientists" who use I.Q. test results to argue that Black people are mentally inferior to other races.

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"Crémieux runs a Substack also featuring posts on the supposed relationships between race and I.Q.," Wilson explained. "A prominently featured post there seeks to defend the argument that average national IQs vary by up to 40 points, with countries in Europe, North America, and East Asia at the high end and countries in the global south at the low end, and several African countries purportedly having average national IQs at a level that experts associate with mental impairment."

Another report from Talking Points Memo's Hunter Walker found that Lasker has regularly posted about a racial "I.Q. gap" and has even suggested that there are "genetic pathways of crime." On his X account, Lasker has mused about the differences in brain sizes between Black and white Americans and between women and men more generally.

Brandon McEuen, a historian at Wayne State University who specializes in teaching about the history of the eugenics movement, slammed the Times for not only relying on Lasker as its source for the story on Mamdani but also for granting him anonymity.

"The decision to keep Lasker anonymous is ridiculous since his name has already been published in other outlets that don't provide softballs for eugenicists," he wrote on his Bluesky account.

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an 6 25

'No apology will be forthcoming': New York Times smacks down Trump's demand for retraction

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aha // commie just all purpose devil term?

an 5 25

new York Times bestselling author George Saunders knows President Donald Trump can probably fire the librarian of Congress, but says the move gave him "a visceral feeling for just how diseased this administration really is."

Librarian Dr. Carla Hayden, the first Black woman to hold the position, is energetic, engaged and “utterly dedicated to the work of the library,” Saunders wrote in the Times.

READ MORE: Top Senate Republican issues Trump an ultimatum

But the White House tossed out “nonsense from its meager box of repetitive right-wing auto-defenses” when it claimed Hayden had, “in the pursuit of D.E.I.,” done “quite concerning things.”

“Did it name those things? It did not. It couldn’t have,” Saunders argues. “Putting aside the basic idiocy of being against that position (“What, you value diversity? You think things should be equitable? And that all should be included?”), members of the administration now use ‘D.E.I.’ as a sort of omni-pejorative, deliberately (strategically) leaving its exact meaning vague.”

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“What it seems to mean, to them, is: The accused is a person who is aware that certain groups have had a different experience of American life and who feels that it is part of our intellectual responsibility (and joy) to engage with that history, so as to improve our democracy,” Saunders said.

The White House also claimed with “sickening” inaccuracy that Hayden put “inappropriate books in the library for children,” when the librarian of Congress “doesn’t put books” into the library at all.

READ MORE:'Embarrassment:' Trump admin asks judge to hide it's tactics for mass layoffs

“When a ship is sinking,” writes Saunders, “there’s value in knowing how fast, and calling it out. When a country is self-sabotaging, ditto. So let me just say it: Shame on the White House. Shame on those who should be stopping this slide into autocracy and aren’t. (I’m looking at you, John Thune, Mike Johnson and Marco Rubio.) Shame on all of us if we let these ignorant purveyors of cruelty reduce this beautiful thing we’ve built over these hundreds of years to a hollow, braying, anti-version of itself.”

Read the full New York Times essay here.

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AN 5 25

Donald Trump is now four months into his second presidency, and some of his critics are commenting that Joe Biden's presidency now seems like a lifetime ago.

Trump's cheerleaders in right-wing media are applauding his "record of achievement," claiming that he has accomplished a great deal in a short period of time. But the New York Times' Thomas B. Edsall has a very different view.

In his May 20 column, Edsall argues that some of the damage Trump has inflicted on the United States during the last four months will take years to repair.

READ MORE:'Priorities': Kristi Noem ripped for demanding new $50M jet while the Coast Guard struggles

"One thing stands out amid all the chaos, corruption and disorder: the wanton destructiveness of the Trump presidency," Edsall laments. "The targets of Trump's assaults include the law, higher education, medical research, ethical standards, America’s foreign alliances, free speech, the civil service, religion, the media and much more…. Some of the damage Trump has inflicted can be repaired by future administrations, but repairing relations with American allies, the restoration of lost government expertise and a return to productive research may take years — even with a new and determined president and Congress."

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Edsall adds, "Let’s look at just one target of the (Trump) Administration's vendetta: medical research. Trump's attacks include cancellation of thousands of grants, cuts in the share of grants going to universities and hospitals; and proposed cuts of 40 percent or more in the budgets of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Science Foundation."

Several interviewees cited examples of long-lasting "damage" Trump is inflicting.

Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, a Never Trump conservative, told Edsall, "I even believe he is destroying the American presidency, though I would not say that is intentional and deliberate."

READ MORE:Busted: Fact-checker says Trump exaggerated certainty of prescription drug price cuts

Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz told Edsall, "The gutting of expertise and experience going on right now under the blatantly false pretext of eliminating fraud and waste is catastrophic and may never be completely repaired…. There is no precedent, not even close, unless you consider Jefferson Davis an American president. "

Andrew Rudalevige, a political scientist at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, told Edsall, "The damage caused to governmental expertise and simple competence could be long-lasting. Firing probationary workers en masse may reduce the government employment head count, slightly, but it also purged those most likely to bring the freshest view and most up-to-date skills to government service, while souring them on that service."

Mara Rudman of the University of Virginia's Miller Center told Edsall, "The most lasting impact of this term will be felt in the damage done to the reputation of the United States as a safe harbor where the rule of law is king, and where the Constitution is as sacred a national document as any country has developed. Through his utter disregard for the law, Trump has shown both how precious and how fragile are the rules that undergird our institutions, our economic and national security, and the foundation for our democracy."

READ MORE:'Exceedingly foolish': Inside the Trump Administration's plan to slash health care spending

*Thomas B. Edsall's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).

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note nicknames gossip tabloid rag celeb tiffs?

an 4 25

Following his appearance at the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, where he was called out in a homily, Donald Trump jumped onto Truth Social to lash out at the New York Times and, in particular, reporter Peter Baker.

In his long tirade, the president took extreme exception to a Saturday report by Baker about negotiations involving Ukraine where the status of Crimea has become a sticking point.

In his rant, the president accused Baker and the New York Times of having it all wrong and accused them of giving former President Barack Obama a pass on the annexation of Crimea by Russia.

ALSO READ:'Retribution or bust’: 'Secretary of Retribution' joins J6 leaders to demand mass arrests

As he wrote, "No matter what deal I make with respect to Russia/Ukraine, no matter how good it is, even if it’s the greatest deal ever made, The Failing New York Times will speak BADLY of it. Liddle’ Peter Baker, the very biased and untalented writer for The Times, followed his Editor’s demands and wrote that Ukraine should get back territory, including, I suppose, Crimea, and other ridiculous requests, in order to stop the killing that is worse than anything since World War II."

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He then added, "Why doesn’t this lightweight reporter say that it was Obama who made it possible for Russia to steal Crimea from Ukraine without even a shot being fired. It was also Liddle’ Peter who wrote an absolutely fawning, yet terribly written Biography, on Obama. It was a JOKE! Did Baker ever criticize the Obama Crimea Giveaway? NO, not once, only TRUMP, and I’ve had nothing to do with this stupid war, other than early on, when I gave Ukraine Javelins, and Obama gave them sheets."

"This is Sleepy Joe Biden’s War, not mine," he accused. "It was a loser from day one, and should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened if I were President at the time. I’m just trying to clean up the mess that was left to me by Obama and Biden, and what a mess it is. With all of that being said, there was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through 'Banking' or 'Secondary Sanctions?' Too many people are dying!!!"

You can see his post here.

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NO LNX

A Quarter-Billion Dollars for Defamation: Inside Greenpeace’s Huge Loss

A pipeline company’s lawsuit against the environmental group could chill free speech, experts said. First Amendment issues are likely to figure prominently in an appeal.

:

:{:{Greenpeace representatives outside the courthouse in Mandan, N.D., where the jury ruled against the environmental organization this month.}:

By Karen Zraick

Karen Zraick covered the trial from the courtroom in Mandan, N.D.

March 31, 2025

When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner.

The costly verdict has raised alarm among activist organizations as well as some First Amendment experts, who said the lawsuit and damage awards could deter free speech far beyond the environmental movement.

The verdict “will send a chill down the spine of any nonprofit who wants to get involved in any political protest,” said David D. Cole, a professor at Georgetown Law and former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “If you’re the Sierra Club, or the N.A.A.C.P., or the N.R.A., or an anti-abortion group, you’re going to be very worried.”

The lawsuit, filed by Energy Transfer in 2019, accused Greenpeace of masterminding an “unlawful and violent scheme” to harm the company’s finances, employees and infrastructure and to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace countered that it had promoted peaceful protest and had played only a minor role in the demonstrations, which were led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe over concerns about its ancestral land and water supply.

A key part of Energy Transfer’s case relied on defamation claims. For example, the jury found that Greenpeace defamed the company by saying it had “damaged at least 380 sacred and cultural sites” during pipeline work, the first of nine statements found defamatory.

Greenpeace called Energy Transfer’s lawsuit an attempt to muzzle the company’s critics. “This case should alarm everyone, no matter their political inclinations,” said Sushma Raman, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA. “We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment.”

Greenpeace has said it will appeal to the Supreme Court in North Dakota, the state where the trial was held. Free-speech issues are widely expected to figure prominently in that filing.

But Greenpeace was not the only party invoking the First Amendment.

Upon leaving the courtroom, the lead lawyer for Energy Transfer, Trey Cox of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, called the verdict “a powerful affirmation” of the First Amendment. “Peaceful protest is an inherent American right,” he said. “However, violent and destructive protest is unlawful and unacceptable.”

Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer, described the verdict as “a win for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law.”

The clashing comments shine a light on a central tension in the debate: Where do you draw the line between peaceful protest and unlawful activity?

“If people are engaged in non-expressive conduct, like vandalism, like impeding roadways such that cars and passers-by can’t use those roadways, the First Amendment is not going to protect that,” said JT Morris, a senior supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit that defends free speech across the ideological spectrum. “But peaceful protest, criticism of companies on matters of public concern, those are all protected.”

The verdict landed in the midst of a larger debate over the limits of free speech. President Trump has accused news outlets of defaming him, and he has been found liable for defamation himself. His administration has targeted law firms he perceives as enemies, as well as international students deemed too critical of Israel or of U.S. foreign policy. Conservatives have accused social media platforms of suppressing free speech and have vowed to stop what they call online censorship.

“There’s nothing in this particular political climate that’s shocking anymore,” said Jack Weinberg, who in the 1960s was a prominent free-speech activist and later worked for Greenpeace. (He’s also known for the phrase “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” although that’s not exactly how he said it.) “But it’s wrong,” he said of the verdict, “and it will have profound consequences.”

There has long been a high bar for defamation lawsuits in the United States.

The First Amendment protects free speech and the right to protest, and a landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision, New York Times v. Sullivan, strengthened those protections. To prevail in a defamation suit, a public figure must prove that the statement was false and was made with “actual malice,” meaning knowledge that the statement was false, or reckless disregard for its veracity.

Carl W. Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said that ruling intentionally raised the bar to win a defamation suit. “It’s extreme,” he said. “It’s meant to be.”

Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, pointed to the history of that famous case. It concerned a 1960 ad in The Times that described police actions against civil rights demonstrators in Alabama as “an unprecedented wave of terror.”

A police official sued the paper and won. But the Supreme Court overturned the verdict. The court ruled that protecting such speech was necessary, even if it contained errors, in order to ensure robust public debate.

In a Greenpeace appeal, Mr. Volokh said, the evidence demonstrating whether Greenpeace’s statements were true or false would be crucial in evaluating the verdict, as would the question of whether Greenpeace’s statements were constitutionally protected expressions of opinion.

Other issues that loom: What was permitted to be entered into evidence in the first place, and whether the instructions to the jury were sufficient. Then, he said, if the statements are found to be clearly false, is there enough evidence to show that Greenpeace engaged in “reckless falsehood, acts of so-called actual malice?”

Any award for defamation chills free speech, Mr. Volokh added, whether against Greenpeace or against the Infowars host Alex Jones, who was found liable for more than $1 billion over his false statements about the murder of children at the Sandy Hook school shooting.

In the Greenpeace case, the nine statements found by the jury to be defamatory referred to Energy Transfer and its subsidiary Dakota Access. One statement said that Dakota Access personnel had “deliberately desecrated burial grounds.” Another said that protesters had been met with “extreme violence, such as the use of water cannons, pepper spray, concussion grenades, Tasers, LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Devices) and dogs, from local and national law enforcement, and Energy Transfer partners and their private security.”

Thumbnail of page 11

Read all nine statements found defamatory by a jury

They’re listed on page 11 of the verdict.

Read Document Page 11 of 33

Other statements were more general: “For months, the Standing Rock Sioux have been resisting the construction of a pipeline through their tribal land and waters that would carry oil from North Dakota’s fracking fields to Illinois.”

The protests unfolded over months, from mid-2016 to early 2017, attracting tens of thousands of people from around the world, and were widely documented by news crews and on social media.

Janet Alkire, chairwoman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, argued that Greenpeace’s statements were true and not defamatory. “Energy Transfer’s false and self-serving narrative that Greenpeace manipulated Standing Rock into protesting DAPL is patronizing and disrespectful to our people,” she said in a statement, using an abbreviation for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Image

Protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.Credit...Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

She said that “scenes of guard dogs menacing tribal members” were publicly available “on the news and on the internet.”

Videos of the incidents in question weren’t shown at the trial. Everett Jack Jr. of the firm Davis, Wright Tremaine, the main lawyer for Greenpeace, declined to discuss why.

The 1,172-mile pipeline, priced at $3.7 billion when announced, has been operating since 2017. It carries crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois.

During the trial, some arguments hinged on whether the pipeline crossed Standing Rock’s land, or how to define tribal land. The pipeline is just outside the borders of the reservation but crosses what the tribe calls unceded land that it had never agreed to give up.

There was also debate about whether tribal burial grounds were harmed during construction. Experts working for the tribe found that was the case, but experts brought in by Energy Transfer did not.

Even if a statement was false, Mr. Cole said, a defendant cannot be held liable if they had a basis for believing it. He also predicted that the penalty would likely be reduced on appeal if not overturned.

Martin Garbus, a veteran First Amendment lawyer, led a delegation of lawyers to North Dakota to observe the trial. The lawyers have said that the jury was biased against the defendants and that the trial should have been moved to another county. He expressed concern that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court could be used to overturn Times v. Sullivan. He noted that Justice Clarence Thomas has called for the Supreme Court to reconsider that case.

But Mr. Cole, Mr. Tobias and other experts said they did not expect the court to reconsider Times v. Sullivan.

Greenpeace has said previously that the size of the damages could force the organization to shut down its U.S. operations.

The lawsuit named three Greenpeace entities, but it centered on the actions of Greenpeace Inc., based in Washington, which organizes campaigns and protests in the United States and was found liable for more than $400 million.

A second organization, Greenpeace Fund, a fund-raising arm, was found liable for about $130 million. A third group, Greenpeace International, based in Amsterdam, was found liable for the same amount. That group said its only involvement was signing a letter, along with several hundred other signatories, calling on banks to halt loans for the pipeline.

Earlier this year, Greenpeace International filed a countersuit in the Netherlands against Energy Transfer. That lawsuit was brought under a European Union directive designed to fight what are known as SLAPP suits, or strategic lawsuits against public participation — legal actions designed to stifle critics. (State law in North Dakota, where Energy Transfer brought its case against Greenpeace, doesn’t have anti-SLAPP provisions.)

The next hearing in the Netherlands case is in July.

Karen Zraick covers legal affairs for the Climate desk and the courtroom clashes playing out over climate and environmental policy. More about Karen Zraick

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Rising Fears for Free Speech After Greenpeace’s Defeat.

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corrections@nytimes.com

March 20, 2025, Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Protest Over Pipeline Will Cost Greenpeace Hundreds of Millions

Karen Zraick stated that Water Protectors committed acts of violence. Provides no evidence.

"But the protests erupted into acts of vandalism and violence at times, alienating people in the surrounding community in the Bismarck-Mandan area."

However, Bronx resident Sophia Wilansky had her arm blown off by a percussion grenade: https://bra.in/7j9Dyx

Private security sicced dogs on water protectors.

Those water protectors bravely and nonviolently disarmed private security brandishing an assault rifle. https://bra.in/4pRLVx

Water Protectors were sprayed with water and chemical agents in sub-zero temperatures.

Please retract erroneous statement or provide evidence for it (and if latter, put in context).

Article does not mention ETP hired fake newspaper to influence jury.

TigerSwan ran a counter-insurgency op.

thank you for your attention and timely action

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minOr? fail 1 25

mma

... The right uses the same playbook after every disaster

The right treats every disaster as an opportunity to attack the left, with talking points bubbling up from the fever swamps or filtering down from Trump, then spreading swiftly through the ecosystem thanks to the all-encompassing nature of its propaganda machine.

We’ve seen the same pattern repeatedly over the last few years, following deadly natural disasters in North Carolina and Puerto Rico and California, among others.

But because this is such well-trodden territory, it is disturbing when legacy media outlets are unable or unwilling to bat down the false claims.

The New York Times’ write-up of Trump’s remarks about Newsom’s water management is headlined “Trump Blames California’s Governor, and His Water Policy, for Wildfires.” Only in its final paragraphs does the story explain that the Trump claims detailed in its opening sentences are false.

Privileging the lie like this leaves Times readers poorly informed. The good news for the paper is that another opportunity for better coverage will surely follow the next natural disaster.

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'Outrageous': NYT rejects Quaker ad that calls Israel attack on Gaza 'genocide'

1 25 an

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morano foghorn fox

12 24

DDSB

Biden 'doubling down' in the face of 'absurdity' with latest climate push, expert says

Fox Business

Climate Depot executive editor Marc Morano reacts to comments from a Senate hearing on climate concerns and sounds off on the Biden ...

nyt ben keys

ditch home; extremiest arent you? cli hypoc on blast hdline; cli obsession ethos; expose absurdity; wharton prof; un says extreme wether not increasing; own hse in flood zone; nyt long hist gone after home racism, cli emergency, houses more dang to cli than cars; doing all the things they tell us not to do [kerry pvt plane?] giant homes oprah lame duck joe pedal to metal on his cli agenda; new emission targets; cuts GG 60 percent by 2035; gum up sys w new regs; very easy to undo; climate agenda hates us, hates---. hates am way, 2x down in face of ... magical thinking paperwork climate agenda get us out of paris treaty by going to congress woman fear based agenda, requieres their intervention; misnamed IRA is really the grn new deal; get rid of epa, ? endangerment finding; day 1 reverse agancy pentagon abolish every climate agy and goal do fast and rapid, do in 2 wks

Latest

Oct. 29, 2024

Guest Essay

Climate Change Should Make You Rethink Homeownership

Renting is quickly becoming a better way for many people to enjoy high-risk places with much less financial baggage.

By Benjamin Keys

May 7, 2023

Guest Essay

Your Homeowners’ Insurance Bill Is the Canary in the Climate Coal Mine

Wharton’s Ben Keys on how climate change is already reshaping the insurance and housing markets — and how our denial is only making the problem worse.

By Benjamin Keys

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AN 11 24

“The press freedom fire is at our door step now," saidone Washington Post journalist on Thursday night after news broke that two months before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office, he has already begun to wage legal warfare against on the news media.

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)reported that days before the election, a lawyer for Trump, Edward Andrew Paltzik, sent a letter toThe New York Times and Penguin Random House demanding $10 billion in damages for publishing articles and a book that were critical of the president-elect, who was convicted of 34 felony counts earlier this year.

Trump's legal team took issue with a book by Times journalists Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner titled Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. They also said they were demanding damages over "false and defamatory statements" in the October 20 article "For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment" by Peter Baker and the October 22 piece "As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator"by Michael Schmidt.

The former article covered numerous wrongdoings by the president-elect and accusations against him, pointing out that he "is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges, and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact)," and that he has also boasted about sexually assaulting women and spearheaded numerous businesses that went bankrupt.

The latter article detailed comments by Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, who told the Times that the definition of fascism accurately describes Trump.

The president-elect himself said while campaigning that he planned to govern as a dictatoronly on "Day One"of his term in office.

"Governments and powerful figures threatening journalists and media outlets with costly legal battles and bankruptcy is a common tactic against press freedom in repressive countries."

Paltzik told the newspaper that the articles demonstrate the Times' "intention of defaming and disparaging the world-renowned Trump brand that consumers have long associated with excellence, luxury, and success in entertainment, hospitality, and real estate, among many other industries, as well as falsely and maliciously defaming and disparaging him as a candidate for the highest office in the United States."

TheCJR reported that theTimes responded to Paltzik's letter, telling him the newspaper stood by its reporting on Trump.

As Barry Malone, deputy editor-in-chief of the Thomson Reuters Foundation,saidon social media on Friday, Trump's legal threats may be designed not to actually win billions of dollars in damages but "to tie the media up with time-consuming and often prohibitively expensive cases."

The Timesand Penguin Random House threats were reported two weeks after Trump suedCBS News for another $10 billion, claiming an interview with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the November 5 election, was unfairly edited to present her in a positive light and qualified as "election interference."

CBS said it would "vigorously defend" its journalistic practices and called the lawsuit "completely without merit"—a similar response to the one by The Washington Post, which was accused by Trump on the same day of making an illegal in-kind donation to Harris.

Anne Champion, an attorney who has represented several journalists and CNN in legal cases initiated by Trump, told the CJR that the legal threats will likely have "a mental chilling effect" on reporters and news outlets in the United States as Trump prepares to take office.

"It is both conscious and unconscious," said Champion. "Journalists at smaller outlets know very well that the costs for their organization to defend themselves could mean bankruptcy. Even journalists at larger outlets don't want to burden themselves or their employees with lawsuits. It puts another layer of influence into the journalistic process."

Trump has a longstanding disdain for the media, saying numerous times during his first term that journalists were the "enemy of the people." During one campaign rally just before the election he said he wouldn't "mind" if reporters at the event were shot, and he called the media the "enemy camp" during his victory speech last week.

During his first term he also threatened to "take a strong look at our country's libel laws"—which are actually controlled by states, not the federal government—and ensure that "when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts."

The American Civil Liberties Unionpointed outat the time that the First Amendment and the lack of federal libel laws would stand in Trump's way, but on Thursday Lachlan Cartwright wrote atCJR that "the drumbeat of legal threats signals a potentially ominous trend for journalists during Trump's second term in office."

AsWashington Post columnist Karen Attiah noted on the social media platform Bluesky, "governments and powerful figures threatening journalists and media outlets with costly legal battles and bankruptcy is a common tactic against press freedom in repressive countries."

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NYT

NO LNX

On Telegram, a Violent Preview of What May Unfold on Election Day and After

Right-wing groups, which use Telegram to organize real-world actions, are urging followers to watch the polls and stand up for their rights, in a harbinger of potential chaos.

Telegram played a small but significant role in the 2020 election as an organizing tool for planners of the Jan. 6 attack.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

By Paul MozurAdam SatarianoAaron Krolik and Steven Lee Myers

Paul Mozur, Adam Satariano, Aaron Krolik and Steven Lee Myers analyzed more than 1 million posts from election skeptics and right-wing extremist groups on Telegram.

Nov. 4, 2024

:{:{Updated}:

Groups backing former President Donald J. Trump recently sent messages to organize poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt.

“The day is fast approaching when fence sitting will no longer be possible,” read one post from an Ohio chapter of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization that was instrumental in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “You will either stand with the resistance or take a knee and willingly accept the yoke of tyranny and oppression.”

The messages were all posted on Telegram, the lightly moderated social media platform with nearly one billion users, which has become a harbinger of the potential actions and chaos that could unfold on Election Day and after. More so than other social apps, Telegram is a prime organizing tool for extremists, who have a tendency to turn digital coordination into real-world action.

A New York Times analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome. Nearly every channel reviewed by The Times was created after the 2020 election, highlighting the growth and increased sophistication of the election denialism movement.

The Times reviewed messages from “election integrity” groups across a dozen states, including battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan. Their posts overwhelmingly spewed disinformation and conspiracy theories and featured violent imagery.

More than 4,000 of their posts went further by encouraging members to act by attending local election meetings, joining protest rallies and making financial donations, the analysis found. Posts from other right-wing groups reviewed by The Times urged followers to be prepared for violence. These calls to action extended the right-wing language typically found on other major social media sites into the physical world.

In New Hampshire, one Telegram channel instructed people to question local officials in person about absentee ballot tallies. In Georgia, followers of a local Telegram channel were urged to attend election board meetings to argue for limits to absentee voting. In New Mexico, people were told to monitor voting stations with cameras, file police reports if necessary and be ready to “fight like hell.”

“If you have ever said, ‘What can I do?,’ this is your opportunity,” said one post from a Telegram group focused on Pennsylvania.

Katherine Keneally, a former intelligence analyst with the New York Police Department, said views shared on Telegram should not be dismissed as the musings of a fringe minority but rather seen as a warning about what could happen on Election Day and beyond.

“Telegram is very often central to actually organizing people to engage in offline activity,” said Ms. Keneally, who now works for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research firm that monitors Telegram. She recalled attending a meeting in 2022 of election skeptics in Montana, where participants taught one another how to use Telegram. Among more extreme movements, she said, Telegram is used “very strategically to radicalize and recruit.”

In a statement, Telegram, whose founder was arrested in France in August on charges related to the spread of illicit material on the service, said it had ramped up content moderation leading up to the election. The company added that it would cooperate with the authorities to remove “criminal content.”

“Telegram does not tolerate content that encourages disrupting legal democratic processes through violence or destruction of property,” it said.

Telegram played a small but significant role in the 2020 election as an organizing tool for planners of the Jan. 6 attack. Today, its influence is greater and potentially more ominous, according to The Times’s analysis.

Right-wing media channels post a stream of news, memes and misinformation about perceived voting irregularities, which are then picked up by other groups that use them to argue that the Democrats have begun to steal the election. Mixed in are calls for citizens to show up at the polls and to monitor and report irregularities — or fight if necessary.

Image

Right-wing media channels on Telegram post a stream of disinformation about perceived voting irregularities, which other groups pick up to argue that Democrats have already begun to steal the election.Credit...Bing Guan for The New York Times.

“While other platforms are primarily about self-expression, ‘owning the libs’ and hateful buffoonery, Telegram often generates an ambience of ‘let’s get something done,’” said Paul M. Barrett, the deputy director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University.

The “election integrity” movement on Telegram includes a loose network of accounts devoted to “auditing” the vote and amplifying election malfeasance theories, such as false claims that election workers are giving Republican voters Sharpies that are incompatible with voting machines.

One channel focused on election auditing in New York featured recruitment ads from United Sovereign Americans, which calls itself a national “election validity” advocacy group. One of its lawyers is a former solicitor general of Pennsylvania who defended Mr. Trump during his second impeachment in 2021 after Jan. 6.

Under an image of Uncle Sam and a bold red “WE NEED YOU!” banner, the group recently claimed, without any credible evidence, that 2022 voter records showed “millions of ‘irregularities’ which, when ignored, are election fraud.” Many claims about voter fraud have been debunked. The group did not respond to a request for comment.

Another group, focused on vote auditing in Pennsylvania, offered paid compensation for election monitors but only if they worked in the traditionally Democratic stronghold of Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is.

“Fill out your information, and we’ll contact you to get you trained and ready for Election Day!” the group said.

Another Telegram channel run by a group called the People’s Audit posted a video that offered a “hypothetical situation that is totally possible,” in which the Department of Homeland Security used the driver’s licenses of undocumented immigrants to cast votes en masse for the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. The video floated the scenario even though it is illegal and rare for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.

“Yes, they would be engaging in ID theft, election interference and treason, which is punishable by death,” the video concluded.

Kris Jurski, who posted the video, said on Telegram that it had been taken down from X. He said he was grateful that the video had remained on Telegram, which he used later to advertise a webinar teaching people how to secure voter rolls and deter fraud. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Image

Trump supporters wore attire associated with the Proud Boys — the group’s colors are yellow and black — at a rally in December 2020.Credit...Luis M. Alvarez/Associated Press

Many posts casting doubt on election reliability made their way into the channels of extremist groups like the Proud Boys, which has preferred Telegram to other platforms after being restricted by sites like Facebook, Instagram and X.

The group’s posts questioned why states might not be able to fully tally election results on election night and repeated misleading claims about voter registration numbers in Michigan. In one video, a truck with a Confederate flag chased after immigrant children, with a caption reading: “1/20/25: Trump is sworn in as President. 1/21/25: Me and the Proud Boys begin the deportation.”

“When you look at the postings, even if it’s not actually calling for violence or even if it’s not saying we need to get whoever, there’s a very ugly tone to it,” said Wendy Via, a founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracked a 317 percent spike in election denialism on Telegram in October. There was no significant left-wing movement like this, she said.

In recent months, many Telegram channels run by chapters of the Proud Boys have celebrated a return to relevance, including perceived attention from Mr. Trump and his allies. Several accounts pointed to the black-and-yellow ties and hats — which are Proud Boys colors — worn by Mr. Trump in the days before, and the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson during, a recent rally at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Image

Recent posts on Telegram channels associated with the Proud Boys celebrated a perceived show of support from Mr. Trump.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Image

Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, at a recent Trump rally at Madison Square Garden.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times.

Asked whether Mr. Trump had intended to send a signal, a spokeswoman for his campaign responded, “Lol. No.” Mr. Carlson did not respond to a request for comment but posted on X that The Times “knows a Proud Boys necktie when they see one.”

“They feel activated,” said Michael Loadenthal, who researches political violence at the University of Cincinnati, adding that Proud Boys groups had assembled publicly less often than they had before the 2020 election. “There’s a feeling they are in the right.”

Recruitment messages on the public Telegram accounts of various Proud Boys chapters have sought to capitalize on the perils of election fraud, often implying a need for violence. One popular image showed an armed man wearing a balaclava.

“Free men do not obey public servants,” it read.

Another portrayed a tit-for-tat with “leftist Democrats” going back to Mr. Trump’s presidency.

“Enough is enough!” read a part of the post. “Be ready for anything and everything!”

Methodology

The Telegram channels reviewed in this article were provided in part by researchers at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. The Times used software, including large language models, to organize and analyze the posts and to identify messages with calls to action.

A correction was made on Nov. 4, 2024: An earlier version of this article misstated the year in which Katherine Keneally of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue attended a meeting of election skeptics in Montana. It was in 2022, not this year.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Paul Mozur is the global technology correspondent for The Times, based in Taipei. Previously he wrote about technology and politics in Asia from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. More about Paul Mozur

Adam Satariano is a technology correspondent for The Times, based in London. More about Adam Satariano

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers

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called for joe to bow out tand then?

BB 8 24

after a weekend of unhinged ranting and babbling by the Republican candidate for President, the New York Times is very disappointed in the Democrat's economic plans.

Having spent a lot of energy telling us Joe Biden needed to get out of the race because he was old, the New York Times continues to give Donald Trump a free pass. Where are their demands for him to quit the race? The news all weekend and this Monday AM has all been very positive for the Harris campaign, while Trump has dug himself into a deeper, crazier hole. Even Fox has to admitTrump is nuts. With all the weird stuff Trump offers the NYT to write about they spend time telling us Harris is a younger Joe Biden — which is precisely what they wanted a few weeks ago.

There is no area in which she is seeking a significant break from his agenda — perhaps not surprising given that she had a role in crafting much of it. She has abandoned a host of progressive positions she adopted while running for the 2020 presidential nomination, and has for the most part avoided getting bogged down in the specifics of what she would do as president.

"What they did is they cut out the unpopular parts of the campaign, which were all the questions around Joe Biden's age and capacity, and they left in the popular parts, which were the actual record and the actual policies of the Biden-Harris team," said Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Center for American Progress, the think tank of the Democratic establishment. "Now they have an opportunity to burnish those by projecting the unfinished part of the agenda into the future."

Ms. Harris's standard stump speech is hardly bereft of policy, though she does not delve into details. Instead, she calls for a broad range of policies embraced by mainstream Democrats.

New York Times

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an raw 7 24

former President Donald Trump's allies are working to reshape American law into a weapon to be used against their political enemies, wrote Jesse Wegman in a scathing editorial for The New York Times.

Trump's pick of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) underscores this, he wrote, because Vance embodies the far-right's commitment to a key goal of the controversial Project 2025 plan to transform the government into an authoritarian loyalty cult to the GOP.

Vance, wrote Wegman, "predicted ... that the former president, who had been recently disgraced by his insurrectionary attempt to overturn the 2020 election, would nevertheless run again in 2024. Should Mr. Trump win, Mr. Vance said, he had some advice: 'Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.' And if the courts ruled against him? No problem, Mr. Vance said: Just blow them off."

This is already happening, wrote Wegman — and another of Trump's appointees, District Judge Aileen Cannon, is showing how it will work in her move to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, which special counsel Jack Smith is already moving to appeal.

In her decision, Cannon concluded Smith, "Was not validly appointed to his post because no federal law authorizes the appointment of someone from outside the Justice Department to perform that task," wrote Wegman, noting she based this entirely on a non-majority concurrence from Justice Clarence Thomas in the case granting Trump a presumption of immunity in a separate case.

ALSO READ:'Keep lying': Late night Trump rant about Harris quickly turns against him

"As a matter of law and fact, this is not merely wrong, it is flagrantly, embarrassingly wrong ... It is not a close or complicated legal question" — indeed, the Supreme Court ruled the law allows this in 1974, and Cannon pretends they didn't.

These sorts of machinations by Vance and Cannon are exactly what to expect the whole government to become should Trump get his way, Wegman concluded ominously.

"This is what a second Trump term would look like," he wrote. "Ambitious judges who may not have been Trump loyalists at first will watch what’s been happening in recent days and get the message about what it takes to advance their careers. In this way, Judge Cannon embodies the future that Mr. Vance described in 2021. She is part of a legal elite raised on Trumpism that will use their perches in the judiciary and legal world to enforce a one-sided version of law that is about power and outcomes over any liberal principle."

In other words, he said, this is a reality where "the rule of law is for suckers or, worse, only for specific people. Our people."

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:{:{The Quad-City Times}:

no lnx

Capitol Notebook: New York Times responds to Iowa AG Brenna Bird over allegations of Hamas ties

LEE-GAZETTE DES MOINES BUREAU Dec 7, 2023 1

Watch Now: Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird speaks at anti-abortion rally one year post-Dobbs, in June, 2023.

The New York Times responded to a letter from Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird’s questioning whether freelance journalists who worked with the organization had ties to Hamas.

In a letter on Wednesday, the Times' director of communications Charlie Stadtlander called the claims “inflammatory allegations based on false assumptions and debunked social media posts.”

Iowa Republican Attorney General Brenna Bird

Bird

On Monday, Bird and 13 other attorneys general sent a letter to the Times, Associated Press, Reuters and CNN arguing the news organizations may have provided “material support to terrorists” by paying for photographs from journalists that had been alleged to have ties to Hamas.

The attorneys general cited a report from HonestReporting, a pro-Israel media watchdog, which questioned whether freelance photojournalists for the organizations had advance knowledge of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

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“You should ensure that you are taking all necessary steps to prevent your organizations’ from contracting with members of terror organizations,” Bird wrote in the letter.

The Times has denied it had any knowledge of the Oct. 7 attack. Stadtlander reiterated in the letter that "the only connection The New York Times has to Hamas is that we report on the organization fearlessly and at times at great risk."

He pointed to later statements from HonestReporting, which said it did not have evidence that any journalist was embedded with Hamas and was satisfied with the explanations from the media outlets.

"I realize that the purveyors of disinformation online have widely and recklessly spread the lie of “embedded journalists,'" Stadtlander wrote. "But it does real harm when public officials embrace such falsehoods and give them credibility."

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New York Times gives glowing profile to right-wing writer who repackaged misleading claims about the police murder of George Floyd | Media Matters for America

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Judge orders Trump to pay New York Times nearly $400K for expenses in 'frivolous lawsuit' - Alternet.org

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an 1 24

as the third anniversary of the deadly January 6 insurrection approaches this weekend, one columnist is calling on journalists and editors to stop treating the future of democracy like a standard partisan issue.

In her latest column for The Guardian, Margaret Sullivan expressed her frustration about the beltway media's tendency to find a both-sides angle when covering former President Donald Trump's repeated threats to democracy.

"In a constant show of performative neutrality, journalists tend to equalize the unequal, taking coverage down the middle even though that’s not where true fairness lies," Sullivan wrote, urging reporters to "get beyond delivery and appearances, to get beyond poll numbers and approval numbers – all the things that they are most comfortable with."

"The mainstream media is not nearly as comfortable with communicating the larger concepts, even when the stakes are this high," Sullivan continued. "Constantly under attack from the right, they fear looking like they are 'in the tank' for a particular candidate or party, so they fall back on those traditional building blocks of coverage – numbers, polls, approval ratings."

"That may have worked in the past, or at least been relatively unobjectionable," she added. "Not any more."

Sullivan cited several examples of false "both sides" narratives in prominent publications, including a New York Times article that she said was "typical of the mainstream media’s tone and focus." That article noted that President Joe Biden was giving a speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania on the anniversary of January 6 to remind Americans that his predecessor's lies about the 2020 election helped fuel an attack on the US Capitol, but framed it as "an effort to redirect attention from Mr. Biden’s low approval numbers." ABC News had a similar approach in a recent article with the headline "One attack, two interpretations: Biden and Trump both make the Jan. 6 riot a political rallying cry."

Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong-Fast criticized that headline in a post to X (formerly Twitter).

READ MORE:Michigan elections chief: 'Direct line' between Trump's Detroit call and January 6 riot

"There aren’t two sides to a violent insurrection in the United States capitol," she tweeted.

In her column, Sullivan lauded former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron's blunt evaluation of the threat to democracy Trump posed when he said the ex-president is "the only politician I’ve heard actually talk about suspending the constitution."

"He’s talked about using the military to suppress entirely legitimate protests using the Insurrection Act. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against the then-outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC. He’s talked explicitly about weaponizing the government against his political enemies," Baron said. "And, of course, he continues to talk about crushing an independent press... all of those [threats], by nature, by definition, are authoritarian."

Sullivan ended her column by asking journalists and editors to "remember that being in favor of democracy isn’t a journalistic crime. In fact, it’s a journalistic obligation."

READ MORE:'We're going to come after the people in the media': Trump ally calls for prosecuting journalists

Read Sullivan's full columnby clicking here.

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https://www.alternet.org/trump-jack-smith-indictment/

"Baseless conspiracy theories': NY Times fact-check tears apart Trump’s 2020 election lies

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an 11 23 no lnx

The death of the New York Times

D. Earl Stephens

November 13, 2023

After being a loyal reader for the better part of 60 years, I have officially run out of respect for The New York Times.

I have come to the grudging realization that this newspaper is actively playing a part in undermining our Democracy by convening a political horse race, and backing a burnt-orange, reprehensible, racist traitor, and his dirty trainers, who mean our country harm.

I believe they are doing this because they have lost their way and their morals, and have carefully dug out a tributary that flows from the obscene river of cash that is currently poisoning our politics, and runs directly into the bottomless pockets of the broken decision-makers whose fat asses are comfortably stuffed in the chairs of their front offices.

Unrest and instability might be bad for our Democracy, but they are damn good for business at The New York Times.

I take no pride in writing what I believe is this necessary piece.

I have been a steady reader of the “Gray Lady” for most of my life. Growing up in New Jersey, I actually aspired to work at the place as a starry-eyed kid, who pedaled his bike around delivering newspapers after school each day.

That never happened, and mostly by design. It turns out I got far more of a thrill working for smaller, underdog newspapers that stood up for their readers, called power to account, and strived to make a real difference in their communities.

Still, I never lost my respect for The Times — until now.

Their news presentation was boring, gray and haughty, but their writing and editing was second to none, and I had a certain amount of confidence that if there was an important world or national story that needed telling they’d get to it before anybody, and fire it out there for all to see.

In the wake of the terrible blast on November 8, 2016, that blew a hole through America’s decency, it took me no time at all to write in so many words, that it would be professional journalism organizations like The New York Times that would dig deep into Trump’s gory affairs, and begin exposing him for what he was, and always had been.

They would save the day, because that is what good journalism can do when it is done right.

They’d cover his White House like a blanket. When he invariably did completely terrible, anti-American things like defending Vladimir Putin’s attack on America while standing next to the murdering fascist in Helsinki, they’d put a laser focus on it, and make sure everybody in the world understood why that really mattered.

Yes, their treatment of Hillary Clinton’s emails (and the woman herself) leading up to the 2016 Election was a journalistic crime spree, but I still had confidence they would make amends for that malfeasance.

If you are saying to yourself right now that I was a gullible fool, and I was served my just deserts, I am saying that is completely fair.

I still believe I was mostly right, at least for a time, and The Times did start turning around some pretty good stuff that covered the burnt-orange traitor with shame. Just as quickly, however, they resorted to ultra-cheap, both-sides journalism, even when there was nobody even close to the incomparably awful, lying, pussy-grabbing racist and his fawning party on the other side.

And if I never read another 77-column-inch story dedicated to what 11 Trump supporters are saying about anything while inhaling black coffee in a Pennsylvania diner it will be too soon.

What has finally driven my lifelong respect for the paper to an end was yet another poll they conducted with Sienna College that went to print this weekend focusing on six swing states. The poll was accompanied by hundreds and hundreds of column inches devoted to a bunch of ridiculous numbers culled from a sampling of American voters that was so small, the 11 Trump voters at the diner looked more significant and reputable by comparison.

I guess The Times wanted everybody on the face of the Earth to know that according to them Joe Biden was in trouble in these six swing states, and that their burnt-orange steed was snorting hard and closing with a huff on the outside.

We can try to play stupid for a minute and pretend the leadership at The Times had somehow talked itself into believing it was performing some kind of helpful journalism to its readers by producing this bought-and-paid-for bilge, but that just doesn’t add up.

There are too many people there who know full well that a news organization’s job is to report the news, not make it. By devoting three full news cycles to this outlandish slop, the paper made it crystal clear they valued themselves and their bank accounts more than their readers.

Essentially, they told their readers this: “We are glad you are paying us to cover the news, but we just did something we think is important and we are going to spend the next three days patting ourselves on the back and telling you why we’ve come to amazing conclusions that we think are so bloody important. Please make sure you sign your checks before sending them to us. You’re welcome.”

I’m not going to wade too deeply into the results of this poll for reasons I will get to in a second. And frankly, I don’t know how many polls have to be wrong before people stop paying attention to them altogether. Still … I would like to know why Republicans were oversampled by The Times in this particular foray into professional guessing.

The Times has not provided an answer to this question, but it is a fact their minuscule sample size of the American public was predominated by right-leaning voters.

As to polls in general ... To start, they are often ridiculously wrong, as we’ve seen time and time again since, ironically, Trump was somehow elected despite being given a one-in-five chance on Election Day 2016 by these expert pollsters.

More consequentially, depending on their murky results, polls can also present a very dangerous bias and these days are being used mostly by Republicans to suppress the vote. Nobody has more practice in the ghoulish art of voter-suppression than they do.

Let me tell you just one grievous story about how bogus poll results were used to re-elect the vomit-inducing Ron Johnson (another one of Putin’s fast friends, incidentally) in last year’s senatorial race here in Wisconsin, and how the Democratic Party inexplicable and disastrously fell for this ruse.

In the final weeks of the race, polls were released in Wisconsin showing Johnson running 4%-to-7% points ahead of his firebrand of a challenger, Democrat, Mandela Barnes.

These numbers were a bit of stunner because incumbent Democratic Governor Tony Evers was also on the ballot, and was running slightly ahead of his Trump-kissed challenger.

It was also obvious to anybody who was actually covering this campaign, instead of floating poll numbers into the air about it, that it was crystal clear Barnes was closing like a freight train on the fading Johnson.

I was at two of Barnes rallies in the final days of the campaign and the man was drawing huge crowds, and was positively on fire. He was connecting, and I had no doubt in my mind that the race was going to be very close.

Trouble is, the Democratic National Committee got wind of these bad polls for Barnes and pulled the money they had planned to allocate to his campaign during the final week, and instead deployed it to other races they deemed closer and safer around the nation.

Turns out, Johnson prevailed by less than ONE percentage point. It was agonizingly close. Nobody will ever convince me otherwise that if the DNC had stayed with Barnes he would be in Washington right now representing my state in the Senate.

Oh, and Evers won his race in a cakewalk. So much for those polls.

In this case, bad polls actually scared the DNC away. In too many other cases, polls can convince prospective voters that maybe the person they are supporting doesn’t stand a chance. This might cool their support for him or her on Election Day.

I’d guess that both of these things conspired to sink Barnes, which still makes my stomach turn.

But back to this NYT poll, and why what’s left of my hair is on fire.

It turns out that buried deep inside the print editions of their endless, breathtaking coverage of their flimflam poll, was this juicy nugget they had to hope almost nobody would see:

“Polls have often failed to predict results of elections this far out.”

I mean, holy s---.

This isn’t burying the lede, it’s completely obliterating it.

Oh, and on Tuesday? Democrats once again exceeded expectations and those blasted polls in nationwide elections, and won just about every important race on the docket.

Ever since Trump and his Republicans attack on our country and subsequent coup attempt in 2021, I have been calling for The Times and ALL major media companies to establish Democracy Desks in their newsrooms.

Every day — hell, every HOUR — Republicans are doing something to undermine our Democratic Republic here in America, whether it be squashing voting rights, refusing to certify elections, threatening DOJ officials, flat lying about the results of these elections, supporting dictators around the world, banning books detailing our nation’s choppy history, all of the above, and more.

It never ends. There is no bigger overarching story in America right now than Republicans’ surge toward fascism.

WHY isn’t this being given the editorial weight it deserves?

I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again right here: If the Republicans are successful in taking down our Democracy and installing an authoritarian regime in Washington, one of the very first things to go will be our freedom of the press, and THEN where will The Times be?

It is ludicrous that their readers aren’t being educated everyday about what the Republicans have in mind and how devastating it would be to the citizens of this country if they ever got back into the White House.

For one thing, it’s fair to posit there would never be another election again -- at least not one that would be remotely fair.

Ever since the disaster in November, 2016, just enough Americans have risen up and gotten active stamping out the flames of fascism Republicans have so frantically been fanning.

But we could use a little help.

That would start with some first-class journalism and reporting about things as they are. That would start with knocking it the hell off with these stupid polls that predict nothing, and start dealing with our terrifying realities.

That would mean spending the time and resources necessary to really dig in, and actually start reporting only the news that’s fit to print.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough

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MMA 8 23

Following the indictment of disgraced former President Donald Trump on federal charges for his attempt to remain in office after losing the 2020 election, mainstream media outlets are seemingly bending over backward to seek commentary from Republican sources, many of whom end up spreading misinformation and spin, or simply wasting what could have been useful airtime.

Some outlets privileged Trump’s bogus argument that the indictment violates his First Amendment rights

In contrast to these other outlets, the Associated Press article covering this flimsy defense of Trump provided ample commentary from legal experts to debunk it.

The piece explained that the indictment conceded “that Trump had the right to falsely claim that fraud had cost him the election and to legally challenge the results,” but noted that it also stated that “the conduct of Trump and six co-conspirators he’s alleged to have plotted with went far beyond speech.”

It quoted George Washington University law professor Mary Anne Franks arguing of Trump’s election lies, “When you say it to another person and the two of you speak in a way and exchange information in a way that leads to action — that you want to take action to do something with that speech — then arguably it becomes unprotected.”

And it cited Cornell Law School constitutional law expert Michael Dorf, who argued: “Insofar as he’s giving instructions, and planning to do things that are themselves illegal and involve action, like the signing of false certificates and so forth, that’s not a very good defense.”

Conservative guests also made false arguments on-air

During an interview with CNN, former Trump-appointed Attorney General Bill Barr, who was a material witness to Trump’s conduct in the months following the election, explained why Trump’s defense is baseless. “All conspiracies involve speech, and all fraud involves speech,” Barr explained. “So, free speech doesn’t give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.”

Contrary to Barr’s straightforward assertions about this case, some of the conservative guests to whom mainstream outlets are turning are providing no added value to discussions of the indictment, instead propagating misleading claims:

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fail? mag?

mma 5 23

New York Times Magazine recently dedicated a multipage spread to the conservative war on public education, often legitimizing the political right’s advocacy for school choice vouchers and crusade against obscure concepts like "critical race theory.”

In doing so, the magazine placed a target on the back of public education advocate and teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, gratuitously framing right-wing attacks on education as an organic result of the political climate, rather than as a manufactured onslaught spurred by conservative media.

On April 28, The New York Times Magazine published an article on the continued attacks on the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), one of the largest teachers unions in the country. The article details recent fights surrounding public education such as those over school voucher programs, COVID-19 mask mandates and school shutdowns, and culture war topics. While the cover of the April 30 edition of the magazine displays a fake picket sign reading “STOP RANDI WEINGARTEN!!” and thestory appears to be framed as a profile of the AFT leader, it quotes her only sparingly.

In its characterization of the AFT and Weingarten, the magazine amplifies multiple right-wing talking points that attack public education and teachers unions, which ultimately frame Weingarten as the scapegoat for larger social issues well out of her or teachers unions’ purview.

For example, the article’s headline describing Weingarten as “the most dangerous person in the world” was taken from former President Donald Trump cabinet member and staunch election denialist Mike Pompeo. The article goes on to declare that Pompeo “had nevertheless put his finger on something” in targeting Weingarten and concludes, “Maybe Pompeo hadn’t been wrong.” 

Pompeo later bragged about his inclusion in the magazine piece, tweeting, “Even the New York Times has to agree with me sometimes.” But as MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan wrote, adopting Pompeo’s “ridiculous and offensive attack” on Weingarten was “shoddy.”

The New York Times has repeatedly mischaracterized extreme attacks on public education and framed discriminatory education policies as a question of electability rather than highlighting the harm caused by this rhetoric and the policies it generates. In recent years, the Times has also whitewashed figures who have been driving forces in the attacks on public education, such as right-wing anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo, giving a national platform to his extreme viewpoints.

In addition to sanitizing the right’s war on education, The New York Times has legitimized other conservative culture wars. Last year, the Times helped fan the flames of rising anti-trans rhetoric by repeatedly suggesting that trans youth are being rushed to transition prematurely, featuring anti-LGBTQ extremists, and fearmongering about increasing rates of trans identification. The Times has also had a history of inadequately covering right-wing extremism and amplifying ahistorical right-wing rhetoric such as “tough-on-crime” policies, which has been used as a racist dog whistle throughout American politics.

Given the publication’s national readership and widespread circulation, the Times bears a great responsibility in giving its audience accurate reporting that reflects reality, not distortions crafted by right-wing media. Here are just some of the ways that the Times magazine elevated bad-faith right-wing messaging about education.

Framing Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin as successful in leveraging attacks on education

It was not Glenn Youngkin’s plan to turn Virginia’s 2021 governor’s race into a referendum on America’s battles over education. Initially, he was just hoping to prevent his opponent, Terry McAuliffe, from owning an issue that historically favored Democrats. “We couldn’t afford to let them take the fight to us,” Jeff Roe, one of Youngkin’s chief strategists, told me. By almost every measure, Youngkin, a former private-equity executive with no political experience, was the underdog.

Throughout his election campaign, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) leveraged right-wing culture wars on education, namely going after the conservative boogeyman “critical race theory” and threatening LGBTQ protections in schools. In its description of his gubernatorial campaign, the magazine paints Youngkin as an education warhawk who successfully used CRT to turn out the vote in addition to invoking other concerns plucked directly from conservative media. In reality, the effect of CRT in his race was likely much more subdued. As Vox wrote, voting patterns across Virginia did not appear to be “consistent with a CRT-focused explanation” but rather indicated the state took a “uniform swing against McAuliffe, not an especially strong backlash in areas where CRT was an especially prominent issue.” The Times further fails to mention that Youngkin has little to no experience with public education as a private school attendee and a parent who sent his own children to private schools.

Giving credence to right-wing advocacy for “school choice”

Did the pandemic and the culture wars reveal the indispensability of these [public] schools to their communities and to the broader fabric of the nation, or did they only underscore their inherent limitations — in effect, making the case for school choice?

The promotion of school choice policies has become a way for right-wing figures to push anti-public education sentiments and promote private and charter schools, and it has enabled de facto primary and secondary school segregation. The Times piece gives credence to the right-wing belief that school choice is a popular education policy by constructing the narrative that there is widespread disappointment in public schools. However, according to one of the Times' own surveys, conducted in 2022, 66% of parents with at least one school-aged child are satisfied with their local public schools, and 77% are satisfied with their own child’s education. While polls show that public support for school vouchers has increased in recent years, FiveThirtyEight notes that several of these surveys are sponsored by school choice advocacy groups that “may be incentivized to word their poll questions in a way that encourages respondents to indicate support for the programs.”

Blaming teachers unions for pandemic public school closures and learning loss

There was already early research showing that students were suffering academically from remote learning. Schools across Europe had begun reopening without any major outbreaks, and many of America’s private and parochial schools were making plans to resume in-person learning at the start of the new school year. A lot of public-school parents wanted their children to be back in the classroom, too. But many teachers seemed resistant to the idea.

Throughout the article, the Times blames teachers and teachers unions for needlessly delaying the return to in-person public schooling. At one point, the magazine cites a study from Brown University suggesting that “Democratic districts, with correspondingly strong teachers unions, returned to in-person learning more slowly and gradually than Republican districts with weaker unions.”

However, data from the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress found that pandemic learning losses were still significant in “areas that returned to the classroom quickly” while “cities — which were more likely to stay remote longer — actually saw milder decreases than suburban districts.”

Referencing groups such as Moms for Liberty without acknowledging their right-wing dark money connections

In Brevard County, Tina Descovich, the incumbent, was in favor of an immediate return to the classroom and opposed mask mandates. She was challenged by a public-school speech-language pathologist, Jennifer Jenkins, who called for a more cautious approach, including a mask mandate for all but the youngest children. Jenkins easily won the late-August election, but Descovich was just getting started. She called Tiffany Justice, a fellow school-board member in nearby Indian River County, to suggest that they create their own parents’ rights group, Moms for Liberty. “We’ve got to do something here,” Justice recalled Descovich’s telling her. “We have to help these parents because they’re trying to step up and speak out, and the schools are just slamming them at every turn.”

Moms for Liberty has gained traction in national discussions on education for portraying itself as a supporter of “parental rights” in public schools – a frame the Times uncritically adopts. In reality, Moms for Liberty is a right-leaning organization that has prominent ties to right-wing and far-right groups that are also seeking to privatize education and attack school boards and administrators. Moms for Liberty has also been found to harass and threaten violence against school administrators and board members for not supporting anti-LGBTQ educational policies. In its neutral framing of Moms for Liberty, the Times is whitewashing anti-public education figures and characterizing them as underdogs against Weingarten and the AFT, despite Moms for Liberty’s close ties to Republican politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Glossing over the origins of the right’s CRT and LGBTQ fearmongering

Christopher Rufo, the right-wing activist who manufactured the obsession with C.R.T. two years earlier, was now on Fox News railing against another crisis — the “academic queer theory” that he charged was being “mainlined” into America’s public schools — while Republican candidates condemned the “grooming” of children to identify as different genders in the nation’s classrooms. Many Republican candidates pledged their allegiance to a “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” requiring schools to provide information on reading lists, curriculums and whether a family’s child used another name or pronoun in school.

Though the Times magazine mentions concepts like critical race theory and so-called “academic queer theory” as targets of conservative backlash, the article largely glosses over the way such grievances were engineered by right-wing activists to misleadingly gin up resentment toward public schools. CRT came to conservative prominence in the spring of 2021, with right-wing media and figures trying to erase its roots as an academic concept typically taught at the graduate level to make it a blanket term used to decry lesson plans that embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion. Conservatives have also tried to sound the alarm about alleged “academic queer theory” taught in public schools pushing vaguely defined gender ideology.

While the Times’ on Weingarten initially comes off as a profile on the AFT leader, the lack of voice given to educators on the frontlines of the right’s manufactured war on education is telling. Rather than giving a national platform to the teachers affected by the right’s crusade on the conventional classroom, amid the Times’ amplification of right-wing education policies and demonization of public schools, the magazine somehow found its villain in teachers and teachers unions.

CNN gave Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin a town hall to spew right-wing talking points about education

03/10/23 5:27

National media coverage fails to accurately cover DeSantis’ dystopian crusade against public education

02/09/23

The New York Times helped fuel an anti-trans panic in 2022. Will 2023 be any better?

02/08/23

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https://www.alternet.org/media-trump-officials/

an 1 23  cdv

There is no such thing as "the liberal media."

That is language concocted by the Republican Party and right-wing consultants with the goal of bullying the American news media into being compliant and subservient to the "conservative" agenda.

And they were remarkably successful in achieving that goal.

Decades later it is now an accepted "fact" among America's political class, the general public, and the mainstream news media itself that there is such a thing as "liberal bias" in the news industry. The enduring myth of the "liberal media" is one of many examples of how the American right has successfully weaponized language with a propaganda campaign to shape the country's political terrain in their interests.

Republicans have marketed themselves as defenders of "freedom." In reality, they are authoritarians who support a range of policies that limit human and civil rights.

The Republican Party has created a brand that is based upon "family values." This is fiction. The policies and ideology of the modern GOP are centered upon gutting the social safety net and ending the county's already very weak and still developing social democracy. If they are successful in that agenda, the overall well-being of American families will be greatly diminished.

The "conservative" movement staunchly claims to be "pro-life." This is not true. Their policies and ideology have actually shortened the lives of the American people as seen with health care, gun violence, the global climate crisis and environment, the COVID pandemic, and social inequality more generally.

Former Rep. Newt Gingrich is one of the main architects of the strategy that allowed the Republican Party to win the language wars and the central role of the myth of "the liberal media" in that outcome. In 1995, the media watchdog group FAIR explained how:

Since winning control of Congress, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) has constantly complained about "destructive" and "negative" coverage from the "liberal elite media."… In fact, the new speaker of the House—who once described his goal as "reshaping the entire nation through the news media" (New York Times, 12/14/94)—has given a great deal of thought to the media and how to manipulate them.One Newtonian axiom is "fights make news" (Boston Globe, 11/20/94). Another skill he has taught to Republican candidates through his political organization, GOPAC, is how to create a "shield issue" to deflect criticism…

But the clearest expression of Gingrich's philosophy of media came in a GOPAC memo entitled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." Distributed to GOP candidates across the country, the memo's list of words for Democrats and words for Republicans was endorsed by Gingrich in a cover letter: "The words in that paper are tested language from a recent series of focus groups where we actually tested ideas and language." Next time you hear Gingrich complain about media focusing on the negative, refer back to these lists.

In a widely cited 2003 essay at The Nation, media critic and author Eric Alterman said the following about the myth of "the liberal media":

Move over to the mainstream publications and broadcasts often labeled "liberal," and you see how ridiculous the notion of liberal dominance becomes. ….

I could go on, but the point is clear: Conservatives are extremely well represented in every facet of the media. The correlative point is that even the genuine liberal media are not so liberal. And they are no match–either in size, ferocity or commitment–for the massive conservative media structure that, more than ever, determines the shape and scope of our political agenda.

In a careful 1999 study published in the academic journal Communications Research, four scholars examined the use of the "liberal media" argument and discovered a fourfold increase in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in their news. But a review of the media's actual ideological content, collected and coded over a twelve-year period, offered no corroboration whatever for this view. The obvious conclusion: News consumers were responding to "increasing news coverage of liberal bias media claims, which have been increasingly emanating from Republican Party candidates and officials."

:{The right is working the refs. And it's working. Much of the public believes a useful but unsupportable myth about the so-called liberal media, and the media themselves have been cowed by conservatives into repeating their nonsensical nostrums virtually nonstop. :{As the economist/pundit Paul Krugman observes of Republican efforts to bully the media into accepting the party's Orwellian arguments about Social Security privatization: "The next time the administration insists that chocolate is vanilla,much of the media–fearing accusations of liberal bias, trying to create the appearance of 'balance'–won't report that the stuff is actually brown; at best they'll report that some Democrats claim that it's brown."}:

}:

In the real world of the right-wing media, the pundits are the conservatives' shock troops. Even the ones who constantly complain about alleged liberal control of the media cannot ignore the vast advantage their side enjoys when it comes to airing their views on television, in the opinion pages, on the radio and the Internet.

In total, the mainstream news media is inherently "small c" conservative. As a social institution it prioritizes making money and is averse to change. As such, the American mainstream news media also serves an agenda-setting and boundary-enforcing function that sets limits on the "approved public discourse." In that role, liberal and progressives are routinely silenced out of deference to "conservative" and right-wing voices – however extreme the latter may be.

Because the mainstream news media are aligned with the powerful as a class, they prioritize having access to them in what is a parasitic and symbiotic relationship. In practice, this meant that access to the powerful — especially for DC beltway journalists — is more important than bold truth-telling and consistently speaking truth to power.The conservative nature of the American news media and its institutional bias towards "normalcy" helps to explain why it has been so unable to properly pivot and adapt to the realities of the Age of Trump, rising neofascism, and the country's ongoing democracy crisis. Thus, the continued habit of using obsolete norms such as "bothsideism," an overempahsis on "horserace coverage," an obsession with political personalities instead of systems and power, and an amplification of the controversy of the day instead of on fundamental issues.

One of the most dangerous examples of how the media has been conditioned by the right through the myth of "liberal bias" is how it is now helping to launder the reputations of several Trump regime members and other Republican fascists. In a very high-profile example of reputation laundering, The New York Times— which is routinely attacked by right-wing media for committing the "crime" of "liberal bias" (a baseless and absurd claim) — recently featured a guest opinion essay by former Trump regime advisor and propagandist**:{Kellyanne Conway. Her Times op-ed contained Trump political pornography such as this:}:

Donald J. Trump shocked the world in 2016 by winning the White House and becoming the first president in U.S. history with no prior military or government experience. He upended the fiction of electability pushed by pundits, the news media and many political consultants, which arrogantly projects who will or will not win long before votes are cast. He focused instead on capturing a majority in the Electoral College, which is how a candidate does or does not win. Not unlike Barack Obama eight years earlier, Mr. Trump exposed the limits of Hillary Clinton's political inevitability and personal likability,connected directly with people, ran an outsider's campaign taking on the establishment, and tapped into the frustrations and aspirations of millions of Americans.

Some people have never gotten over it. Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. There is no vaccine and no booster for it. Cosseted in their social media bubbles and comforted within self-selected communities suffering from sameness, the afflicted disguise their hatred for Mr. Trump as a righteous call for justice or a solemn love of democracy and country. So desperate is the incessant cry to "get Trump!" that millions of otherwise pleasant and productive citizens have become naggingly less so. They ignore the shortcomings, failings and unpopularity of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and abide the casual misstatements of an administration that says the "border is secure," inflation is "transitory," "sanctions are intended to deter" Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraineand they will "shut down the virus." They've also done precious little to learn and understand what drives the 74 million fellow Americans who were Trump-Pence voters in 2020 and not in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In her New York Times audition for a job on Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, Conway also wrote:

:{A popular sentiment these days is, "I want the Trump policies without the Trump personality." It is true that limiting the name-calling frees up time and space for persuasion and solutions. Still, it may not be possible to have one without the other. :{Mr. Trump would remind people that it was a combination of his personality and policies that forced Mexico to help secure our border;structured new trade agreements and renewed manufacturing, mining and energy economies; pushed to get Covid vaccines at warp speed; engaged Kim Jong-un; played hardball with China; routed ISIS and removed Qassim Suleimani, Iran's most powerful military commander;forced NATO countries to increase their defense spending and stared down Mr. Putin before he felt free to invade Ukraine.}:

}:

When it comes to Donald J. Trump, people see what they wish to see. Much like with the audio debate a few years ago "Do you hear 'Laurel' or 'Yanny'?," what some perceive as an abrasive, scornful man bent on despotism, others see as a candid, resolute leader unflinchingly committed to America's interests.

There were thousands of comments on the New York Times website in response to Conway's column and the publication's decision to allow her such a privileged platform. Based on a cursory review, a good many, if not most of these comments were negative. The Times even featured one such complaint in a letter to the editor:

A diversity of opinions and perspectives is a fantastic goal, and one reason I've been a longtime subscriber. Generally speaking, your opinion guest essays are well written and thoughtful and provide a point of view that makes one examine a topic with fresh eyes.

The opinion from Ms. Conway is not that.

Time and again she employs sloganeering to sling arrows at Democrats and non-Trumpists in an attempt to burnish the reputation of her former boss.

She continues to attempt to turn neighbor against neighbor by perpetuating the othering of Trump detractors and the denial of Mr. Trump's and her attacks on voting, democracy and simple decency.

Hers is not another "opinion"; it is carefully crafted and intentional spin to appeal to people's sense of grievance and to reaffirm the lies and misinformation they are so ready to believe.

Her inclusion in your paper diminishes the quality of debate, and galvanizes a person America would be better off forgetting.

Conway is representative of a larger pattern where such leading news media outlets as the New York Times, CNN, CBS, NBC and others are deciding to amplify and provide a platform for Trumpists, Republican-fascists, and other right-wing anti-democracy voices. They are doing this behind the cover of "fairness" and "balancing" when in reality such a decision is based on fear, profit-maximizing, and strategically positioning themselves to be in good favor with the Republican Party, "conservatives" and other anti-democratic forces as a type of insurance policy and security blanket for what promises to be a very perilous and unsettled future.

In an essay at Medium, journalist and author Wajahat Ali warns that "Even in the face of increased threats and a failed coup, too many journalists in mainstream media outlets will continue to pave the road toward fascism with their 'both sides' coverage." He continues, "Access journalism is a parasitic relationship.Some of these journalists are like small remoras, or shark suckers, who attach to sharks to get to their destination. If they were riding the shark in JAWS, they'd write an article blaming the townspeople for forcing the shark to eat them":

There's a class of journalists belonging to legacy outlets and corporate media who are incapable of shedding their antiquated, toxic skin and adapting to the changing political and cultural landscape where disinformation, white supremacist conspiracy theories, and right-wing stochastic terrorism is the norm. Instead, they chase the North Star, which isn't the truth, but rather access to power, ratings, and a path toward personal success….

Instead of bending the knee to right-wing intimidation, platforming their lies, mainstreaming their hate, and engaging in "both sides" nonsense to create the fiction of symmetry in an utterly asymmetrical reality, these political journalists need to be biased in favor of the truth and democracy.

Ultimately, the American mainstream news media needs to engage in a type of personal inventory and critical self-reflection about its role in democracy and failings (and successes) in the Age of Trump and beyond.In short, it must do better as it strives to live up to the ideals of the Fourth Estate in a democracy. A big step in that direction would be refusing to participate in the reputation laundering and rehabilitation of Trump's regime members and other neo-fascists and enemies of democracy in today's Republican Party and larger right-wing and "conservative" movement.

If the American mainstream news media does not do this necessary and hard work it is just contributing to its own legitimacy crisis and lack of trust among the American people, which in turn means aiding the Republican fascists and other enemies of a free press and democracy.

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amy w 12 22 ff ceo

The Art of "Creative Confrontation" Is Alive and Well

Back in the 1970s, legendary Mobil VP Herb Schmertz pioneered the art of bullying journalists or, as he called it, "creative confrontation." If journalists weren't covering Mobil's point of view, or he thought they were being too critical of Mobil, he called them up and let them know. And he let their bosses, and their bosses' bosses know too. Sometimes he threatened to pull advertising. Once he cut The Wall Street Journal off from any information at all—press releases, comments from executives, even quarterly earnings reports.

It looked exactly like what the American Petroleum Institute and Shell tried to do to Hiroko Tabuchi, the New York Times's climate accountability reporter,once in response to a (now-deleted) tweet in which she referenced the shared history of the fossil fuel industry and white supremacy, and again in response to a story about the American Chemistry Council, which counts several oil majors as members, lobbying against regulations in Kenya that would limit the ability of American companies to sell single-use disposable plastic there. If it were only a group of smug flaks congratulating themselves for sending "nastygrams" and saying things like "Let's work on taking away their birthdays next," it would be easy to dismiss as clownish theatrics. But there's quite a bit of evidence that it works. Not just in the 70s and 80s, but today. After telling Tabuchi, in response to her tweet, "we're done," Shell publicist Curtis Smith forwarded his email to her colleague, Clifford Kraus, who he obviously considers a friend, with a note, to which Kraus replied "I obviously can't comment, but you wrote what you felt and that is good."

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Rep Ro Khana (D-Ca), who co-chairs the committee and helped spearhead the investigation, thinks it also worked to pull Tabuchi off of certain types of climate stories. After covering the Committee's hearings on climate disinformation for a year, he says, "Hiroko's not covering it anymore. She's been taken off. So, you know, unfortunately, Big Oil succeeds sometimes when they engage in this kind of bullying."

What this exchange also reveals is the extent to which the API coordinates not just messaging strategy, but also execution, for the industry. After instructing the communications directors for all the oil majors not to engage with Tabuchi on Twitter, Meg Bloomgren, API's senior vice president of communications, explains that she has sent emails to three of Tabuchi's bosses, as well as to the Associate Managing Editor of Standards, about her conduct.

"I encouraged them to do the right thing in addressing Ms. Tabuchi's completely baseless link and offensive accusation," Bloomgren writes. "I also noted that in the meantime, any calls from Ms. Tabuchi to our industry, its executives, or the 10 million workers it supports will likely go unreturned." It's a move straight out of the Schmertz playbook.

Social license to operate is still a big priority...

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an 822

In an editorial titled "Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law" on Friday, The New York Times editorial board called for the former president to be prosecuted.

This comes as the Justice Department is advancing a criminal investigation into highly classified documents improperly concealed by the former president at his Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach, Florida — but, the board wrote, he should also face charges for his role in inciting the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

"Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation," wrote the board. "The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee,leaves little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people. The president, defeated at the polls in 2020, tried to enlist federal law enforcement authorities, state officials and administrators of the nation’s electoral system in a furious effort to remain in power. When all else failed, he roused an armed mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened lawmakers."

"This board is aware that in deciding how Mr. Trump should be held accountable under the law it is necessary to consider not just whether criminal prosecution would be warranted but whether it would be wise. No American president has ever been criminally prosecuted after leaving office," said the board. "When President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, he ensured that Nixon would not be prosecuted for crimes committed during the Watergate scandal; Ford explained this decision with the warning that such a prosecution posed grave risks of rousing 'passions' and worsening political polarization."

This time, however, exonerating a former president from such serious allegations simply for his stature is a "far greater risk," the board argued: "Mr. Trump’s actions as a public official, like no others since the Civil War, attacked the heart of our system of government. He used the power of his office to subvert the rule of law. If we hesitate to call those actions and their perpetrator criminal, then we are saying he is above the law and giving license to future presidents to do whatever they want."

"No one should revel in the prospect of this or any former president facing criminal prosecution," concluded the board. "Mr. Trump’s actions have brought shame on one of the world’s oldest democracies and destabilized its future. Even justice before the law will not erase that stain. Nor will prosecuting Mr. Trump fix the structural problems that led to the greatest crisis in American democracy since the Civil War. But it is a necessary first step toward doing so."

You can read more here.

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cites documented

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/29/us/politics/2000-mules-trump-conspiracy-theory.html

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/new-york-times-ripped-coverage/

on biden

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no lnx twt an 4 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/ny-times/

NY Times pummeled over piece on 8 conservative men who don’t feel 'free to be themselves in the culture'

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement April 13, 2022

Some might say The New York Times is the king of normalizing views from the right, even views that could be considered disturbing or, in some cases, even dangerous to their fellow citizens, the nation, or the world. The Times’ pre-World War II profiles of a young Adolf Hitler are a legendary example.

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In 2015 The Times republished what it calls “1922: Hitler in Bavaria,” patting itself on the back for getting “a lot of things right,” like its “description of his ability to work a crowd into a fever pitch, ready then and there to stage a coup.”

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The Times that year also reported that “several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea thatHitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.”

History knows how that turned out.

Fast forward to 2017, when The Times published a profile commonly referred to as “The Nazi Next Door,” originally titled, “In America’s Heartland, the Nazi Sympathizer Next Door,” which was written by Richard Fausset.

Salon’s Matthew Smith described the piece, bemoaning the “creepy trend of media outlets attempting to humanize Nazis and white supremacists.”

“Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall,” Fausset’s story begins. “They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.”

“Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.”

A caption of a photo reads: “Mr. Hovater and others in the loosely defined alt-right movement are hoping to make their ideas less than shocking, even normal.”

Some felt The Times, intentionally or not, certainly appeared as if it were trying to lend a hand. And in fact, after massive outrage, which forced a headline change (along with removing a link it included to “a webpage that sells swastika armbands,”) the Times’ editors defended publishing the piece by saying they thought “it was important to do so.”

Between 1922, and 2017, and after, no doubt the Times has published other works that normalize the radical right, extremism, and fascism.

Earlier this year a Twitter user posted his take on how the Times in 1935 covered a “large anti-Hitler protest in front of a Nazi ocean liner.”

And oh yes, 1924:

“22,000 Nazis Hold Rally in [Madison Square] Garden; Police Check Foes,” was a front-page headline in the Times about a stunningly disturbing NYC event in 1939.

Meanwhile, fast forward to today.

“These 8 Conservative Men Are Making No Apologies” is the headline in Tuesday’s Times Opinion section. The piece is by the Times’ deputy Opinion editor Patrick Healy and the Opinion section’s editorial assistant Adrian J. Rivera. And while no one should make a comparison to Hitler or Nazis, the question some are asking is why did The Times think it important to profile a group of conservative men, since conservative men have pretty much been in charge for decades?

“There was no talk of a stolen election, no conspiracy theories about voter fraud or rants about President Biden’s legitimacy. Yet listening to our 90-minute focus group with eight conservative men, you couldn’t help but worry for our democracy a bit,” it begins.

“The men didn’t see themselves fitting into American society today. They didn’t feel free to be themselves in the culture,” the piece claims. “Seven of them said they felt like a stranger in their own country. At a time when democratic institutions are under pressure — and even under attack — and the United States feels so ununited, what causes these Americans to feel so alienated from America?”

The Times, to my knowledge, has never done a focus group of, say, eight LGBTQ men over 50. Or eight LGBTQ people of any age. What about doing a focus group of eight Northeast Democrats? How about visiting a diner and listening to supporters of President Joe Biden? Or Senator Elizabeth Warren? Or Reps. Jamie Raskin or Val Demmings?

When does the paper of record start highlighting views of people from the left, rather than a Nazi from 1922 or conservatives from 2022?

Again, The Times defends its piece, claiming these are “Americans whose voices are often not heard in opinion journalism.”

The Times apparently has never heard of Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, or Facebook.

The Times piece includes one hour and 22 minutes of audio it titled, “8 Conservative Men On Being a Man in America Today.”

To give a taste, here are some of the men and their top concerns about America or American society:

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Tony (white, 72, retired, Massachusetts): Government spending.

Derrick (Black, 63, software engineer, Georgia): Inflation.

Michael (white, 67, retired, Florida): Economy.

Christopher (Black, 51, small-business loan broker, Maryland): Elitism.

Danny (Middle Eastern, 47, Realtor, Florida): Disgraceful.

Joe (white, 37, apparel manufacturing, New York): Weak.

Joe says: “This is not the America I remember growing up in, and it’s just sad to see what’s going on.”

Robert says: “You’re not free to be yourself anymore because of crime. You’ve got to be concerned about ‘If I go out, am I going to be a victim of crime?'”

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(Most crime is actually at historic lows, but you won’t hear that on TV or social media. The Brennan Center reports the “violent crime rate in the United States has decreased sharply over the past 25 years.”)

Later in the piece, Robert reveals, “I voted for Trump. I like Trump from when he was with ‘The Apprentice.’ I knew him as a businessperson. That’s why I voted for him. And then — oh, Lord — from church to every place, people just had a problem with it. You can’t have a different viewpoint.”

One interviewer asked questions like “What does it mean to be a man?” “Is masculinity important to you?” “Who would you all think of as good examples of masculinity or manliness these days? Who’s a good example?”

Responses to The Times’ piece were strong and appropriately unforgiving:

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/federal-judge-shoots-down-sarah-palins-request-for-new-defamation-trial-against-the-ny-times/

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no lnx twt

Analysis: why Sarah Palin’s painfully flawed NY Times lawsuit has hit a brick wall

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaking at a September 4, 2014 rally at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona, Gage Skidmore]

Alex Henderson February 15, 2022

On Valentine’s Day 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff announced that he is throwing out Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times — as the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee has failed to demonstrate that the Times acted with “malice” against her. Daily Beast reporter Pilar Melendez and Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple analyze this development in articles published after Rakoff’s ruling.

In her lawsuit, Palin alleged that the Times did more than screw up in its coverage of her — it acted with “malice.” But Rakoff, announcing his decision, said, “My job is to apply the law. The law sets a very high standard for actual malice, and in this case, the Court finds that standard has not been met.”

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Nonetheless, Rakoff allowed the jury to continue its deliberations on February 15.

“The dismissal does not exactly come as a shock — especially since Rakoff made a similar decision back in 2019 that was ultimately reversed by an appellate court,” Melendez explains. “Even Palin attorney Shane Vogt admitted during opening statements last week that the suit was unlikely to succeed, thanks to decades-old protections for journalists offered in part by a precedent involving the Times: the 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan ruling that established the standard for defaming public figures.”

It was the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 9-0 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan 58 years ago under Chief Justice Earl Warren that set the “malice” standard for a case like Palin’s lawsuit against the Times. Although Rakoff had some criticisms of the Times’ coverage of Palin when he announced his decision, he emphasized that the publication showed no signs of acting with “malice” as the former Alaska governor alleged.

Roy Gutterman, director of Syracuse University’s Tully Center for Free Speech in Upstate New York, agrees with Rakoff’s decision and told the Daily Beast, “Because the plaintiff here is a high-profile public official and figure, proving that the newspaper’s errors were a lot more than an honest mistake was a high burden she could not meet. This is the type of case that shows exactly why we have the actual malice standard under the First Amendment. Public officials have to overcome a high burden for a reason. An editing mistake, though ‘unfortunate,’ as the judge noted, is not proof of actual malice. This case will likely live on through appeals.”

[twt]

In his Post column, Wemple argues that Palin never showed that James Bennett, the Times’ former editorial page director, was “out to smear Palin.”

“Palin needed evidence — preferably in e-mail form — that Bennet was eager to nail Palin with something he knew was false: an ‘actual malice’ smoking gun,” Wemple observes. “Instead, she offered only e-mails outlining another day at the Times. Palin faced a ‘very high burden,’ acknowledged Rakoff, stressing that First Amendment law is designed to allow a ‘very robust debate involving, especially, people in power and that the whole point of the First Amendment as applied in that context would be undercut if the standard for libel and defamation were not as high as the Supreme Court decreed.’”

Wemple adds, “The journalistic implications of Rakoff’s ruling are wide-ranging. The timing of his announcement — which comes during the second day of jury deliberations — creates a problem for all parties. Figuring that the case will eventually be appealed, Rakoff said that the appeals court will benefit from having a jury verdict alongside his ruling. Should the jury rule for Palin, the appeals court could simply reinstate the jury action without having to order a new trial. All that said, does Rakoff really think that, in 2022, an un-sequestered jury won’t catch wind of his ruling?”

It remains to be seen what decision the jury will ultimately reach in Palin’s lawsuit. But one thing is for certain: Judge Rakoff clearly believes that from a defamation standpoint, she has failed to make her case.

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pissed off and lying about being quoted exactly by NYT? such usual target she thinks it will work?

Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel is outraged at The New York Times, claiming – falsely – that the paper's article on her resolution that claims January 6 participants were merely engaging in "legitimate political discourse" is "completely false" and "the worst type of baseless political propaganda."

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we got compromise version, orig stronger, expulsion from party?

comm dr 2 22 an

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1 22 an

[media crit]

Donald Trump went into the 2020 election with some of the worst approval ratings on record for a sitting president. He made virtually no effort to appeal to those who didn’t vote for him. How was he able to remain standing, and how did he even potentially have a chance at a second term even if he lost the popular vote? One big reason is that he and his acolytes had convinced their base that the media can’t be trusted.

As we know by now, whenever the media aired even mildly critical coverage of Trump or those who were supposedly helping him make America great again, the response on the right was some variation of “(noun) (verb) fake news!” Indeed, it’s almost an article of faith among the Republican base that the media can’t be trusted.

If your news diet consists of the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, right-wing social media, and Christian conservative outlets, you probably think that when the mainstream media isn’t making things up, it’s crossing lines that should never be crossed in order. But there’s one problem—with few exceptions, it’s right-wing media that engages in that very behavior. And while some of those elements are finally answering for the worst of their sins, others are long overdue for a dose of accountability.

Contrary to what Trump and his diehards would have us think, whenever mainstream media outlets make a mistake, those mistakes are usually corrected fairly quickly once caught.A case in point was a 2017 editorial in *The New York Times* that held 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin partly responsible for a grisly 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. The Old Grey Lady’s editorial board claimed that just days before the shooting, Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that placed stylized crosshairs on the districts of 19 Democratic House members. The implication was clear—that map was a big reason why one of those lawmakers, then-Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, nearly died that day.

That claim was slammed on all sides of the aisle, prompting the Times to partly retract the editorial within five hours of it going online. All of the inaccurate information was retracted within two days.Despite this, Palin sued the Times for defamation. As near as can be determined, Palin is suing because she didn’t just want the Times to retract, but to grovel. The suit was due to go to trial in late January, but was pushed back to early February after the rabidly anti-vaccine Palin caught COVID-19.

Palin faces tough sledding under current precedent for libel and defamation suits. As a public figure, she would have to prove that when the editorial board greenlighted the initial version of the editorial, it did so acting with actual malice. That is, Palin would have to convince a jury that the editorial board either knew the story was false or published it with reckless disregard for whether it was true or false. Remember, the statements at issue were retracted in almost no time at all in modern media terms. Her onlychance of winning is to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court in hopes of making it easier for public figures to win libel suits.

As it currently stands, Palin’s suit betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how media outlets with actual standards work. Indeed, the Times’ quick retraction stands in marked contrast to the behavior of celebrity gossip blog Gawker. In March 2016, Gawker was effectively forced out of business when it was ordered tocough up $140 million in damages to pro wrestler Hulk Hogan for posting a clip of a sex tape of Hogan. While its sister sites (such as sports culture blog Deadspin, tech blog Gizmodo, and feminist blog Jezebel) were sold to Univision at a bankruptcy auction, Gawker itself wasshut down that August. Ultimately, Gawker settled with Hogan for $31 million that November.

A number of observers slammed the verdict for itspotential chilling effect on freedom of the press, especially after billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thielrevealed that he had bankrolled the suit. Thiel openly admitted that he wanted to punish Gawker after its now-defunct tech gossip sister, Valleywag, outed him as gay in 2007. Indeed, in a post-mortem about Gawker on its last day of business, NPR media reporter David Folkenflikobserved that Thiel’s involvement in Hogan’s suit against Gawker portended “ugly implications for press freedom in light of adversaries with nearly infinite resources.”

At its peak in 2015, Gawker hadover 23 million visits per month, making it one of the most visited sites in the world. With that level of popularity, it’s only fair to wonder—why was no one willing to ride to Gawker’s rescue? Granted, potential buyers might have beenskittish about having to deal with the massive legal headache of a lawsuit bankrolled by a billionaire. But surely someone with the wherewithal to withstand Thiel’s resources would have rescued Gawker solely on the principle of defending freedom of the press, right?

By then, however, Gawker had lost a lot of goodwill as a result of two instances where its disregard for standards dating back to the days of typewriters and leaflets was exposed for all to see. In 2015, Gawker ran an article that claimed Conde Nast Chief Financial Officer David Geithner, the brother of President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was being extorted by a gay porn star and male escort. As the story goes, when Geithner reneged on a deal to meet up with the porn star on a trip to Chicago, the escort went to Gawker and offered to tell all. He supplied copies of text exchanges between himself and Geithner and a selfie that Geithner supposedly sent him.

When the story went live, the criticism came inhard,fast, and fromall directions.Most of the detractors argued that it served no public interest to even imply that Geithner was gay. For example, the University of Minnesota’s Jane Kirtley, a media law expert, told The Daily Beast that absent evidence that Geithner gave “preferential treatment to people in the hiring process” or was guilty of sexual harassment, she was “really hard-pressed” to see a legitimate reason for running the story.

But this story had a more fundamental problem than lack of public interest. It was sourced almost entirely from a guy who was extorting Geithner. Specifically, the bulk of the story came from texts provided to Gawker staff writer Jordan Sargent. Despite this, according to Mother Jones, Gawker took onlyone working day to research, vet, and fact-check the story before it went live.

A number of media experts found the rapid turnaround time for this story extremely problematic. Ken Paulson, former editor-in-chief of USA Today and current president of the First Amendment Center, told Mother Jones that stories that could even potentially wreck someone’s reputation “are typically vetted over a longer period.” Over that time, Paulson added, details could come up that “could give you pause about publishing.” First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams was interviewed in the same article, saying that when there is evidence of blackmail or extortion, it ought to be “a blinking yellow light, or even a blinking red light” to thoroughly vet it before you even consider publishing it.

Gawker’s defense, at the time, seemed to be that the story was true and nothing else mattered. In response to withering criticism—including from Gawker’s own readers—Natasha Vargas-Cooper of Jezebel harrumphed in a since-deleted tweet that in her mind, “if it’s true, you publish.”

The fact that Gawker seemed to justify this story simply because it was true appeared especially tone-deaf a mere four years after the News of the World wasforced out of existence due to rampant phone-hacking. Indeed, Gawker’s ethos appeared little different from that of WikiLeaks. By then, we’d known since at least 2010 that Julian Assange’s idea of transparency includedreleasing unredacted Social Security numbers—and dismissing any potential harm as “collateral damage.”

A mere 18 hours after the story went live, Gawker Media’s six-member managing partnershipvoted to remove it over thefurious objections of Gawker’s editorial staff. But when Gawker founder and CEO Nick Denton deliveredthe official explanation for removing the post, he proved that he still didn’t get it.

Denton said that the story about Geithner was “true and well reported,” which would have been enough to justify running it “in the early days of the Internet.” However, he said, “Gawker is no longer the insolent blog that began in 2003,” and this meant that potential stories “have to be true and interesting” in order to pass editorial muster. Denton went further in a memo to Gawker’s editorial team, saying that he was “ashamed” to have his name attached to the story, even if “we were within our legal right to publish.”

There are times when what was considered good reporting years ago is patently unacceptable now. For instance, the relentless coverage of Britney Spears in the early 2000swould never be tolerated today given greater awareness about mental health and sexism. But this didn’t even come close to being one of those times. By suggesting that an article that essentially amounted to aiding and abetting extortion would be even remotely acceptable in 2003, Denton made his statement announcing the article’s deletion amount to a non-apology apology. It also casts a pall on the good that Gawker actually did—like turning the hot lights on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s substance abuse, or revealing that Bill O’Reilly used his influence to start an investigation of his ex-wife’s boyfriend.

Soon after the furor over the Geithner article died down, it became even clearer just how serious Gawker’s cultural problem was. In July 2015, Vanity Fair writer Richard Lawsontweeted a mea culpa about his days at Gawker. He admitted that he’d written, on orders from his boss, “baseless posts accusing an actor of raping an ex-boyfriend.” That actor wasJames Franco.

From 2008 to around 2014, Gawker churned out a series of articles that attempted to out Franco. The first of these articles, penned by Lawson, was a follow-up to ablind item in the New York Postin which an unidentified actor reportedly broke into his former boyfriend’s apartment and violently raped him. Inhis article, Lawson mused that the three likely suspects were Will Smith, Christian Bale—and Franco.

Soon afterward, Lawsonwrote another article suggesting that based on Gawker commenters’ sentiment, “the people” felt Franco was a gay rapist. He then followed that up witha third article suggesting that the “gay rapist” Franco had actually been mentioned by the person who tipped off the Post about the supposed violent attack. If there is any difference between that article and Trump’s penchant for spewing baseless garbage that’s supposedly based on what “many people are saying,” I don’t see it.

Later, other Gawker writerspenned articles suggesting that Franco was gay, based on the thinnest reeds of evidence. According to The Daily Beast, this was part of Gawker’s “creepy obsession with outing closeted men.” Granted, Franco is no angel. In 2021, he not only settled a lawsuit alleging that he harassed several students at the acting school he ran from 2014 to 2017, but admitted sleeping with some of his students.

Seen in this light, it’s no wonder that it took more than six years and at least one false start for Gawker to be revived. It returned in the summer of 2021 as a sister publication to women’s magazine Bustle, who bought Gawker’s remains in 2019. One would have thought that given Gawker’s popularity, it would have been revived sooner. However, NPR’s Folkenflik noted that when Univision bought Gawker’s sister sites, it concluded that Gawker itself was “too toxic to touch.”

Given how long it took for Gawker to be revived, any potential white knights must have reached the same conclusion. Who would want to take on an organization that not only believed there was a time where extortion was at all acceptable, but had no qualms about running libel?

Indeed, even as I write this, the articles libeling Franco are still available on Gawker’s website. That contrasts sharply with how the Times handled the initial version of its editorial attack on Palin. Contrary to what she and her fellow deplorables would have us believe, mainstream media outlets have standards—and those that lack standards get culled.

The same, however, can’t be said for some mainstays of right-wing media. For instance, when former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore made a bid for the U.S. Senateseat that came open when Jeff Sessions was tapped as Trump’s attorney general, Breitbart led a relentless smear campaign against the women who claimed Moore sexually assaulted them or pursued improper relationships with them. And it did so even though its editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow,believed at least one of the accusers was credible.

Marlow made this shocking assertion in an interview with CNN’s Oliver Darcy in December 2017, a month after Moore’s narrow loss to Democrat Doug Jones. He revealed that he believed that Moore’s initial accuser, Leigh Corfman, had “a lot of credibility.” Corfman, you may recall, claimed Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 14.

By admitting that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible even as Breitbart was smearing them, Marlow effectively put big, fat asterisks by every story Breitbart ran about the election. Victim shaming is bad enough, but doing so when you have reason to believe a victim is telling the truth is absolutely heinous. It’s even more so considering that Marlow admitted Breitbart went all-in for Moore to protect Trump.

Project Veritas also joined in on this disgraceful campaign. Its ringleader, James O’Keefe, even went as far as having one of his minions, Jaime Phillips, try to plant a bogus story in The Washington Postclaiming that Moore had impregnated her.But that story came apart when the Post did some actual journalism and discovered Phillips’ story had more red flags than a lifetime of Alabama football games. Most damningly, Phillips had created a GoFundMe page boasting about her goal to join “the conservative media movement” in exposing “the liberal MSM.”

To pile obscenity on top of insult, O’Keefe revealed in December 2017 that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible. And yet, he felt compelled to smear them because—wait for it—he felt their credibility was “not my subject matter,” and his real goal was exposing “bias in the media.” So the man whose stock in trade is targeting journalists for supposed bias admitted that doing so was so important that he felt compelled to shame victims that he believed were credible. Let that sink in.

To give you an idea how outrageous Breitbart and Project Veritas’ behavior was here, imagine if every news outlet that passed on the prospect of exposing Harvey Weinstein’s depravities had reason to believe Weinstein’s accusers were credible—and yet ran stories effectively calling them liars. It makes Palin’s squawking about theTimes’ failure to basically grovel before her look hypocritical as all hell.

Fortunately, at least two other members of the deplorable fever swamp are facing long-overdue accountability. Take InfoWars, for instance. Even after Alex Jones was kicked off mainstream social media and blackballed from smartphone app stores, it looked like he was going to continue his years-long promotion of conspiracy theories and hate speech—albeit with a much reduced audience.

But what may have been the beginning of the end for Jones came in 2018, not long after Facebook and YouTube gave him the boot. Several families of Sandy Hook victims, along with an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones for defamation. Specifically, they wanted Jones held to account for his numerous claims that the Sandy Hook victims and survivors were “crisis actors.” These claims have resulted in the survivors being relentlessly harassed and trolled. The family of Noah Pozner, for instance, has had to move numerous times due to the harassment, and now live under high security in an undisclosed location. They have never been able to visit their son’s grave.

A series of legal reversals for Jones and InfoWars culminated in the fall of 2021. That September, a Texas judge issued three default judgments against Jones and InfoWars in two defamation suits filed by Sandy Hook families. The judge had lost patience with Jones’ refusal to turn over documents, and found it egregious enough to conclude that Jones had already lost. In November, a Connecticut judge issued a default judgment in a suit filed against Jones in another lawsuit. While damages will be determined at trial later this year, they are likely to add up to hundreds of millions of dollars—in all likelihood, enough to put InfoWars out of business.

Another fixture of the deplorable fever swamp, Gateway Pundit, may also face extinction after beingsued for orchestrating a vicious trolling campaign that falsely accused Georgia election workers of stealing their state for Joe Biden. The two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, claim that Gateway Pundit started a flood of disinformation that reached all the way to Trump, who attacked Freeman by name in his now-infamous attempt to shake down Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Dozens of bogus stories about Freeman and Moss resulted in death threats, doxing, and kidnapping attempts, among other things. Rather than apologize, Gateway Pundit actually tried to raise money off the lawsuit, netting over $81,000. If there is any justice, though, that fundraising effort will be a futile exercise. Gateway Pundit and its impresarios, the Hoft brothers, ought to get a very hard lesson on why private citizens only need to prove negligence in order to win libel suits.

The Times moves in almost no time at all by current media standards to retract claims about Palin—and yet, Breitbart, Project Veritas, and Gateway Pundit refuse to even attempt to apologize for far worse. What’s wrong with this picture?

The answer to that question is simpler than you may think. For all the caterwauling we hear from the right about the media not having any standards, we have seen instance after instance where the media has shown it actually does. Moreover, whenever elements of the mainstream press show they don’t have standards, they are weeded out. The demise of Gawker is a stark example of what happens when you catapult your way into the mainstream, only to show you have little regard for basic standards of decency.

If we are to remove the tinder from our politics, we must subject the media to the same level of accountability that Gawker faced, and what InfoWars is more than likely to face. As Gawker learned in 2016, that standard ought to apply regardless of political shade. But if Palin and other right-wingers are willing to take off their blinders, they would see that their own side of the media divide is long overdue for a cleaning.

Poll 426 votes Show Results

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/an-outrageous-affront-to-the-first-amendment-judge-slammed-for-blocking-ny-times-from-publishing-project-veritas-materials/

New York Times recently obtained memos written by an attorney for the far-right group Project Veritas. But on Thursday, November 18, Justice Charles Wood of the Westchester County Supreme Court, according to Reuters, blocked the Times from publishing some of the materials on Veritas that it obtained — and the publication is vowing to fight back.

In a statement on Wood's decision, Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet complained, "This ruling is unconstitutional and sets a dangerous precedent. When a court silences journalism, it fails its citizens and undermines their right to know. The Supreme Court made that clear in the Pentagon Papers case, a landmark ruling against prior restraint blocking the publication of newsworthy journalism. That principle clearly applies here. We are seeking an immediate review of this decision."

Back in 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Warren Burger ruled against the Nixon Administration's efforts to prevent the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers — a U.S. Department of Defense history of the United States' activities in Vietnam from 1945-1967. But the Burger Court, in New York Times Co. v. United States, ruled 6-3 in favor of the Times. The three dissenters were Burger, Justice Harry Blackmun (a Nixon appointee) and Justice John M. Harlan (appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955).

Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, has been vehemently critical of Wood's decision. In an official statement, Brown warned, "This is the first prior restraint entered against the New York Times since the Pentagon Papers, and it is an outrageous affront to the First Amendment."

Founded by far-right activist James O'Keefe in 2010, Project Veritas has drawn a great deal of criticism for editing videos in misleading ways and for its sleazy efforts to discredit Democrats and media organizations.

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heated 11 21

no lnx email

How Exxon duped "The Daily"

The New York Times' popular podcast aired a misleading climate ad during COP26, despite policies designed to prevent misinformation.

Emily Atkin

Nov 17

The corporate logo of the New York Times hangs above the front door of their headquarters on October 23, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

The New York Times’s podcast The Daily is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Each day, millions of people tune in for a deep-dive news story—plus three uninterrupted messages from a trusted advertising partner.

Early last week, that partner was ExxonMobil, the world’s fourth most-polluting fossil fuel company. In paid audio messages that aired amid high-stakes climate negotiations in Scotland, the oil giant sought to convince The Daily’s audience it was moving toward a safe climate future.

The ad appeared to violate The Daily’s policy against fossil fuel sponsorships, which the Times itself revealed earlier this year. In response to growing concerns that oil ads misinform people about the climate crisis, the paper said it “does not allow oil and gas companies to sponsor its climate newsletter, its climate summit, or its podcast ‘The Daily.’”

In an e-mailed statement to HEATED, however, Times Communications Director Nicole Taylor said oil advertisements are still allowed on the podcast. “We do not allow oil and gas companies to sponsor The Daily wholesale,” but “Any company can place spot advertising within The Daily podcast, as long as it meets our advertising acceptability guidelines.”

Asked to explain the difference between a sponsorship or advertisement—and why the Times banned one and not the other—Taylor doubled down on the integrity of the paper’s advertising policies. The Times ”prohibits advertising that is intentionally misleading, deceptive, or contains false information,” she said. “Ads submitted to The New York Times are reviewed by an advertising standards team and are subject to fact-checking.”

But the fact remains that a highly misleading Exxon ad aired on The Daily last week, which means one of two things: Either the New York Times is bad at fact-checking, or Exxon has them fooled just as well as the public.

The Exxon ad that aired last Monday and Tuesday on The Daily reads as follows:

A number of climate experts agree that carbon capture and storage is crucial to reducing emissions to combat climate change.

That’s why ExxonMobil is working to deploy this technology at scale for the highest-emitting sectors.

It can remove more than 90% of CO2 emissions from carbon-intensive industries,

which can help lower the carbon footprint of many everyday things,

like the roads we drive on and devices we all rely on.

Learn more about how ExxonMobil is advancing climate solutions, like carbon capture and storage, at ExxonMobil dot com slash solutions.

“There’s so many misleading aspects to this ad,” said Ben Franta, who studies the history of climate disinformation at Stanford University. Because of its strategically vague language and presentation of micro-facts without context, he said, “You read it and it gives you the impression that carbon capture is new and effective and we’re gonna scale it up, when in reality none of that is the case.”

For Exxon’s ad in The Daily to be accurate, it would have to read something like this:

A number of climate experts agree that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is crucial to reducing emissions to combat climate change. But it’s a small number, and it’s always only when paired with significant fossil fuel reductions, which Exxon is actively fighting against.

That’s why ExxonMobil is working to deploy this technology at scale for the highest-emitting sectors. But it’s at a place too slow to make any sort of difference. Exxon is currently capturing less than 1% of its annual emissions, and most of that carbon is being used to produce more oil. Exxon is working much harder to keep emitting.

It can remove more than 90% of CO2 emissions from carbon-intensive industries. Yeah, and my body can technically perform a backflip, but it’s never actually done one before. The technology that could do this on a significant level does not yet exist. There is one estimate that says a single CCS plant could theoretically reduce 90 percent of one single industrial plant’s emissions— but it’s never happened, and it’s highly debatable. Also, absolutely no one thinks CCS could ever capture 90 percent of all industrial emissions, which this cleverly-worded sentence falsely implies.

It can help lower the carbon footprint of many everyday things, like the roads we drive on and devices we all rely on. Carbon capture can’t be used on cars. Roads and devices are not a significant source of carbon emissions.

Learn more about how ExxonMobil is advancing climate solutions, like carbon capture and storage, at ExxonMobil dot com slash solutions. We provide no information about how we’re advancing climate destruction.

Most people who listen to The Daily aren’t experts on carbon capture. So unless they had done a good amount of research on their own, they likely wouldn’t pick up on how misleading the Exxon ad was.

Indeed, in this case, Exxon used the truth’s complexity to its advantage. It submitted an ad that was simple and easy to understand, yet difficult to debunk in a similarly easy and digestible way.

But this is the New York Times we’re talking about. If anyone should be able to separate complicated truth from fiction, shouldn’t it be them?

How did Exxon’s misleading ad get past the Times’ supposedly stringent advertising standards? Could it be that the paper’s standards aren’t that stringent in the first place?

The Times’ advertising guidelines prohibit content that’s “intentionally misleading.” But it’s unclear how the Times determines intent. “The real question should be if the ad is misleading in effect,” said Genevieve Gunther, the activist leading the Ads Not Fit to Print campaign. Otherwise, oil companies will always be allowed to mislead Times readers about climate change.

Times spokesperson Taylor also only said advertising was “subject to fact-checking.” She did not clarify if all ads are fact-checked. Taylor also did not explain the Times’ fact-checking standards. Are these holistic fact-checks an article might go through? Or are they legal checks to make sure nothing will get them in trouble?

Exxon’s ad in The Daily used a common climate misinformation technique called “paltering.” No individual sentence was 100 percent false, but together they created a misleading impression of the company and its climate efforts. If the Times’ fact-checks are only legal in nature, paltering would easily and always slip through. Oil companies would always be able to pay the Times to misrepresent themselves.

But the issue could also simply be that no one on the Times advertising team believes Exxon’s ads are misleading. They could actually believe one of the world’s biggest climate polluters is working hard to capture their emissions. They could actually believe that humanity can preserve a safe climate while continuing to produce and burn fossil fuels. They could actually believe an effective solution lies in a highly expensive technology that mostly does not exist.

Whatever the explanation, though, the result remains the same: the nation’s most-trusted news platform is exposing millions of people to misinformation about a crisis that grows deadlier and deadlier by the day.

As the climate crisis grows deadlier, the campaign against fossil fuel advertising grows louder. Last month, green groups in Europe launched what Reuters called “the boldest salvo” against fossil fuel advertising yet—a campaign to force the European Commission to take up a law against the practice. Last week, activists in America launched a new initiative targeting PR giant Edelman for producing Exxon ads. The company announced it would undergo a 60-day review of its client roster just a few days after.

The reason is the same as ever. “These adverts are misrepresenting the true nature of companies’ businesses, of their contribution to climate change, and of their transition plans,” said Johnny White, a lawyer for ClientEarth, which successfully forced BP to withdraw some of its misleading climate advertising last year. By misrepresenting their business, he said, oil company advertising “distracts the public” from reality. “We cannot underestimate the real world impact this advertising has on the pace of change.”

The Times remains under pressure from Ads Not Fit to Print, the activist campaign run by Gunther. And the campaign is having an effect beyond the paper. “I’ve had many calls with journalists at other news outlets in the past month, taking about how they feel this is an important issue and how it’s creating momentum in their newsroom,” she said. “It’s really opened up a conversation about journalistic responsibility during a crisis.”

Gunther’s main target, however, is the Times. “The pressure is only going to increase,” she said. “Especially in the wake of COP26, the Times needs to join the reality-based community and understand that climate change is real, fossil fuels are the primary cause, and to be promoting these products is a moral failing and reprehensible policy for any newspaper that purports to report the truth.”

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julie h fair

an 121

the media seem to have finally found the line they won't abide crossing. After both sides–ing the political situation for four years of Donald Trump, the storming of the Capitol by an armed rebellion incited by Trump himself has brought out swift and strong words[wapo op ed pix

...always bear the stigma of having contributed to the day's shameful events."

"Trump Caused the Assault on the Capitol. He Must Be Removed," declared the Washington Post editorial board (1/6/21). "Responsibility for this act of sedition lies squarely with the president, who has shown that his continued tenure in office poses a grave threat to US democracy," they wrote. "He should be removed." They continued:

The president is unfit to remain in office for the next 14 days. Every second he retains the vast powers of the presidency is a threat to public order and national security. Vice President Pence, who had to be whisked off the Senate floor for his own protection, should immediately gather the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, declaring that Mr. Trump is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

The Post deplored GOP lawmakers like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley who continued to press their baseless attempt to overturn the election, and praised Mitch McConnell, who "to his lasting credit" did not join them, even if, as they noted, "almost all" GOP members "bear some blame for what occurred on Wednesday." The Republicans, the paper wrote, have an "overriding responsibility to the nation: stopping Mr. Trump and restoring faith in democracy."

It's a surprisingly forceful position. At the same time, imagine if the paper—and the rest of the establishment media—had taken the GOP's threat to democracy seriously before it reached the point of the president inciting an armed insurrection on Capitol Hill.Yesterday's events were the logical outcome of years of the GOP and Trump casting aside institutional rules and norms one by one with increasing boldness, as the press corps described this increasingly authoritarian behavior as "us[ing] all of the levers of his power" (FAIR.org, 10/15/20), and years of giving Trump and his allies space to make their bogus claims of election fraud (FAIR.org, 9/15/20). The media's long history of both sides–ing the issue of purported election fraud (Extra!, 11–12/08, 10/12; CounterSpin, 10/21/16) paved the way for Trump's mythology that has seduced a breathtakingly—and dangerously—large proportion of the public.

Imagine if corporate media didn't praise McConnell, Lindsey Graham or any other Republicans who propped up Trump's dangerous lies for so long, for finally turning on him. Do they really believe we could have gotten to this point if McConnell and the rest of the party hadn't gone along with Trump's dangerously escalating lies–not just for the last several weeks, but for the last four years? If you keep your foot on the gas as the car speeds toward a cliff, but jump out a few seconds before you reach the edge, do you really deserve "lasting credit" for that?

The real test of corporate media will be not whether they are able to forcefully condemn a president's seditious acts, but whether they go back to business as usual after Trump is gone, pretending that the GOP, a disturbing number of whose members in Congress still pushed to overturn the election after the armed insurrection, is a democratic party that can be counted on to restore faith in democracy. [pix op ed]

new York Times (1/5/20): "More than 150 Republican lawmakers have signed on to reject the votes of tens of millions of Americans."

The Times editorial board, while silent so far after the events of yesterday, did publish a fairly benign opinion the day before ("Trump Still Says He Won. What Happens Next?"—1/5/20), whose optimism clearly didn't take seriously the extensive planning underway in broad daylight on right-wing websites: "The Republican effort to derail Congress's electoral vote count on Wednesday will fail, and President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in at noon on January 20, as the Constitution commands."

The Times could only muster the courage to say that "there is a strong argument" for impeachment (linking to an op-ed they published on January 4) without actually making that argument themselves; the piece concluded by praising Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for resisting Trump's corrupt attempts at overturning the election results, and lamenting, "If only that weren't extraordinary in the Republican Party today."

What's missing so far is a mea culpa from the media for its own role in normalizing the GOP's long-term efforts to drag this country toward authoritarian rule—and their cynical enjoyment of the ratings bonanza provided by the enthralling spectacle of Trump's assault on democracy (FAIR.org, 3/1/16). Instead, we have the editor of Columbia Journalism Review (11/4/20) castigating the press for spending too much time in the past four years on Trump's "infinite faults," and not enough trying to understand Trump supporters (FAIR.org, 11/16/20).

Kudos to the Washington Post for finally calling for a political reckoning. Now it's time for you to call for a media reckoning.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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an 1120

NYT fact-checks Trump with epic front-page banner: ‘Election officials nationwide find no fraud'

Bob Brigham Salon

November 11, 2020

President Donald Trump will awake on Wednesday to a brutal banner headline in The New York Times.

"Election officials in dozens of states representing both political parties said that there was no evidence that...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/nytimes-investigation-finds-trump-administration-was-desperate-to-shift-blame-for-a-crisis-of-its-own-creation/

Conducting over two dozen interviews with senior administration and public health officials, and consulting a cache of previously unavailable documents, the New York Times has uncovered what now seems obvious to everyone except perhaps Trump’s dwindling and ignorant base of supporters: the Trump administration deliberately sought to shift blame for its botched handling of the Covid-19 pandemic to the states, in what theTimes authors aptly characterize as a “catastrophic policy blunder” and “one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations.”

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A team in the White House led by President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, met daily on the crisis, but the ultimate goal was shifting responsibility. “They referred to this as ‘state authority handoff,’ and it was at once a catastrophic policy blunder and an attempt to escape blame for a crisis that had engulfed the country — perhaps one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations,” write Michael D. Shear, Noah Weiland, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and David E. Sanger.

Other than Trump himself, two of the officialstaking a lead role in causing this catastrophe, according to the Times, were Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House Coronavirus Task Force leader Deborah Birx. Birx’s role in delivering deliberately upbeat information to Trump (in the face of dire negative news directly to the contrary) played a major role in Trump’s decision-making, according to the Times, which refers to her as the “chief evangelist” portraying the threat from the virus as “fading.” (The Times article in fact contains an entire, devastating segment explicating Birx’s influence on the policy; she declined to be interviewed for the article).

For scientific affirmation, they turned to Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the sole public health professional in the Meadows group. A highly regarded infectious diseases expert, she was a constant source of upbeat news for the president and his aides, walking the halls with charts emphasizing that outbreaks were gradually easing. The country, she insisted, was likely to resemble Italy, where virus cases declined steadily from frightening heights.

As late as April 11, Birx was telling Trump that the “nation was in good shape,” while Meadows was casting the handling of the crisis in ideological terms, as an issue that the states should handle, rather than the federal government. Birx was also largely instrumental in developing a plan that shunted responsibility for the pandemic away from the federal government and onto the cash-strapped states. Not surprisingly, these were the exact types of messages guaranteed to please Trump (who from Timesinvestigation was clearly too uninterested and self-absorbed to interpret any data himself).

Over a critical period beginning in mid-April, President Trump and his team convinced themselves that the outbreak was fading, that they had given state governments all the resources they needed to contain its remaining “embers” and that it was time to ease up on the lockdown.

The results of this deliberate exercise in self-delusion manifested themselves in an overall attempt to minimize the necessity of lockdowns and social distancing, with the catastrophic results we are now witnessing today. Importantly,the Times investigation makes clear that Trump’s policy was not simply a matter of misjudgments, but “a deliberate strategy that he would stick doggedly to as evidence mounted that, in the absence of strong leadership from the White House, the virus would continue to infect and kill large numbers of Americans.”

It was also a strategy designed solely with Trump’s re-election prospects in mind, and extended to deliberately and “disdainfully” ignoring scientific studies which contradicted the Trump line, “muzzling” voices advocating a more safety-oriented approach, and “continu[ing]to distort reality even as it became clear that his hopes for a rapid rebound in the economy and his electoral prospects were not materializing.”

The Times’ report includes several facts not previously disclosed. First, nearly the entirety of the administration’s policy was formulated by aides with no public health or scientific background whatsoever. Second, Trump’s perverse “campaign” against testing was intentional and in fact directly related to shifting wholesale responsibility to individual states so that he, Trump, would not be blamed for the catastrophe.  Third, the silencing of Fauci through limiting his media appearances was deliberate as they were afraid he would “go off message” and start telling Americans the truth about skyrocketing infection rates; and fourth, California’s governor was told by administration officials that if he wanted bulk deliveries of nasal swabs to test for Covid-19 infections, he would have to call Trump personally and thank him before they would be delivered.

The article also confirms that it was Jared Kushner, as well as administration officials acting on his cues, who was largely influential at the federal level in depriving states of the number of tests necessary to adequately combat the virus.

But the enabler of the administration’s failure, at least according to the emphasis implicit within theTimes’report, was Birx. It was Birx who came up with the language referring to individual hotspots and outbreaks as “embers” that simply needed to be tamped down. She repeatedly and persistently likened the situation in the U.S. to the experience of Italy, which turned out to be disastrously wrong. She ignored warnings that the models she continually hyped to White House Officials might not be accurate. The authors of the University of Washington model, in particular, were alarmed when administration officials began using their model to try to predict what would occur if social distancing measures were abandoned.

TheTimesarticle is a devastating portrait of a slow-motion train-wreck in the making, with the health and safety of the American public repeatedly treated as an afterthought to Donald Trump’s political fortunes.

Unfortunately, as we now know, that train is now bearing down on all of us.

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new York Times editorial page editor James Bennet resigned as a result of the horrifying op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton calling for military action against protesters.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/ralph-nader-here-is-trumps-top-betrayal/

...Devastating critics like Dana Milbank, Republican Michael Gerson, Eugene Robinson, Margaret Sullivan, and conservative Max Boot of the Washington Post, or Charles Blow, Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd andNicholas Kristof of the New York Times have cogently taken Trump apart on very serious matters since 2017, yet they leave their readers without the obvious conclusion -Trump has to go.  A clear daily peril to innocent Americans “I’m in total control”, why not try bleach, etc. The country cannot wait until January 2021 – assuming dictatorial Donald and his determined GOP don’t criminally suppress enough votes to postpone Trump’s departure until January 2025.

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an vox 520 no lnx

you probably saw Donald Trump’s ridiculous, false and deadly claim last week: that ingesting chemical cleaners could cure humans of the coronavirus. At a White House press briefing on Thursday (4/23/20), the president said:

I see disinfectant, where it knocks it [coronavirus] out in a minute—one minute—and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it [coronavirus] gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that.

He also suggested that exposing patients to bright lights could help cure them, once again confusing what works on surfaces like tables with the inside of a human body.

It’s worth taking a step back for a second and pausing on the fact that the person in charge of the United States thinks injecting bleach might be a good idea. Trump has consistently spread false information about the pandemic, claiming in February that it would be gone by April due to the warmer weather, and insisting that “we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.”

His pronouncements have already been fatal: After promoting the drug chloroquine, an Arizona man died and his wife was hospitalized after they ingested fish tank cleaner that contained the substance. Surely more deadly but harder to quantify are his outbursts proclaiming that states should “LIBERATE” themselves from oppressive lockdown measures (some of the lightest in the developed world), encouraging people to go out and demonstrate, thereby spreading the virus.

Unfortunately, for journalists stuck in a corporate media system that promotes deference to authority and finds equivalency even when there is none, the president’s dangerous ramblings need to be treated as legitimate and worthy of discussion, even in apparently adversarial media. Vox (4/23/20), for example, said that it was only “highly unlikely that injecting humans with disinfectants will turn out to be a safe or effective treatment.” The Washington Post (4/24/20) described Trump’s statement as an “unsubstantiated and potentially dangerous” idea. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is not “highly unlikely” but impossible, and Trump’s idea is not merely “potentially” dangerous: No amount of bleach is safe to inject into your body. It will kill human beings, as chemical cleaning product manufacturers immediately warned. (The Post did include a disclaimer: “Do not ingest any bleach or disinfectant.”)

Despite this, USA Today (4/24/20) presented the story as a he-said she-said between two opposing views,describing (4/24/20) Trump’s ludicrous outburst merely as “the latest in a pattern of questionable claims.” “We should inject bleach for our health” is not a “questionable” claim, and would not be treated as such if someone without power or influence made it.

NYT: Trump Muses About Light as Remedy, but Also Disinfectant, Which Is Dangerous

The New York Times(4/24/20) referred to the idea that injecting bleach into your body may cure the coronavirus as an “unproven treatment.”

Perhaps the worst offender of phony both-sidesism, however, was the New York Times (4/24/20), which described the president as “eagerly theorizing—dangerously, in the view of some experts—about the powers of sunlight, ultraviolet light and household disinfectants to kill the coronavirus.”

In other words: “Can injecting bleach kill you? On the one hand, definitely yes. On the other, here is a dummy who thinks it will save you from Covid–19, so let’s teach the controversy.” Refusing to state categorically that ingesting known deadly substances is a bad idea, the wording of the Times article suggests that only “some experts” disagree with the idea, while there are other, pro-bleach drinking authorities out there.

After widespread pushback on social media, the Times amended the offending paragraph, but, if anything, made it worse, changing it to Trump “eagerly theorizing about treatments involving the powers of sunlight, ultraviolet light and household disinfectant that could be harmful if they were used to try to kill the coronavirus.” Injecting bleach “could” be harmful under certain circumstances, but who knows? Certainly not us at the New York Times.

This sort of reporting would be absurd beyond belief in other circumstances involving people without serious power. For example, there were no Times reports stating that, “at the Jonestown camp in Guyana, Rev. Jones eagerly theorized about the benefits of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid that could be harmful in certain circumstances.”

Even CNN’s Anderson Cooper (4/23/20), who has emerged as one of Trump’s most visible and aggressive critics, was anxious not to give an opinion, so strong is the culture of supposed “neutrality” in journalism. He asked his guest, “Is there any evidence about taking a disinfectant that’s used on the table where I’m sitting, and using it internally? That doesn’t seem like a good idea. Am I wrong?”

Cooper, like any adult, knows full well that it is a bad idea, but the spectacle of a CNN anchor asking a doctor about drinking bleach is a bizarre example of what can happen when you combine practices of deference to authority, both-sidesism, and a pretense of neutrality.

The failure of corporate media to call a spade a spade for fear of losing their status as objective arbiters of news has, of late, led to clearly racist actions and statements being laundered as “racially charged” or “racially tinged” or even just “race-related” (FAIR.org, 4/5/19, 11/1/19; CounterSpin, 7/23/19). Likewise, ICE concentration camps are described as “detention centers” (CounterSpin, 1/5/20), which has the effect of making them sound like places unruly school kids who fail to do their homework are sent.

To corporate media: It is OK. Facts are facts, even when the president of the United States disagrees. You don’t have to both-sides this one. Injecting bleach is bad.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/nyt-slammed-for-terminal-both-sides-ism-after-reporting-on-trumps-household-disinfectant-suggestion/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/elite-media-dismiss-voter-suppression-on-grounds-that-its-complicated

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Elite media dismiss voter suppression on grounds that it’s ‘complicated’

Written by Julie Hollar / FAIR March 14, 2020

Some voters—disproportionately black and brown ones—waited in line for several hours on Super Tuesday to cast their ballots in the Democratic primary, and media paid attention. But their love for a good visual doesn’t always correspond with a love for connecting the dots, and so most of the coverage downplayed any suggestion that there might be voter suppression going on in 2020.

NYT: Why Did It Take So Long to Vote in Texas and California?

The New York Times (3/4/20) assured us that voting problems were not caused by “deliberate efforts to drive down turnout.”

“Why Did It Take So Long to Vote in Texas and California?” asked a New York Times headline (3/4/20), which offered a reassuring answer in its subhead: “Some voters stood in lines for hours. But despite voter suppression concerns, the primary breakdowns apparently reflected snafus more than malign intent.” Reporter Michael Wines explained:

Some critics complained on Twitter and elsewhere that the delays amounted to voter suppression in a state where Republicans have been frequently sued, sometimes successfully, for trying to minimize Democratic power. But Texas elections are tightly controlled by local officials, not state ones. And in big cities like Houston and Austin which had the biggest problems on Tuesday, those officials are Democrats with scant reason to depress turnout in Democratic urban strongholds.

And yet, in the very next paragraph, Wines reported that “voting machines were divided equally between Democratic and Republican voters—but many more Democrats turned out to vote on Tuesday,” later explaining that

the imbalance stemmed from the county Republican Party’s refusal to agree with Democrats to hold a joint primary election in metropolitan Houston in which voters could cast ballots on any machine. All but a handful of the state’s 254 counties held joint primaries.

The article’s final paragraph noted that the Houston voting site at historically black Texas Southern University, where people waited up to seven hours to vote,

allotted 10 voting machines to each party, and eventually added 14 additional machines for Democratic voters, she said. But of those who showed up on Tuesday, 1,132 voted in the Democratic primary. Sixty-eight voted for Republican candidates.

WaPo: Long voting lines in Texas spotlight concerns about access to the polls

The Washington Post (3/4/20) blamed long voting lines on ” a number of complicated factors.”

It’s a curiously stark mismatch between evidence and conclusions, a phenomenon repeated in the Washington Post (3/4/20), where reporter Elise Viebeck likewise took issue with those suggesting voter suppression was happening:

One of the remaining Democrats in the presidential field—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—seized on the episode, tweeting that it revealed a “crisis of voter suppression.”

However, interviews with election officials, activists and voters pointed to a number of complicated factors that combined to produce the massive lines in Harris County.

(The print version’s lead: “Voter suppression came to mind for some, but the reality was complicated.”)

Like Wines, Viebeck noted the Harris County GOP’s refusal to hold a joint primary, and that, after the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act, Texas closed 750 polling places—more than any other state.

A Houston Chronicle article (3/4/20) about the situation slightly complicated the question of responsibility for giving equal numbers of machines to each party (reporting that though Republicans refused the joint primary, which would have prevented the problem, they were given more machines than they asked for, because the Democratic county clerk’s office worried about charges of discrimination), but it also pointed out that “almost two-thirds of the county’s voting centers were in county commissioner precincts in west Harris County held by Republicans.”

Sure, there were plenty of technological snafus and administrative errors—and those certainly need to be highlighted, so that pressure is put on election officials to fix them—but why pooh-pooh charges of voter suppression when voter suppression (which often masquerades as bureaucratic incompetence) is also an undeniable problem?

MSNBC: Lawrence O'Donnell on Super Tuesday

Lawrence O’Donnell (MSNBC, 3/3/20) on long Super Tuesday lines: “They’re all kind of excited about this.”

Others went so far as to celebrate the lines. On MSNBC (3/3/20), Lawrence O’Donnell reported:

My phone is filled with texts from people, friends of mine in those lines. I have one from a Hollywood polling place where the casting director is in a conversation with a cinematographer and a math teacher and someone who was an undecided voter an hour ago in that line. And she says they just realized and only just realized that they’ve been on the line for two hours, because it’s been so much fun…. I’ve got one from a very affluent community in the Pacific Palisades, a director who’s been in line for two hours. He’s not complaining. They’re all kind of excited about this.

It’s charitable that the affluent aren’t complaining about standing in line for hours (as no one should face obstacles to vote)—but they’re also typically not worried about getting fired or missing a paycheck for doing so. Oblivious to this reality, O’Donnell also dismissed the idea that a city should be expected to make it possible for all of its citizens to vote:

And the infrastructure for voting in Los Angeles is a difficult one to maintain. Because on the last mayoral election, this is the election for the mayor of Los Angeles, the voter turnout was 20%. And so to build an infrastructure in Los Angeles that is capable of handling this giant surge turnout that they’re getting tonight is impossible.

To be fair, most journalists were more concerned than O’Donnell about people’s access to democracy, but they were still remarkably disinterested in asking how the concerted (and partisan) efforts to suppress turnout post-Shelby are playing out in 2020. In the Super Tuesday coverage, NBC (3/4/20) was the only broadcast network to air the words “voter suppression” (in a quote from a voter standing in line in Texas), in a segment less than two minutes long that noted the elimination of many voting centers in both Texas and California, but didn’t mention the partisan nature of that act in Texas, instead characterizing it as simply “designed to make voting easier.”

NYT: The Student Vote Is Surging. So Are Efforts to Suppress It.[prev]

The New York Times‘ earlier reporting (10/24/19) on efforts to suppress the student vote did not inform coverage of lower-than-expected youth turnout in the 2020 primaries.

The failure to connect the dots extends to coverage of lower-than-expected turnout, in particular youth turnout. Plenty of reporters seized on early turnout numbers to point out that Bernie Sanders’ campaign is failing in its goal of mobilizing youth and other traditionally low-turnout groups, but rarely do they look at the relationship between turnout and suppression—despite the fact that those groups typically face more obstacles to voting.

And Wines’ dismissal of suspicions of voter suppression on the grounds that urban polling places are controlled by Democrats seems to willfully ignore the fact that establishment Democrats often have a strong incentive to make sure that older Democrats vote more than young ones—and have been known to manipulate the voting process to their own advantage (City & State, 11/6/18).

In fact, the Times‘ coverage was even more remarkable, given Wines’ insightful reporting months earlier about efforts to suppress the student vote in Texas and several other states (10/24/19), in which he noted that recently enacted “restrictions fit an increasingly unabashed pattern of Republican politicians’ efforts to discourage voters likely to oppose them.”

There surely are multiple reasons for lower-than-hoped-for turnout that no doubt intersect with each other, including both obstacles to voting and failure (or lack) of efforts to mobilize voters; it’s instructive to see where journalists instinctively turn to look for the culprit. Particularly post-Shelby, ID requirements, poll closures and voter roll purges have ramped up, inevitably taking a toll on democratic access. As Emory University’s Carol Anderson recently told Counterspin (3/3/20) about voter suppression:

To see the overall pattern, and continuing to hammer it home, about what is at stake in this democracy…requires good investigative journalism, it requires going beyond the soundbite, it requires a clarion call: This nation is in danger.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/under-fire-botched-response-coronavirus-trump-tried-blame-obama-ny-times

https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/ny-times-piece-bernie-sanders-and-soviet-union-should-never-have-been-published

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/business/deutsche-bank-trump-kushner.html

Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts

Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank employee, saw potentially suspicious transactions involving the company of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, she said.

Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank employee, saw potentially suspicious transactions involving the company of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, she said.Credit...Willie J. Allen Jr. for The New York Times

By David Enrich

May 19, 2019

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.

The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.

But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government.

The nature of the transactions was not clear. At least some of them involved money flowing back and forth with overseas entities or individuals, which bank employees considered suspicious.

Real estate developers like Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner sometimes do large, all-cash deals, including with people outside the United States, any of which can prompt anti-money laundering reviews. The red flags raised by employees do not necessarily mean the transactions were improper. Banks sometimes opt not to file suspicious activity reports if they conclude their employees’ concerns are unwarranted.

But former Deutsche Bank employees said the decision not to report the Trump and Kushner transactions reflected the bank’s generally lax approach to money laundering laws. The employees — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve their ability to work in the industry — said it was part of a pattern of the bank’s executives rejecting valid reports to protect relationships with lucrative clients.

“You present them with everything, and you give them a recommendation, and nothing happens,” said Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank anti-money laundering specialist who reviewed some of the transactions. “It’s the D.B. way. They are prone to discounting everything.”

Ms. McFadden said she was terminated last yearafter she raised concerns about the bank’s practices. Since then, she has filed complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators about the bank’s anti-money-laundering enforcement.

Kerrie McHugh, a Deutsche Bank spokeswoman, said the company had intensified its efforts to combat financial crime. An effective anti-money laundering program, she said, “requires sophisticated transaction screening technology as well as a trained group of individuals who can analyze the alerts generated by that technology both thoroughly and efficiently.”

“At no time was an investigator prevented from escalating activity identified as potentially suspicious,” she added. “Furthermore, the suggestion that anyone was reassigned or fired in an effort to quash concerns relating to any client is categorically false.”

Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, the umbrella company for the Trump family’s many business interests, said: “We have no knowledge of any ‘flagged’ transactions with Deutsche Bank.” She said the Trump Organization currently has “no operating accounts with Deutsche Bank.” She did not respond when asked if other Trump entities had accounts.

Karen Zabarsky, a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies, said: “Any allegations regarding Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Kushner Companies which involved money laundering is completely made up and totally false. The New York Times continues to create dots that just don’t connect.”

Deutsche Bank’s decision not to report the transactions is the latest twist in Mr. Trump’s long, complicated relationship with the German bank — the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with the real estate developer.

Congressional and state authorities are investigating that relationship and have demanded the bank’s records related to the president, his family and their companies. Subpoenas from two House committees seek, among other things, documents related to any suspicious activities detected in Mr. Trump’s personal and business bank accounts since 2010, according to a copy of a subpoena included in a federal court filing.

Mr. Trump and his family sued Deutsche Bank in April, seeking to block it from complying with the congressional subpoenas. The president’s lawyers described the subpoenas as politically motivated.

Suspicious activity reports are at the heart of the federal government’s efforts to identify criminal activity like money laundering and sanctions violations. But government regulations give banks leeway in selecting which transactions to report to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Lenders typically use a layered approach to detect improper activity. The first step is filtering thousands of transactions using computer programs, which send the ones considered potentially suspicious to midlevel employees for a detailed review. Those employees can decide whether to draft a suspicious activity report, but a final ruling on whether to submit it to the Treasury Department is often made by more senior managers.

In the summer of 2016, Deutsche Bank’s software flagged a series of transactions involving the real estate company of Mr. Kushner, now a senior White House adviser.

Ms. McFadden, a longtime anti-money laundering specialist in Deutsche Bank’s Jacksonville office, said she had reviewed the transactions and found that money had moved from Kushner Companies to Russian individuals.She concluded that the transactions should be reported to the government — in part because federal regulators had ordered Deutsche Bank, which had been caught laundering billions of dollars for Russians, to toughen its scrutiny of potentially illegal transactions.

Ms. McFadden drafted a suspicious activity report and compiled a small bundle of documents to back up her decision.

Tracking 30 Investigations Related to Trump

Federal, state and congressional authorities are investigating Donald J. Trump’s businesses, campaign, inauguration and presidency.

Typically, such a report would be reviewed by a team of anti-money laundering experts who are independent of the business line in which the transactions originated — in this case, the private-banking division — according to Ms. McFadden and two former Deutsche Bank managers.

That did not happen with this report. It went to managers in New York who were part of the private bank, which caters to the ultrawealthy. They felt Ms. McFadden’s concerns were unfounded and opted not to submit the report to the government, the employees said.

Ms. McFadden and some of her colleagues said they believed the report had been killed to maintain the private-banking division’s strong relationship with Mr. Kushner.

After Mr. Trump became president, transactions involving him and his companies were reviewed by an anti-financial crime team at the bank called the Special Investigations Unit. That team, based in Jacksonville, produced multiple suspicious activity reports involving different entities that Mr. Trump owned or controlled, according to three former Deutsche Bank employees who saw the reports in an internal computer system.

Some of those reports involved Mr. Trump’s limited liability companies. At least one was related to transactions involving the Donald J. Trump Foundation, two employees said.

Deutsche Bank ultimately chose not to file those suspicious activity reports with the Treasury Department, either, according to three former employees. They said it was unusual for the bank to reject a series of reports involving the same high-profile client.

Mr. Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank spans two decades. During a period when most Wall Street banks had stopped doing business with him after his repeated defaults, Deutsche Bank lent Mr. Trump and his companies a total of more than $2.5 billion.Projects financed through the private-banking division include Mr. Trump’s Doral golf resort near Miami and his transformation of Washington’s Old Post Office Building into a luxury hotel.

When he became president, he owed Deutsche Bank well over $300 million. That made the German institution Mr. Trump’s biggest creditor — and put the bank in a bind.

Senior executives worried that if they took a tough stance with Mr. Trump’s accounts — for example, by demanding payment of a delinquent loan — they could provoke the president’s wrath. On the other hand, if they didn’t do anything, the bank could be perceived as cutting a lucrative break for Mr. Trump, whose administration wields regulatory and law enforcement power over the bank.

In the past few years, United States and European authorities have punished Deutsche Bank for helping clients, including wealthy Russians, launder funds and for moving money into countries like Iran in violation of American sanctions. The bank has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and is operating under a Federal Reserve order that requires it to do more to stop illicit activities.

On two palm-tree-lined campuses in Jacksonville, Deutsche Bank has thousands of employees who vet customers and transactions. Six current and former bank employees there said the operations were deeply troubled.

Anti-money laundering workers were pressured to quickly sift through transactions to assess whether they were suspicious, the employees said. As a result, they often erred on the side of not flagging transactions.

Two former employees said that they had raised concerns about transactions involving companies linked to prominent Russians, but that managers had told them not to file suspicious activity reports. The employees were under the impression that the bank did not want to upset important clients.

Several employees said they had complained about the bank’s anti-money laundering processesto Joshua Blazer, the head of Deutsche Bank’s financial crimes investigations division in Jacksonville, and had then been criticized for having a negative attitude. One employee said she resigned last summer over concerns about the bank’s ethics.

Mr. Blazer, hired by Deutsche Bank in 2017 to strengthen the bank’s financial crime-fighting apparatus, declined to comment.

Ms. McFadden’s job at Deutsche Bank was to inspect clients and transactions in the company’s private-banking division — the unit that lent money to Mr. Trump. She joined the bank in 2008, after working for Bank of America, also in Jacksonville.

Ms. McFadden had left Bank of America in 2005, and later sued for racial discrimination and wrongful termination. According to court records, her lawsuit was settled on confidential terms the same year she joined Deutsche Bank, where she went on to win multiple performance awards.

Around the time she flagged the Kushner Companies’ transactions, Ms. McFadden said, she also complained about how the bank was scrutinizing the accounts of high-profile customers, such as those in public office. Those customers — known as politically exposed persons — are regarded as at heightened risk of being involved in corruption. As a result, their accounts are subject to extra vetting.

Ms. McFadden said she had told her superiors that dozens of politically exposed clients of the private-banking division, including Mr. Trump and members of his family, were not receiving that added attention. Her superiors told her to stop raising questions, according to Ms. McFadden and the two former managers.

After taking her complaint to the human resources department, Ms. McFadden was transferred to another division. She was terminated in April 2018. The bank told her that she was not processing enough transactions.

Ms. McFadden disputed that. She said her superiors had reduced the number of transactions she was assigned to review after she voiced her concerns. She and the two former managers said they perceived her termination as an act of retaliation.

“They attempted to try to silence me,” she said. “I’m at peace because I know that I did the right thing.”

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Paul Krugman: ‘Apocalypse’ is the ‘new normal’

In this Monday, Dec. 30, 2019 photo provided by State Government of Victoria, a helicopter tackles a wildfire in East Gippsland, Victoria state, Australia. Wildfires burning across Australia's two most-populous states trapped residents of a seaside town in apocalyptic conditions Tuesday, Dec. 31, and were feared to have destroyed many properties and caused fatalities. (State Government of Victoria via AP)

Written by Alex Henderson January 3, 2020

Natural disasters, from hurricanes and floods to wildfires, have been occurring for centuries. But as climate change accelerates, such disasters will become more frequent. This week, Australia has been battered by destructive wildfires — and liberal economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column, warns that such destruction is becoming “the new normal.”

“The past week’s images from Australia have been nightmarish: walls of flame, blood-red skies, residents huddled on beaches as they try to escape the inferno,” Krugman explains. “The bush fires have been so intense that they have generated ‘fire tornadoes’ powerful enough to flip over heavy trucks.”

The 66-year-old Krugman goes on to assert that Australia’s wildfires are only one of the many recent disasters that underscore the perils of climate change.

“Australia’s summer of fire is only the latest in a string of catastrophic weather events over the past year: unprecedented flooding in the Midwest, a heat wave in India that sent temperatures to 123 degrees, another heat wave that brought unheard-of temperatures to much of Europe,” Krugman warns. “And all of these catastrophes were related to climate change.”

Krugman delivers some more bad news: “Apocalypse will become the new normal, and that’s happening right in front of our eyes.” Moreover, Krugman writes, “Florida as a whole will eventually be swallowed by the sea,” and “much of India will eventually become uninhabitable.”

But Krugman also delivers some good news, observing, “Drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions now look remarkably easy to achieve, at least from an economic point of view. In particular, there has been so much technological progress in alternative energy that the Trump Administration is trying desperately to prop up coal against competition from solar and wind.”

Krugman, however, stresses that in the U.S., “growing climate awareness is mainly taking place among Democrats; the Republican base is largely unmoved. And the anti-environmental extremism of conservative politicians has, if anything, become even more intense as their position has become intellectually untenable.”

Krugman concludes his column by stressing that Trump’s environmental policy has been abysmal.

“Donald Trump and his friends are doing everything they can to create more such disasters,” Krugman emphasizes. “For the truth is that Trump’s environmental policy is the worst thing he’s doing to America and the world. And voters should know that.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/sarah-palin-is-seeking-over-75000-in-damages-in-defamation-lawsuit-against-ny-times/

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Sarah Palin is seeking over $75,000 in damages in defamation lawsuit against NY Times

Written by Alex Henderson December 31, 2019

President Donald Trump isn’t the only Republican politician who has been highly critical of the New York Times: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is another long-time critic —and on Monday, the 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee filed a 52-page amended complaint as part of her defamation lawsuit against the publication. Palin, according to Law & Crime, is seeking more than $75,000 in damages as well as “restitution in the form of the Times’ advertising revenues attributable to the” June 14, 2017 article that inspired the lawsuit.

On June 14, 2017, the Times published an opinion piece by its editorial board and discussed, among other things, Palin’s political activities in the early 2010s — when her political action committee, SarahPAC, released an ad that depicted crosshairs imposed over various Democratic politicians. One of them was Arizona’s Gabby Giffords, who was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives at the time. After the ad aired, Giffords was seriously injured in a January 8, 2011 attack in Tucson by gunman Jared Loughner.

In her lawsuit, Palin asserts that it was unfair for the Times to publish an editorial linking her to Loughner’s attack. The Times’ James Bennet is specifically mentioned in the lawsuit.

The filing on Monday states, “Gov. Palin brings this action to hold James Bennet and the Times accountable for defaming her by falsely asserting what they knew to be false: that Gov. Palin was clearly and directly responsible for inciting a mass shooting at a political event in January 2011. Specifically, on June 14, 2017, the Times published an editorial authored in the name of its editorial board, which represents the “voice” of the Times, that falsely stated as a matter of fact to millions of people that Gov. Palin incited Jared Loughner’s January 8, 2011 mass shooting at a political event in Tucson, Arizona.”

Palin, Colin Kalmbacher explains in Law & Crime, first filed her lawsuit against the Times only two weeks after the June 14, 2017 editorial was published.

The filing on Monday also states, “Gov. Palin brings this action to hold James Bennet and the Times accountable for defaming her by falsely asserting what they knew to be false: that Gov. Palin was clearly and directly responsible for inciting a mass shooting at a political event in January 2011. Specifically, on June 14, 2017, the Times published an editorial authored in the name of its editorial board (which represents the ‘voice’ of the Times) that falsely stated as a matter of fact to millions of people that Gov. Palin incited Jared Loughner’s January 8, 2011, mass shooting at a political event in Tucson, Arizona.”

Palin’s lawsuit also claims that the Times mentioned Loughner’s attack in order to divert attention from violence against Republicans — specifically, the June 14, 2017 attack in which sniper James Hodgkinson in Washington, D.C. seriously injured Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Palin’s lawsuit mentions that the Times, in 2017, identified Hodgkinson was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders — who, it should be noted, wholeheartedly condemned the attack and wished Scalise a speedy recovery.

The Palin filing states, “As early reports about the Hodgkinson shooting sparked speculation about whether his actions were motivated by liberal, anti-Republican political rhetoric, Mr. Bennet was outraged and decided to respond by reviving what he knew to be debunked speculation that Gov. Palin incited Loughner’s shooting. To do so, Mr. Bennet ignored his own knowledge of the facts surrounding the Loughner shooting, the well-known consensus, including within The Atlantic and the Times, that Gov. Palin’s political activities played no role in Loughner’s shooting, readily available information and articles about the Loughner shooting, and the most basic and fundamental tenants of ethical journalism.”

Bennet has stressed that he never said that Palin was directly responsible for Giffords’ shooting but rather, that he was making a point about the political environment in 2011.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-the-new-york-times-is-botching-its-impeachment-coverage-and-empowering-republicans

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How the New York Times is botching its impeachment coverage and empowering Republicans

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly December 16, 2019

On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the editorial boards of over a dozen newspapers have called for the impeachment of Donald Trump.

Washington Post: The case for impeachment

USA Today: USA TODAY’s Editorial Board: Impeach President Trump

New York Times: Impeach

New York Daily News: The truth hurts: The House Intelligence Committee presents a coherent and compelling case for impeachment

Philadelphia Inquirer: Impeach President Donald Trump | Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board

Boston Globe: Impeach the president???????

Los Angeles Times: Editorial: We’ve Seen Enough: Trump should be impeached

San Francisco Chronicle: Editorial: What is the alternative to impeachment????????

Tampa Bay Times: The case for impeachment | Editorial???????

Orlando Sentinel: The House should vote to impeach Trump, and the Senate should remove him from office | Editorial???????

Chicago Sun-Times: The case for impeachment over censure for President Donald Trump???????

Salt Lake Tribune: Tribune Editorial: Impeachment proceeds as it should

Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Editorial: It’s now time to impeach Trump???????

Following a brief summary of where things stand, the New York Times editorial board wrote this about congressional Republicans.

So far, Republican legislators have shown little sign of treating this constitutional process with the seriousness it demands.

Instead, they have been working overtime to abet the president’s wrongdoing. They have spread toxic misinformation and conspiracy theories to try to justify his actions and raged about the unfairness of the inquiry, complaining that Democrats have been trying to impeach Mr. Trump since he took office…

The Republicans’ most common defenses of Mr. Trump’s behavior fall flat in the face of the evidence.

They go on to summarize the evidence of the president’s impeachable offenses.

That is in stark contrast to how the news division of the same publication handled their coverage of the impeachment vote in the House Judiciary Committee. Jay Rosen noted the language that was employed.

Jay Rosen

@jayrosen_nyu

This is it, people. This is all they got. All phrasing from a single story in the New York Times today. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/us/politics/impeachment-partisan-trump.html … Asymmetrical polarization is just too much for the institution as currently led. So they changed it to 50/50 polarization and put it on page one.

In the article Rosen linked to, reporter Michael Shear highlighted several exchanges like this.

Even for members of a profession who are used to talking past each other, it was striking how unwilling both Republicans and Democrats on the committee were to concede even an inch to the other side.

“Ukraine was not aware of the aid,” Mr. Johnson insisted Thursday, referring to the $391 million in security assistance that Mr. Trump had ordered withheld. If they didn’t know the money had been frozen, he explained, Ukraine couldn’t have been on the receiving end of a pressure campaign by the president.

When it was his turn, Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, asserted exactly the opposite, alluding to email evidence and testimony that disproved Mr. Johnson’s argument. “They knew it on July the 25,” Mr. Cohen said of the Ukranians. “There were communications from the embassy that have been released that they knew the aid was being held up. They knew it was being held up.”

Shear could have referred to other reporting in the New York Times to demonstrate that it was Representative Cohen who was being factual.

As deputy foreign minister, it was Olena Zerkal’s job to read incoming diplomatic cables from embassies around the world. One from Washington caught her eye back in July, she recalled: It said the Trump administration had frozen military aid for Ukraine.

“We had this information,” Ms. Zerkal said in an interview. “It was definitely mentioned there were some issues.”

Instead, Shear went on to relay several other instances where Democrats said one thing and Republicans the opposite. He assumes that there is some value in reporting that there were “disputes over basic facts” without informing his readers what the evidence tells us about those facts. That is how he reaches the conclusion that “both sides engaged in a kind of mutually assured destruction.” Nowhere in his reporting does Shear acknowledge what the New York Times editorial board stated so clearly: that Republicans “have spread toxic misinformation and conspiracy theories to try to justify [Trump’s] actions.”

What is most revealing about these two pieces from the New York Times is that the editorial board of the publication is providing facts in support of their opinion, while the news division is trafficking in bothsiderism and ignoring the facts.

At a time in our history when one of the greatest dangers we face is an assault on the truth, the kind of bothsiderism promulgated by reporters like Shear plays right into the hands of the attempt by congressional Republicans to be the “merchants of doubt.” Their goal is to muddy the evidence and promote the idea that there is an “unresolved controversy with two sides.” It is an insidious form of propaganda that undermines facts and evidence.

As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote back in 2012 when political polarization had become obviously asymmetrical, “a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality.” In 2014, Ornstein went on the make a remarkably prescient prediction.

Saying both sides are equally responsible, insisting on equivalence as the mantra of mainstream journalism, leaves the average voter at sea, unable to identify and vote against those perpetrating the problem. The public is left with a deeper disdain for all politics and all politicians, and voters become more receptive to demagogues and those whose main qualification for office is that they have never served, won’t compromise, and see everything in stark black-and-white terms.

Ornstein wrote that five years ago when a lot of media outlets were taking a “both sides do it” approach to the Republican strategy of total obstruction. He was right to suggest that it left the average voter unable to “identify and vote against those perpetuating the problem.” As a result, we wound up with a demagogue in the White House and one of his chief enablers in charge of the Senate trial for his removal from office.

If ever there was a time for journalists to prioritize truth over balance, this is it. Pretending to stay above the fray by avoiding the facts is not a neutral position. The news room at the New York Times could learn a thing or two about that from their editorial board.

==

1219

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/new-york-times-changes-headline-after-getting-mocked-for-asking-if-senate-republicans-will-follow-their-garland-rule-in-2020/

New York Times changes headline after getting mocked for asking if Senate Republicans will ‘follow their Garland rule’ in 2020

Republicans worried about hypocrisy? Is that why we’re accumulating debt…

rbg health raise q --> wtf do you think they will do? [to be fair authoir sez art'l less dumb]

==

1119

New York Times compares Bernie Sanders’ ambitious climate plan to Trump’s border wall in deeply flawed and misleading report

Jim Naureckas, [rush limbaugh rein of error bk]Julie Hollar / FAIR

New York Times compares Bernie Sanders’ ambitious climate plan to Trump’s border wall in deeply flawed and misleading report

Written by Jim Naureckas, Julie Hollar / FAIR November 25, 2019

When Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his $16.3 trillion climate plan, corporate media were quick to throw cold water on it, arguing that the Democratic presidential candidate’s plan was too expensive, and logistically and politically impossible (FAIR.org, 9/6/19). As Sanders fleshed out his plan in more detail, the media pushback continued: “Sanders’ Climate Ambitions Thrill Supporters, but Experts Aren’t Impressed,” announced a recent New York Times headline (11/14/19).

Reporter Lisa Friedman first compared Sanders’ plan to Trump’s border wall (“with the fossil fuel industry footing much of the bill, much as Mexico was to pay for the border wall”) and then panned it in no uncertain terms: “Climate scientists and energy economists say the plan is technically impractical, politically unfeasible and possibly ineffective.”

Who are the ‘experts’?

The New York Times (11/14/19) describes Bernie Sanders as “the climate candidate with the most expensive plan.”

Who are the “experts” who are troubled by Sanders’ plan? The piece quotes 11 sources, two of whom are “thrilled supporters” of the sort referenced in the headline, and another a Sanders spokesperson. A fourth is Joel Payne, who suggests Sanders’ program doesn’t “exactly check out,” but although Payne is described as a “Democratic strategist,” he’s not exactly an “expert.”

Of the remaining seven sources, two are offered as examples of how “not everyone sees doom” in the Sanders climate platform: Daniel Kammen, identified as “an energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley,” who called it “audacious but doable,” and Noah Kaufman, a “researcher at Columbia University” (more specifically a climate economist), who said Sanders is “proposing policies that match” the scale of the crisis.

That leaves five critical “experts,” some of whom are not particularly critical. Paul Hawken, author of a work that “analyzes solutions to global warming,” said Sanders’ “sense of urgency in here is correct,” but it could be “more effective” — specifically, by embracing nuclear power. Jesse Jenkins, an “energy systems engineer” at Princeton University, credited Sanders with “trying to set a marker in terms of the pace and scale of spending that he’s proposing,” but doesn’t think it “represents a very nuanced understanding.” Michael Oppenheimer, “a professor of geoscience and international affairs at Princeton University,” questioned Sanders’ backing off from support of a carbon tax, but defended the candidate’s approach as appropriate for “the political arena.”

Finally, there are two people cited in the piece who are entirely critical of Sanders’ blueprint. David Victor is quoted as saying it “can’t work in the real world,” though his identification as a “professor of international relations at the University of California San Diego and a climate adviser to Pete Buttigieg” might lead a reader to question his objectivity. And Severin Borenstein, “a professor at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley,” said, “I just don’t see that getting off the ground.”

So of the seven “experts” quoted by Friedman, two are supportive of Sanders’ proposals to fight climate disruption, two are critical and three somewhere in the middle — a weak validation of her sweeping thesis that “climate scientists and energy economists” as a whole call the Sanders plan “impractical,” “unfeasible” and “possibly ineffective.”

Undisclosed conflicts

Worse, the bulk of the “experts” quoted by Friedman have unacknowledged conflicts of interest. Borenstein, who can’t see Sanders’ plan “getting off the ground,” is faculty director at the Energy Institute at Haas, which takes funding from energy companies like Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. Jenkins, who said Sanders wasn’t “very nuanced,” works at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, whose “E-Filliates” include ExxonMobil, NRG and Siemens. Hawken, who complained Sanders was too anti-nuclear, leads the Highwater Investment Group, whose top holdings have included Ford Motors and EnerNOC, now part of the energy conglomerate Enel, which produces nuclear power.

The Times did mention Victor’s connection to Buttigieg, but didn’t note that he runs UCSD’s Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, funded by BP and the electricity industry’s Electric Power Research Institute. (His earlier project at Sanford was bankrolled by more than $9 million from BP.) The non-“expert” Payne, in addition to being a “Democratic strategist,” is a PR consultant who has worked for General Motors, South Jersey Gas and the American Chemistry Council.



Bernie Sanders’ climate plan is the only one awarded an A+ rating by Greenpeace.

Funding doesn’t necessarily dictate the views of academics, of course; Kaufman works at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, which is backed by BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil, but still managed to be supportive of Sanders’ program. But corporations do give money to think tanks in the hope of influencing scholarship in their favor, so the Times’ general failure to note such connections when quoting critics of Sanders does a disservice to readers.

Even with a roster of “experts” skewed towards industry-funded research, the actual quotes from Friedman’s sources, as opposed to her paraphrases of what “climate scientists and energy economists say,” present a range of disagreements about the exact methods by which the climate crisis should be addressed, but a general consensus that the crisis must be addressed urgently. And Sanders is one of a few candidates treating the climate crisis as an urgent matter — which you would think should inform the framing of an article about expert opinion of his plan.

A truly informative and fair piece here would compare Sanders’ plan to those of the other presidential candidates (including Trump). Some prominent environmental organizations do this, and rank Sanders’ plan at the top of the primary crowd. (Greenpeace awards him its only A+ score, and 350.org gives him 3/3 thumbs up, along with Cory Booker, Julián Castro, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren and Marianne Williamson.)

But instead, the only comparison the Times gives readers is the misleading and unhelpful parallel it draws between Sanders’ insistence that the government-subsidized fossil fuel industry help pay for his climate plan through “litigation, fees and taxes,” and Trump’s demand that the government of Mexico foot the bill for his wall. Note that the fossil fuel industry, which has spent massive amounts of money to deny climate science and block restrictions on carbon, is made up of corporations subject to U.S. law (at least in their U.S. subsidiaries), unlike the sovereign country of Mexico.

Sanders’ plan to prevent global climate catastrophe and Trump’s anti-refugee wall are not obviously alike in any substantive or significant way; it’s as if the paper can’t resist slipping in gratuitous digs at Sanders any chance it gets, even as the world burns.

Meanwhile, in the presidential debates, journalist moderators have devoted fewer than 10% of their questions to the climate crisis (FAIR.org, 10/17/19). Until media start to treat the climate crisis with the urgency the scientific community continually tells us it requires, they will continue to be a major part of the problem.

---

seer cunha

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/i-was-fired-from-the-new-york-times-for-a-proposed-edit-that-was-deemed-unfair-to-trump-i-know-firsthand-about-the-papers-insidious-double-game/

When I saw that infamous “Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism” headline in The New York Times, I was not surprised in the least. And when I learned that it had set off subscription cancelations among outraged readers, I thought: “Finally! What took so long?”

Having spent eight years taking deep daily dives into New York Times stories as a copy editor, I can with confidence impart this bit of news fit to print: The Gray Lady has, ever since Trump’s election, been playing an insidious double game to ensure its survival....

==

hmmn an 1019

Columnists at the New York Times are all angry at the possibility of decriminalizing of border crossings, health care for the undocumented and the abolition of private insurance. In fact, they don’t want to do away with Trumpian inhumanity. They want the oppression to continue, but without the transparent rhetoric.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/wsj-nyt-celebrate-shale-revolution-for-investor-class-despite-its-leading-to-our-doom/

==

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/democratic-candidates-are-finally-punching-back-against-corporate-medias-shoddy-press-coverage/

no lnx

Democratic candidates are finally punching back against corporate media’s shoddy press coverage

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos October 13, 2019

Democrats running for president have a new message for the news media: We’re not going to take it anymore.

No longer willing to stoically suffer through bad, misleading press coverage, Democrats are borrowing a page from Republicans by going public with their complaints and demanding journalists do better. But unlike Republicans who often “work the refs” by griping about imaginary slights in hopes of better treatment in the future, Democrats are calling out the press with wholly accurate claims of media malpractice.

Last week, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign sent a blistering letter to New York Times editor Dean Baquet, reprimanding the paper for helping spread Donald Trump’s debunked conspiracy theory about Joe Biden and his son’s business dealings in Ukraine. It’s “part of a larger strategy not to let the same coverage that corrupted the 2016 election happen this time around,” a campaign source told CNN’s Brian Stelter.

The stinging critique from Biden came one day after the Times published an opinion column from discredited right-wing author Peter Schweizer, once again hyping the Biden/Ukraine story. Schweizer, who wrote a patently dishonest book about Hillary Clinton in 2015 alleging all sorts of made-up crimes—a book the Times helped market and promote during the campaign—has been peddling the Biden smear all year within the far-right media ecosystem.

It was the Times that trumpeted Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash as the “the most anticipated and feared book” of the 2016 campaign season. And it was the Times that forged an exclusive alliance with the Breitbart-backed book (published by a Rupert Murdoch-owned subsidiary), and used the factually erroneous tome as a guidepost for Hillary Clinton ‘gotcha’ articles.

As for this campaign cycle, even after mainstream news outlets had completely debunked the hollow claims about Biden that Schweizer was peddling, the Times invited the smear’s architect, who has a soft spot for plagiarism, to spread more partisan attacks via the newspaper. Also, note that it was the Times that got caught last May trying to peddle the GOP’s anti-Biden storyline about Ukraine in the first place.

And yes, the right-wing media feasted on the Times’ handiwork last spring, and presented it as confirmation that Biden is corrupt. More recently, the Times often tied Trump’s attempt to get a foreign player to interfere with an American election with the bogus allegations Biden has faced regarding Ukraine, suggesting that both Trump and Biden were being sullied in the process.

The Biden campaign’s aggressive response last week represents a new approach for prominent Democratic candidates. In the past, party stalwarts often ignored press slights, likely feeling that media critiques weren’t why they were running for president and that candidates didn’t want to get distracted from larger, more important issues. But after Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes yet still lost the election thanks to some of the most openly hostile, sexist, and unfair campaign coverage in modern American history, Democratic campaigns are moving faster and much more forcefully to call out bad behavior and pressure news organizations to do better.

My sense is also that for way too long, Beltway Democrats remained wedded to the idea that the press was actually their friend and ally, and that The New York Times for instance, was on the “side” of progressives. But the Times, of course, has been at the forefront of tearing down a long list of Democratic nominees in recent years.

Today, determined not to get ‘Hillary’d,’ or ‘Gore’d,’ or ‘swift boated‘ like previous Democratic nominees Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry, who all lost extremely closes races after being treated unfairly by the press (led by dubious Times coverage in all three instances), more Democrats are stating up front that they’re not going to politely stand back and ignore what they see as unfair and unprofessional media coverage. In 2016, the press obsessed so much over the phony Clinton email “scandal” that coverage of her policy initiatives got obliterated. In 2000, the press took the GOP bait and spent the entire campaign depicting Gore, previously known as a Boy Scout-like politician, as a craven liar. And Kerry was the subject of a vicious, extended smear campaign as partisan Vietnam War veterans, cheered on by Republicans, lied about his war record while the Beltway press amplified the bogus swift boat claims for weeks on end.

The Biden campaign last week also dispatched letters to both Facebook and Twitter, urging them not to run an ad that spread the debunked theory about Biden and Ukraine. “Whether it originates from the Kremlin or Trump Tower, these lies and conspiracy theories threaten to undermine the integrity of our elections in America,” the campaign stressed.

Biden hasn’t been alone among candidates voicing clear media critiques. In the wake of yet another rash of mass shootings, Beto O’Rourke was asked if he thought Trump’s racist, anti-immigration rhetoric had led to immigrants being targeted. “Like, members of the press, what the fuck?” the Democrat responded. “It’s these questions that you know the answers to.”

Bernie Sanders also recently offered up a blunt critique of the news media.“There are six major media conglomerates, including Time Warner which owns CNN, which control about 90% of the media in this country in terms of what we see, hear and read. Between you and me, that is a very dangerous situation,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “The CEOs make tens of millions of dollars a year in compensation. They have an agenda, and I worry about that, as I do worry about concentration of ownership in agribusiness, in Wall Street and in many other areas.” (Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard has aired critiques of the press this campaign season, but they strike me as being un-serious and often incoherent.)

There’s no question Democrats face in uphill battle on this front, not only because they’re getting a late start in the larger debate, but because the Beltway press responds differently to media critiques coming from the left and the right. Eternally spooked by the conservative claim of “liberal media bias,” journalists tend to be hypersensitive to GOP allegations of malpractice. At the same time, political journalists often ignore criticism, or become extremely defensive when their work is questioned by Democrats and liberals.

Nonetheless, the ongoing media debate is one that Democrats desperately need to part of. And for the 2020 campaign, they will be.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.

==

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raw story

ref 4 digby

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/new-york-times-battered-on-msnbc-for-pushing-smear-of-hunter-biden-in-order-to-maintain-access-to-trump/

An “AM Joy” panel jumped all over the New York Times for pushing a widely debunked smear of Hunter Biden promoted by Donald Trump, saying the newspaper is more interested in maintaining their access to the Oval Office than debunking the lie.

Speaking with host Joy Reid — who noted that her producers asked for comment from the Times but were rebuffed — MSNBC regular Maria Teresa Kumar scorched the Times, as well as reporter Ken Vogel, for the uncritical parroting of the president’s smear.

Pointing to Vogel’s story and noting his source was a Breitbart writer, Kumar explained, “The biggest challenge, Ken Vogel does not declare the source , that Peter Schweizer,  is underwritten by the Mercer family — the Mercer family is a neo-facist family that underwrites Steve Bannon and the Breitbart Report so it is not credible.”

“What they had done so stealthily, so well, is that they know that if they can have any type of story in an established newspaper, as is the New York Times, that it any breeds a sense of legitimacy,” she continued. “Fox News takes it and Breitbart takes it, all the ultra-rightwings take it and say, ‘Look, the New York Times is saying it, so it must be true.’ That’s a lack of due diligence.”

“It’s disappointing in the New York Times, quite frankly,” she further explained. “When they try to equate something with Biden and Trump, they’re trying to make sure they continue having access to the president and that’s not the way to do it.”

With host Reid noting Vogel’s desire to not appear on her show, AM Joy regular Eric Boehlert called the Times reporting, including previous stories about Democrats and Hillary Clinton, “Timidity access journalism.”

Watch

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/nyts-1619-project-exhibits-racist-klan-like-stupidity-says-the-daily-wires-andrew-klavan/

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==

NYT presents murder of a Palestinian boy as ‘national trauma’—for Jewish Israelis

Jim Naureckas / FAIR

HBO has a series based on a real-life crime in Israel—a 2014 case involving (in the New York Times‘ words) “a Palestinian teenager snatched off a Jerusalem street by Orthodox…

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/why-the-conservative-mindset-is-so-threatened-by-the-truth-about-slavery/

no lnx

Why the conservative mindset is so threatened by the truth about slavery

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 22, 2019

It has been fascinating to observe the reaction from conservatives to the 1619 Project recently launched by the New York Times. As a reminder, here is how it opens.

In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed. In the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.

A common theme in the reaction of conservatives to this project is to assume that telling our story truthfully is somehow an attack on Donald Trump. For example, Dinesh D’Souza, the man who has spent the last few years blaming Democrats for the oppression of African Americans and claiming that it is the Republican Party that has always fought for freedom, said that the 1619 Project was a “political hit to discredit Trump and his base.” It is always interesting to watch Trump’s enablers assume that any honest conversation about racism in America reflects badly on the president, even when he’s not mentioned....

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/republicans-are-freaking-out-over-a-ny-times-project-on-history-of-slavery-in-the-us-evil-propaganda-machine/

no lnx

Republicans are freaking out over a NY Times project on history of slavery in the US: ‘Evil propaganda machine’

Written by Alex Henderson August 19, 2019

On Sunday, the New York Times unveiled its 1619 Project — an ambitious series of essays addressing the painful history of slavery in the United States and the contributions of African-Americans. And some far-right Republicans are throwing a temper tantrum, insisting that the series is nothing more than anti-American propaganda.The Times is calling its series the 1619 Project because it was in August 1619 — 400 years ago — that a ship containing enslaved Africans arrived at a port in Virginia, which was still a British colony at that point. Slavery existed in North America long before the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, and the Times series pinpoints August 1619 as a dark turning point in North American history.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is among the far-right Republicans who is insisting that the 1619 Project has sinister anti-U.S. motives. On Sunday, Gingrich tweeted, “The NY Times 1619 Project should make its slogan ‘All the Propaganda we want to brainwash you with.’”

In a tweet promoting the 1619 Project, the New York Times’ Mara Gay announced that the publication planned to “publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.” And Gingrich responded, “This is simply a LIE. Pravda was never more dishonest than this effort to write a ‘left history.’”

President Donald Trump was equally buffoonish in his response to the 1619 Project, describing it as a “Racism Witch Hunt” coming from an “evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party.” And the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, posted that a “question raised” by the “rollout of 1619 project” is: “should the public still view the Times as a news outlet? Or as something else?”

Mara Gay

?

@MaraGay

Today is the day to read The New York Times in print, as we observe the 400th anniversary of enslaved Africans arriving in Virginia-the moment America began. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html … #The1619Project

View image on Twitter

609

7:07 AM - Aug 18, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

284 people are talking about this

Newt Gingrich

?

@newtgingrich

Mara Gay (@MaraGay) Tweeted:

In the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.”

This is simply a LIE.Pravda was never more dishonest than this effort to write a “left history”

Peter A. Shulman ??

@pashulman

You wrote a dissertation about colonialism in the Belgian Congo while never going there once and only discussed the perspective of the white colonizers. https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/1162981114383949826 …

Newt Gingrich

?

@newtgingrich

The NY Times 1619 Project should make its slogan “All the Propaganda we want to brainwash you with”.it is a repudiation of the original NY Times motto.

4,533

4:41 AM - Aug 18, 2019

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829 people are talking about this

Donald J. Trump

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@realDonaldTrump

The Failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that they are shifting  from their Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt.....

But David Frum, a Never Trump conservative, didn’t attack the 1619 Project —instead, he mocked Trump on Twitter, posting that the president was upset because the series isn’t about him.

Peter A. Shuman, an associate history professor at Case Western Reserve, noted that Gingrich is hardly a credible source on the history of slavery — as he “wrote a dissertation about colonialism in the Belgian Congo while never going there once and only discussed the perspective of the white colonizers.”

David Frum

?

@davidfrum

Good morning America. I see many of you today talking about events tracing back 400 years. Stop that once! Return to talking about ME https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1163063723952676864 …

Donald J. Trump

?

@realDonaldTrump

The Failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that they are shifting  from their Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt.....

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/demoted-nyt-editor-has-long-history-of-lapses-in-judgment/

list of f/us includes?

he called opponents of fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal “the political fringes,” “groups more on the fringe” and (in the words of anonymous officials) “a small fringe” (FAIR.org, 2/10/15). At the time, fast track was opposed by a majority of the House of Representatives.

He treated the poor and middle class as interchangeable terms, writing that “President Obama’s push for a new ‘middle-class economics’ [would] help make the politics of rich and poor a central issue,” and presenting Mitt Romney “vowing a campaign to ‘end the scourge of poverty’” as an example of the same phenomenon as “Mitch McConnell … encourag[ing] the Republican troops to refocus policy on the stagnant middle class” (FAIR.org, 1/23/15).

He bemoaned that in 2014, the right-wing Heritage Foundation was becoming “more of a political organization” by hiring staffers “known more for their advocacy journalism than their scholarship” (FAIR.org, 2/24/14). Heritage’s co-founder and first president, Paul Weyrich, used to write for the far-right John Birch Society; other “scholars” at the think tank have included eugenicist Roger Pearson and white supremacist Sam Francis (Extra!, 7–8/96).

==

Multiple figures on Fox News are echoing the hateful rhetoric warning of an immigrant invasion, even though the gunman in El Paso, TX, cited this inflammatory rhetoric as his motivation for killing 22 people, most of whom were Hispanic.

Minutes before the gunman opened fire on a Walmart in El Paso, he published a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto online. He wrote of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and warned that immigrants were replacing America’s white population, drawing from the white supremacist theory of “great replacement.” The gunman’s rhetoric in his manifesto can be regularly heard on Fox News. A Media Matters study found that in 2019 alone, Fox News referenced an invasion of migrants over 70 times; Fox personalities have also repeatedly warned that immigrants are coming to “replace” Americans.

Since the shooting, the network is clearly not offering much self-reflection. While an anchor at one point pushed back on a guest's use of the term “invasion,” others on the network have continued to use that rhetoric -- including a different guest speaking with the same anchor. Some have also defended their prior use of the term and denied that such language had anything to do with the El Paso shooting, insisting instead that it is simply a factual description of what is happening at the border.

Also: Similar to our own findings, a massive New York Times report found that right-wing media figures echoed this rhetoric for years leading up to the mass shooting. Right-wing media predictably reacted to the report by lashing out at the Times.

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ref 2 mma

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/rush-limbaugh-and-other-conservative-media-dismiss-ny-times-report-showing-el-paso-shooter

Conservative media figures dismissed an analysis from The New York Times showing hundreds of instances in which they used the same sort of anti-immigration rhetoric as the manifesto of the gunman who shot and killed 22 people in El Paso,TX, in early August.

El Paso mass shooter’s white supremacist manifesto echoed language used by prominent Fox News figures and other conservative media personalities

Multiple Fox News personalities have pushed rhetoric that white Americans are going to be “replaced” by non-white immigrants -- the same white supremacist conspiracy theory referenced by the El Paso shooter. The shooter wrote in his manifesto that he wanted revenge against “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and warned of “cultural and ethnicreplacement.” Media Matters showed that multiple Fox News personalities, including prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, had spread similar rhetoric on the channel. Media Matters, [8/5/19]

NY Times: “There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by” the shooter. The New York Times conducted its own analysis of the manifesto written by the El Paso shooter and found that his numerous references to an “invasion” by Hispanics and cultural “replacement” of white people overlapped in hundreds of instances with comments from prominent Fox News and other conservative media personalities, including Carlson and Rush Limbaugh.

Tucker Carlson went on his prime-time Fox News show in April last year and told his viewers not to be fooled. The thousands of Central Americans on their way to the United States were “border jumpers,” not refugees, he said. “Will anyone in power do anything to protect America this time,” he asked, “or will leaders sit passively back as the invasion continues?”

When another group approached the border six months later,Ann Coulter, appearing as a guest on Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News show, offered a dispassionately violent suggestion about what could be done to stem the flow of migrants: “You can shoot invaders.”

A few days after, Rush Limbaugh issued a grim prognosis to his millions of radio listeners: If the immigrants from Central America weren’t stopped, theUnited States would lose its identity. “The objective is to dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture,” Mr. Limbaugh said, adding: “This is why people call this an invasion.”

There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by the Texas man who confessed to killing 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso this month. In a 2,300-word screed posted on the website 8chan, the killer wrote that he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

It remains unclear what, or who, ultimately shaped the views of the white, 21-year-old gunman, or whether he was aware of the media commentary. But his post contains numerous references to “invasion” and cultural “replacement” — ideas that, until recently, were relegated to the fringes of the nationalist right.

An extensive New York Times review of popular right-wing media platforms found hundreds of examples of language, ideas and ideologies that overlapped with the mass killer’s written statement — a shared vocabulary of intolerance that stokes fears centered on immigrants of color. The programs, on television and radio, reach an audience of millions.

…

At the start of the El Paso suspect’s screed, he refers to the “great replacement,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory based on a French book that claims the migration of minority groups can lead to a “genocide” of white culture.

The El Paso suspect, who confessed to the mass shooting last week, claimed in the document he posted to be defending against a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The words “invasion” and “invaders” appear six times in the text, a stark parallel to the language heard on conservative television and talk radio today. The New York Times, [8/11/19]

Conservative media respond by attacking NY Times and mocking concern over white supremacist rhetoric

Radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested a 14-year-old quote from then-Sen. Barack Obama was as incendiary as his own language. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed of the New York Times story that “they worried about me because I called this invasion a ‘flood’” and then played an audio clip of remarks then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made in December 2005 in which he used the phrase “flood of illegals” to distance his own rhetoric from the shooter’s. Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [8/12/19]

Limbaugh: NY Times story is just the latest attempt to sabotage me. During his second segment responding to the Times story, Limbaugh said it’s the latest in a long line of attempts to discredit him specifically and conservative media in general.

RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): I appreciate the emails that you have sent that I caught during the first breaks here in the program about not taking this thing in The New York Times today apparently seriously enough.

You know, when I know that there isn’t any truth to it, then that’s the primary reason I’m able to laugh at it. And I know the motivation behind it. They simply -- folks, they cannot defeat us on ideas or debates of ideas, in the arena of ideas.

It’s been a constant attempt by the left since I started this program to discredit me,to impugn me. And their purpose has been to make sure I don’t acquire an even larger audience. They are trying to poison the minds of people who don’t listen into never trying the program. That’s the objective of it, and that’s always been the objective.

…

Now we have an obviously deranged lunaticwho is just part of the crowd that has been influenced, but only influenced, by conservative media. This guy apparently, according to The New York Times, was immune to being influenced by anybody else. He was incapable of making up his own mind or coming to his own deranged conclusions on his own. And this has been the baseline, or foundational, attack on me and all of conservative media since it began.

It’s actually an attack on all of you.That you’re dumb, uninformed hicks who don’t know anything and don’t think anything every day until you get marching orders after listening to this program or as a result of listening. This has always been absurd. And I think it’s always been a very weak and very, very telling admission on their part, and that is they hold average people in contempt. Average people are not smart enough to think on their own. They’re not smart enough to live life the right way. They’re not smart enough to make the right decisions, even with their own money.

So I don’t get worked up by it anymore because it’s been a feature of 30 years. And I’ll tell you this. By righteously opposing it and standing here -- sitting here -- pounding my fists on the table and acting out is not gonna stop it, either. I just mock it. I just try to make fun of it. And then I welcome other people to the montage. Now they’re adding -- you know, it used to just be me. Now they’re throwing a bunch of other people into it because conservative media has expanded and become so big that now their efforts to destroy conservative media go beyond me. Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [8/12/19]

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro dismissed those linking conservative media rhetoric to the El Paso shooter as a “conspiracy theory.”

BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Again, I don’t like the language of “invasion,” and I don’t believe I’ve used it. If I had, I’m sorry I did, because I don’t think that it is correct. But I’m fairly certain I never did, because I never considered it a quote-unquote “invasion” when illegal immigrants cross our southern border. But -- and I certainly don’t believe in the idea of quote-unquote “racial replacement,” because I literally do not care about the races of people who live in America. I care about their ideas and their ideology.

But The New York Times decides that because there is language that sounds similar to stuff that Tucker Carlson has said, they’re now going to attribute this shooter to Tucker.

…

Again, this is a conspiracy theory:{. And a conspiracy theory, this one, is deliberately designed in order to link together basic conservative tropes about immigration with white supremacism. The Daily Wire, :(style="background-color:#eff3f7ff"):}:*The Ben Shapiro Show*:{, :(style="background-color:#eff3f7ff"):}:[8/12/19:{]}:

Breitbart News Daily's Alex Marlow: NY Times story is “such bad journalism,” and “they’re going to have blood on their hands” for taking the shooter’s manifesto seriously.

ALEX MARLOW (HOST): This is where I’m obsessed with this story from yesterday, where The New York Times had five bylines on how the El Paso killer echoed the incendiary words of conservative media stars and they cited something like 50 or 60 examples of [unintelligible] -- almost everyone on Fox News personalities using the term “invasion.” And this assumes so much -- it's such bad journalism because it is, it assumes a couple of key things.

First of all, it assumes that because the -- it takes the manifesto seriously, which I keep saying is a mistake that only will encourage more serial killers or more mass shooters. These are lunatic ravings that are designed to give attention. And to give attention to it, and to take it literally, it means that all you have to do is write something and then shoot people, and then you get a platform forever for whatever insane ideas you have. So I think the media taking these manifestos literally is actually going to -- they’re going to have blood on their hands if they keep doing this. But this has been the tactic of most of the media, to take the manifesto of the El Paso shooter seriously.

And the implication that if you used the word “invasion,” it means that you’re culpable for violence from one lunatic, who again, his idea of stopping the invasion was going to a Walmart and shooting a lot of people who were not invaders. That was his way of dealing with the invasion. So, it is -- and this just prints five bylines here. The New York Times. It takes five people to go through Fox News and say, “They used invasion,” the implication being this is why this guy shot people at a Walmart. It’s so stunningly irresponsible, even for The New York Times. Sirius XM Patriot, *Breitbart News Daily*, [8/12/19]

Conservative blogger and pundit Erick Erickson mocked the Times’ analysis, saying it “blames the dictionary for El Paso shooting.”

Oh how awful. The shooter in Texas used the same language the President and Rush Limbaugh have used to talk about the caravans of illegal aliens flooding our southern border.

The particular word is “invasion.” That’s what the President called it. That’s what Rush Limbaugh called it. That’s what the dictionary calls it.

I realize many journalists and progressives will seal clap this story. They’ll get excited by it and might even go blind in the bathroom stall while reading it. But the technical term for a horde of people crossing the border without permission is “invasion.”

...

Has there been incendiary rhetoric? Absolutely. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the United States of running a concentration camp and a leftwing radical used that same language to justify his firebombing of an ICE facility.

Most of the media has willfully ignored that.

They’d rather blame Rush, Tucker Carlson, Fox News, and Donald Trump.

They might as well blame the dictionary. The Resurgent, [8/12/19]

Conservative radio host Mark Simone deflected to the Dayton, OH, shooter’s support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), calling the NY Times “a total joke.”

MARK SIMONE (HOST): Hey, the fake news has been -- you know, it’s been fake news for two years. Michael Goodwin wrote an incredible piece about The New York Times, how it went from being -- they used to call it the “Gray Lady,” the paper of record -- to being the sleaziest fake news organization ever. In fact, he’ll be with us later this hour and we’ll talk about it. But if you look at today's New York Times, they have an article, front page, above the fold, and it's a photograph of the El Paso shooter's manifesto with certain words underlined. It's a big -- right above the fold on the front page. The biggest place they could put it, and it's all about how look how the El Paso shooter's manifesto says similar things to the right-wing talking points. This is the big story. Now, nowhere in the paper does it mention that the Dayton shooter, his manifesto was all Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren stuff. The Dayton shooter a huge supporter of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, quoting their stuff left and right. You think we'll see that article tomorrow? You think we'll ever see that article? This is why The New York Times has become a total joke. WOR-AM, *Mark Simone Show*, [8/12/19]

Philadelphia talk show host Dom Giordano defended using “invasion” to describe the border situation and pushed the white supremacist “replacement” theory.

DOM GIORDANO (HOST): All right, the word of the day, according to The New York Times, front and center, is “invasion.” You can't say “invasion” anymore. Now they're going after not just Fox News, but talk radio, and they talk about how talk radio hosts and callers and others use this word “invasion.” Now, in fairness, I might start using it more now. I don't think I've used it enough. That's exactly what it is that's going on at the border. The numbers are staggering. It's a perfectly legitimate word.

Now the word they allege that the El Paso gunman used -- and they claim is being used a lot -- I guess Tucker Carlson -- and I see Tucker most nights -- is replacement. That’s the one you’re going to start to hear more. In other words, this plays into the big narrative that white working-class people believe they’re being replaced by people the Democrats, mainly open-borders crowd, want to bring into the country. And there are books, there are conspiracy theorists out there that this is an organized effort to do that exactly. Versus an outcome that comes out of this invasion. I mean, these people that were arrested in Mississippi -- did you see the outcome of this now?

…

Now these companies are going to be holding job fairs to have to replace these workers that were here illegally. And the theory is, and there seems to be some evidence of that, they’re going to have to up the wages and benefits. Bingo. So is that not a case of replacement, where they’re able to replace low-skilled high school graduates, or not even, that are in these tough jobs, meatpacking, and all that?

...

And by extension, even though I don’t think it’s a planned thing, it’s just an economic thing, they were replacing American workers in these industries. WPHT-AM, *The Dom Giordano Show*, [8/12/19]

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punked on op-ed? didn't they have editorial policy change on deniers?

Greta Thunberg, at age 16, has quickly become one of the most visible climate activists in the world. Her detractors increasingly rely on ad hominem attacks to blunt her influence.

Thunberg gained prominence after she began skipping some days of school to protest climate inaction outside Swedish parliament. She spearheaded the school walkouts that saw more than a million children across the globe leaving their classrooms to demand action on global warming.

She has addressed world and U.N. leaders and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Later this month, she'll sail across the Atlantic Ocean in a 60-foot yacht powered by solar panels and underwater turbines on her way to participate in the U.N. climate talks in New York (*see related story*).

But the success of Thunberg — who describes herself on Twitter as a "16 year old climate activist with Asperger" — remains a sore point for those who reject mainstream climate science and some who have helped shape or encourage the Trump administration's rollback of climate policy.

They frequently point to Thunberg's autism, claim she is used by her parents and compare her call to young people on climate change to "Hitler Youth." They have pointed to her "monotone voice" and framed her as a "millenarian weirdo" with the "look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes."

A recent opinion piece in The New York Times prompted an outcry among climate hawks and Thunberg's allies, who said the newspaper was validating these types of personal attacks on the teenage activist.

Experts say relying on ad hominem attacks has significant collateral damage in that they dissuade people with intellectual and developmental disabilities from speaking publicly. While the language of describing someone as a "puppet" or abused by adults may appear coded, it's clearly a dog whistle that signals her words should be discounted because her mind works differently, said Steve Silberman, author of "NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity."

"It's classic autism bashing," he said. "They feel at liberty to do it because autism has been framed as a pathology for decades, so they feel like they don't have to hold back, than just 'other' her, turn her into a freak when she's actually making more sense than 95% of the adults who have addressed this issue for the last 30 years."

Patrick Moore, chairman of the board of directors of the CO2 Coalition, which promotes the benefits of carbon dioxide, wrote on Twitter that "Greta=Evil." In an interview with E&E News, Moore denied that his numerous mentions of Thunberg's autism in media appearances and on social media were attacks on her disability but that he instead was "comparing her masters to Hitler."

He said that Thunberg's public speeches were written for her, that she was a "puppet" and that she was unable to answer questions in interviews because her ideas were not her own.

"They aren't her ideas," he said. "There's a reason why 16-year-olds don't vote, don't drink, don't drive, don't whatever. At that age, she is not an adult, and therefore she has no right to influence people in a political process."

Moore's group has been increasingly active on Capitol Hill and in the Trump administration. CO2 Coalition co-founder Will Happer is now serving on the National Security Council at the White House and spearheaded a shelved plan to conduct an "adversarial" review of climate science. Moore was recently invited by congressional Republicans to downplay an alarming U.N. extinction report.

Earlier this year, Trump enthusiastically tweeted a quote from a Moore performance on Fox News in which Moore said climate science was "fake news" and that more carbon dioxide would be good for humanity.

Moore said he was seeking to show Thunberg "is a full-blown tool of adults."

"She is being abused by her parents, by Al Gore, by society at large that is on side with this ideology as if there is a climate emergency," he said. "What a nonsensical, stupid concept, there is no climate emergency, I think you know, otherwise people would be fleeing from it."

While her critics claim to attack Thunberg for ideas, critiques that mention her personal traits are harmful and reliant on "prejudiced ideas about autistic people," said Zoe Gross, a spokeswoman for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. People are quick to label autistic traits, including tone of voice and facial expressions, as "creepy." She said criticism of Thunberg that highlights the way she speaks, answers questions and displays emotions is clearly an attempt to belittle her.

"Some people may be making assumptions out of ignorance ... but others are explicitly saying that autistic people are not worth listening to," Gross wrote in an email response to questions. "It's upsetting to see any person being belittled because of their disability, especially a child. People with all kinds of disabilities can form and express opinions, speak up for ourselves and others, and become advocates and leaders."

Thunberg's critics include those who have been close to the Trump EPA.

Steve Milloy, who served on the Trump administration's EPA transition team and has pushed to restrict the use of science at the agency, has referred to Thunberg as an "adult-exploited empty-headed child."

"She's ignorant, maniacal and is being mercilessly manipulated by adult climate bedwetters funded by Putin," he wrote recently on Twitter.

At his congressional hearing, Moore testified alongside Marc Morano, who works for the conservative Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and has a blog that misrepresents and attacks climate science. Morano has been invited by the Trump administration to EPA events weakening the role of science at the agency; he was photographed giving his book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change" to former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Morano's blog describes Thunberg as an "autistic prophet." In his Twitter feed, Morano retweets criticisms of her that center on her autism.

"She hasn't been called a mascot. Which; is really what she is. She'll get a Nobel Prize and a wanna-be Ph.d. from Harvard. For being autistic and not going to school," wrote one follower retweeted by Morano.

Conservative media have also begun using Thunberg's character traits in an attempt to minimize her words. A columnist at The Federalist, for instance, recently wrote that Thunberg's struggles with autism while growing up "bred in her an absolutist attitude that is far from attractive." An editor of the right-wing British magazine Spiked, which receives funding from the Koch brothers network,called Thunberg a "weirdo" and wrote that "there is something chilling and positively pre-modern about Ms Thunberg."

Andrew Bolt, a Sky News host, recently wrote a column that called Thunberg "deeply disturbed."

"I have never seen a girl so young and with so many mental disorders treated by so many adults as a guru," he wrote. "But Thunberg has something very rare as well: a sense of absolute certainty. She shows not the slightest doubt and forgives not the slightest compromise. This allows followers who are tormented with doubt and burden of freedom to relax into her totalitarian certainty. And in Thunberg's case, that certainty comes from what normally would be seen as a disability."

In the New York Times opinion piece, The Weekly Standard editor Christopher Caldwell called Thunberg a "complicated adolescent."

"Intellectually, she is precocious and subtle," Caldwell wrote. "She reasons like a well-read but dogmatic student radical in her 20s. Physically, she is diminutive and fresh-faced, comes off as younger than her years, and frequently refers to herself as a 'child' — about the last thing the average 16-year-old would ever do."

Thunberg's autism actually informs her activism and motivates her to speak out against the falsehoods spouted by climate deniers, said Silberman, the author of "NeuroTribes." He said she doesn't pay any attention to the false notion of a "debate" in climate science.

Thunberg speaks like "one of the few people who has woken up out of this fever dream of bullshit that's spread by these right-wing politicians and oil company misinformation," Silberman said.

"Unlike most neurotypical people, she can't just shrug off the fact that of course oil company executives are going to lie and politicians who are beholden to them are going to lie," he said. "She can't abide that, it bothers her almost viscerally."

For her part, Thunberg has said that autism is "not a 'gift'" but that it "CAN be a superpower."

"I've had my fair share of depressions, alienation, anxiety and disorders," she wrote in a Facebook post in April. "But without my diagnosis, I would never have started school striking. Because then I would have been like everyone else."

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/rich-republicans-sell-a-woe-is-me-story-seeking-to-hide-big-dollar-campaign-contributions/

no lnx

Rich Republicans sell a woe-is-me story seeking to hide big-dollar campaign contributions

Written by Laura Clawson / Daily Kos August 9, 2019

Days after one of its star reporters jumped on the Republican faux-outrage bandwagon over a Democratic congressman’s use of publicly available campaign finance information, The New York Times offers up a furrowed brow of a story about whether it might be a good idea to hide the names of political donors—after all, people who’ve donated the legal maximum to Donald Trump don’t like the response.

“Calling out the people who fund campaigns is not a new tactic in politics,” Katie Rogers and Annie Karni write, “but the question of how much should be publicly disclosed about those donors has been an issue that Republicans, led by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, have repeatedly raised in recent years.” In other words, Republicans want all dark money, all the time. No accountability, no sunlight.

Because otherwise, people who can afford to write $2,800 checks—and more—to Donald Trump might get calls saying things like, “Hey, we were going to use you for business, but we found out you’re a racist,” and we can’t have that!

In an article about public disclosure and Republican opposition to such disclosure, nowhere does the Times say in so many words that information on people who give more than $200 to a campaign is publicly available on a government website. Probably the closest is this: “While the Supreme Court ruled in the 2010 Citizens United case to uphold public disclosure—with Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s conservative stalwart, arguing later that without such revelations ‘democracy is doomed’—Republicans and wealthy allies like the Koch brothers have argued that it results in donor harassment and has a chilling effect on free speech.” So the Supreme Court, including its leading right-wing voice, was for disclosure … BUT!

This is The New York Times dedicating 1,400 words to the wish of rich Republicans to change the law to provide less transparency and accountability, only it’s not reporting on that campaign, on the fact that this is what rich Republicans want to do and why that might be and how they’re going about it. Instead, it’s dutifully reporting their cover story as if it has merit and substance. It’s stenography on the “woe is me” of rich people who got some angry—but apparently not threatening, since heaven knows, if anyone had been threatening, we would have heard about it—phone calls because they gave thousands of dollars to a racist.

When we talk about the rules being written for rich people, this is a perfect example of how it happens.

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The Weekly doc series  https://hyperallergic.com/502547/the-weekly-new-york-times-fx-hulu/

early one on russia/ active measure?

eg art https://hyperallergic.com/tag/the-weekly/

As The New York Times gets set to launch The Weekly, a documentary series for FX and Hulu, CEO Mark Thompson on Monday said the newspaper giant is eyeing doing more TV news shows based on its quality storytelling.

"We're going to look at whether we can extend in TV," Thompson told analysts during an address to the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco that was webcast. The Weekly, the publication’s first foray into TV news that is set to air on FX and stream on Hulu, builds on the Michael Barbaro-hosted podcast The Daily that has helped pioneer a narrative approach to news by the traditional publication as it expands into the digital realm.

Thompson gave no word on when The Weeklywill launch, after its premiere was pushed back into 2019. The series will be produced by The New York Timesand Left/Right, a Red Arrow Studios company co-founded by Ken Druckerman and Banks Tarver. In addition to the FX’s linear telecast and Hulu’s second window, episodes will also be available to view on FX’s VOD services, FXNOW and FX+.

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https://boingboing.net/2019/07/06/war-criminals-and-corporate-lo.html

cory d

Sydney Ember is a news reporter who covers Bernie Sanders for the New York Times; her coverage is consistently negative (part of the Times's overall pattern of negative reporting on Sanders, including "stealth edits" to make its coverage less positive, to the dismay of the paper's public editor).

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Ember's negative reporting on Sanders might be the result of her deep connections to the finance world: she came to the Times after a career as an analyst at the coal-boosting hedge fund Blackrock and she's married to Mike Bechek, son of the former CEO of Bain Capital, where he also worked.

FAIR's Katie Halper has dug deep into Ember's network of go-to sources for quotes on why no one should vote for Sanders,showing that they are drawn from the ranks of the finance and corporate lobbyist world. Ember quotes the likes of:

* Jim Kessler, identified by Ember as "executive vice president for Policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank" (Third Way is a pro-austerity thinktank whose board is overwhelmingly made up of CEOs, bankers and corporate lawyers; it advocates for cuts to Social Security and Medicare and opposes higher taxes for billionaires);

* Otto J. Reich,a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, who was quoted in a piece condemning Sanders for his opposition to Reagan's secret arming of death-squads that brought down Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega with a campaign of rape, torture and murder;

* Jarrod Loadholt, whom Ember calls "a Democratic strategist who has worked on education policy in South Carolina" -- Loadholt is a consumer finance lobbyist who has worked to roll back Dodd/Frank, supporting a bill that would make it easier for banks to practice racial discrimination.

* Mary Anne Marsh, whom Ember calls "a Democratic strategist in Boston who worked for Senators Senators John Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy" -- but Ember doesn't mention that Marsh is principal at the Dewey Square Group,lobbying for Allegiance Healthcare Corporation, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Coca-Cola, Collegiate Funding Services, Countrywide Mortgage, DuPont, General Motors Corporation, Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA), Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, Purdue Pharma, Starbucks, United Health Group, the US Chamber of Commerce (hired to lobby for caps on damages corporations pay when they are sued by customers), the National Restaurant Association (hired to lobby to make it harder for restaurant workers unionize) and Fix the Debt (hired to lobby for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security).

* Tracy Sefl, whom Ember calls "a veteran Democratic strategist" -- but Ember doesn't mention that Sefl was a "surrogate and senior advisor for Hillary Clinton" who worked extensively with TheDrudge Report on Clinton's behalf, and was "a hired gun at a Republican-led firm Navigators Global."

These omissions are unique to Ember; other reporters (including other reporters at the New York Times) who quote these sources are at pains to identify their corporate affiliations and their checkered histories. In the mainstream press, Ember is the only writer who consistently seeks quotes from corporate lobbyists, war criminals, and far-right figures to discredit Sanders without disclosing their affiliations.

Her career as a lobbyist for many of the industries that would be most impacted by Sanders’ proposals might explain Marsh’s obvious animus against the candidate, as displayed in the May 20 edition of her weekly Fox News column, “Bernie Sanders’ Incredible Shrinking Candidacy—Why He Won’t Be Dem Nominee.” One of Sanders’ apparent insurmountable weaknesses, she wrote, is that people “remember Sanders didn’t support Clinton in the general election against Trump.” People with better memories recall that Sanders was one of the most energetic surrogates for Clinton on the campaign trail, campaigning constantly for her in battleground states (New Yorker, 11/4/16).

Marsh is right when she says that “most Democrats running don’t subscribe to Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialism,” which is why he’s seen as a unique threat to those who promote rapacious profiteering in the areas of finance, health care, education and the military. Third Way made that clear, once again, at a conference they held last week, where its co-founder Matt Bennett singled out Sanders’ vision from his opponents’: “One is a Democratic capitalist narrative…. The other is a socialist narrative,” notably omitting the “Democratic” descriptor for the latter.

By presenting her sources as objective authorities, instead of paid lobbyists and austerity ideologues, Ember both conceals and advances their agenda, undermining the integrity of the Fourth Estate, our democracy, and one of the most popular politicians.

Sydney Ember’s Secret Sources [Katie Halper/FAIR]

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