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Pretending To Have A Scoop, The New York Times Is Again Failing Its Readers

Pretending To Have A Scoop, The New York Times Is Again Failing Its Readers

The New York Times on Tuesday published what it professes is The Great Summing Up of the horrors likely to be visited upon us by a second term of Donald Trump in the White House. The Washington Post did this story before, in early November: “Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term.” Now the Times has come along with, ”How Trump Plans to Wield Power in 2025: What We Know.” Both stories discuss Trump’s plans to “go after” the Biden family and his other political opponents, but the Times story does it as if this is actually news on December 26, 2023.

In fact, the story covers Trump’s outrageous plans for a second term as if it’s breaking news, from his threat to round up thousands of immigrants and put them in detention camps built by the military using Defense Department funds, to his scheme to install Trump loyalists throughout the government, including in the civil service.

The Times does come up with one area not covered in the Post November story, the likelihood that Trump will pull the U.S. out of NATO, “retreat from Europe,” and instead use American military power against gangs in Mexico. That much in the Times story is more or less new, based, I suspect, on the reluctance by his slavish munchkins among House Republicans to pass aid for Ukraine before they departed Washington for the comfy confines of their respective districts back home.

It's all a bit ass-coverish, a Boxing Day story attempting to put all in one place a scary scenario that simply echoes the alarms first sounded by their rival 200 miles to the south in Washington D.C.

The most interesting and alarming thing about the Times story today is to be found in a little aside in a section explaining that it is based on what Trump has said during his campaign, on his website, and interviews with “campaign advisers, including some who spoke with The New York Times at the request of the campaign.” You could write this last little gem off to political reporters’ braggadocio, showing us how much access they have, except for the fact that the story’s authors include the likes of Maggie Haberman and Charlie Savage, both of whom seem to wear their monikers as so-called “Trump whisperers” with pride. It’s as if the two of them, with the able assistance of the third reporter on the by-line, Jonathan Swan, want us to know that their reporting isn’t based on second-hand tattle-tailing of disgruntled former campaign staff but on access they alone have that comes from inside Trump’s tropical Berchtesgaden Eagles Nest in Palm Beach.

I am usually thankful for any juicy nugget I can get about Donald Trump and his authoritarian stratagems, but this kind of inside-baseball nonsense in a story that sums up Trump’s plans to jettison democracy in favor of a Hitlerian dreamscape that pretends only the New York Times can accurately report is as unseemly as it is childish.

There is a nah-nah-nah quality about the Times coverage of Trump at this point that is downright obnoxious. The so-called newspaper of record is covering this wannabe autocrat as if his plans to dismantle democratic norms, throw away the rule of law, and ignore any sort of restraints on his power, including those that might be imposed by the courts, as if they are just more policy positions. They’re treating the masterplan conceived of by the Heritage Foundation as just another political white paper, rather than the dark cloud over our way of governance that it is.

The Times, with all its resources, should not be relying on the Trump-whisperer troika to sum things up for us every once in a while, but rather assign one team of reporters on Trump’s mini-Eichmann, Stephen Miller, another team on his obvious profit-making from wholesale violation of campaign spending laws, and yet another team on what his pal Vladimir Putin is doing this time to flood social media with Russian-bot accounts promoting the man he has already said he would like to see elected president.

As with all things Trump, nearly all the corruption in his campaign is right out in the open. At one rally after another, he’s reveling in “lock him up” chants promising that he will break one law after another beginning with the moment he takes the oath if he is elected.

In the 2016 campaign, the Times devoted thousands of inches to garbage like Hillary’s emails and Russian-generated lies promoted by people like Roger Stone, who served as a kind of backstage Roy Cohn to Trump after he was publicly ousted from the Trump campaign in a fake dispute established just so Trump could put distance between himself, his campaign, and Stone.

This time, the Times is pounding the bongo drum of inflation that doesn’t exist, an economy that Trump says is failing, which the Times loyally reports every time that lie comes out of his mouth, and polls that are beneficial to one person every time the Times headlines them.

As with its previous coverage of Trump, it’s all about emphasis, and the New York Times is failing again on that score nearly every day, the knowing murmurs of the whisper-troika notwithstanding.

'Too Many Secrets': Washington Post Urges Reform Of Classification System

'Too Many Secrets': Washington Post Urges Reform Of Classification System

The discovery and voluntary relinquishing of classified documents at properties connected to President Joe Biden ignited a firestorm among politicos given the story's concurrence with the ongoing saga surrounding former President Donald Trump's hoarding of top-secret texts at his Mar-a-Lago golf compound in Palm Beach, Florida.

The United States Department of Justice's appointment of special counsels to investigate each case – Jack Smith for Trump and Robert Hur for Biden – signals that Attorney General Merrick Garland seeks to remain impartial in pursuit of the truth.

And although the circumstances of the two scandals lack a fundamental equivalency – with Trump's being presumed as a criminal matter and Biden's being likened to Hillary Clinton's exonerated negligence – the stories have nevertheless triggered discussions over the federal government's policies regarding sensitive materials.

On Sunday, The Washington Post editorial board expanded on that topic, opining that "the classification system for managing secrets is overwhelmed and desperately needs repair."

The paper's editors had two main points. The first was that "too much national security information is classified, and too little declassified. For years, officials have stamped documents 'secret' in a lowest-common-denominator system that did not penalize over-classification and made declassification difficult and time-consuming. For example, in November, a 2004 interview of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney with the 9/11 Commission was released to the public. It should not have taken 18 years."

They cited a statement given in 2004 by then-Republican Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, who lamented the quantity of information that intelligence organizations deem unfit for public knowledge.

"There are too many secrets," Shays said. That formed the basis of the Post's second argument.

"Over-classification is counterproductive, making it harder for agencies to function, draining budgets and eroding public confidence. Agencies put their best people to work on the most urgent problems, and declassification is a low priority," the Board explained. "Now comes a 'tsunami,' as the Public Interest Declassification Board warned two years ago: an explosion of digital information. Yet management of classified materials 'largely follows established analog and paper-based models.'"

The editors then suggested a solution.

"A good start would be to simplify the classification process into two tiers, 'secret' and 'top secret,' eliminating the lower 'confidential' level, while protecting those secrets that need special handling," they said. Recall that "confidential" was the marking that plagued Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign.

The Post also alluded to a meeting held by "government experts" from the Hudson Institute in which they determined that “the growing volume of classified records already exceeds the ability of humans alone to process them.”

The editors concluded that the Hudson Institute's realization was a "wake-up call," adding that "the whole system needs to be fixed, and its dysfunction should not be ignored for another decade."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Why Did Major Newspapers Chase Hunter Biden And Airbrush Jared Kushner?

Why Did Major Newspapers Chase Hunter Biden And Airbrush Jared Kushner?

Several of the nation’s leading newspapers failed to thoroughly scrutinize a potentially major scandal involving a president’s close family member using influence in the White House to establish lucrative international business deals.

In this case, the person trying to enrich himself s is none other than former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose multibillion-dollar sweetheart deal with Saudi Arabia has gotten just a fraction of the attention devoted to baseless stories about Hunter Biden.

The contrast could not be clearer. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter never held any official role in the Obama or Biden administrations, but Republicans and their media allies are investigating his business dealings — including those conducted during a period in which it appeared as if his father had permanently retired from politics.

Jared Kushner, on the other hand, had an “unrealistically broad policy portfolio” in his father-in-law’s administration, ranging from health care to foreign policy. Kushner, who served as one of Trump’s closest White House advisers, even reportedly led the administration to its early determination to ignore the COVID-19 pandemic in Democratic-leaning states. And, contrary to Hunter Biden’s private sector work, Kushner’s current business ventures are happening as his father-in-law tries to lay the groundwork for a political comeback in 2024.

Saudi Arabia’s $2 Billion Investment In Kushner’s Firm Raises Serious Questions

Last Sunday, The New York Timesreported that, just six months after leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner had secured a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Arabian government to capitalize his newly formed private equity firm Affinity Partners. In addition to comprising the majority of the firm’s initial portfolio, the deal will also pay $25 million in annual fees to Affinity.

Professional Saudi investment analysts had internally questioned the decision to inject capital into the Kushner-led venture, citing Kushner’s inexperience in private equity and the financial risks involved — only for the fund’s board headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the despotic heir apparent in Riyadh and a political ally of Kushner and Trump, to order that the deal should go ahead.

Documents also show Saudi investment fund staff explaining that the deal was made “to form a strategic relationship” with Kushner, rather than on the basis of its financial merit — an outright admission of a political relationship.

During the Trump administration, Kushner helped broker $110 billion in arms sales to the Saudi government, to assist in the ruthless Saudi military intervention in Yemen, while he also provided political cover to the regime after the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Times reported that ethics experts argue the deal “creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner’s actions in the White House — or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024.”

USA Today Rewrites Recent History To Scandalize Biden Family

By an eerie coincidence, USA Today also published last Sunday a profile of Valerie Biden Owens, the president’s sister, which appeared on the front page of Monday’s print edition under the headline “President's sister defends 'Joey,' Hunter.”

“Not since John F. Kennedy has a president been surrounded by such a large and close-knit clan, one that has been a source of both emotional support and political trouble for the commander in chief,” wrote the paper’s Washington bureau chief Susan Page. She further asserted, without a hint of irony, “For years, Donald Trump has hammered Joe Biden with accusations of corruption involving multimillion-dollar contracts that son Hunter and brother James won in China and Ukraine when Biden was vice president.”

Even if the Times hadn’t just published the story about Kushner’s deal with the Saudi regime, it would be simply astonishing that Page could write such dramatic statements about the perception of impropriety in the Biden family without acknowledging the well-known history of Trump’s children making millions in overseas business deals during his presidency.

Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner worked in the White House with direct access to sweeping policy portfolios, and Trump’s adult sons were involved with his political campaign while also ostensibly managing his business as his proxies. And, of course, Trump himself used the presidency to routinely patronize his hotels and resorts at government expense, siphoning millions in taxpayer dollars through his properties in Florida, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and even Scotland.

If Page wanted to tell a story about the president’s family serving as a source of “political trouble for the commander in chief,” her fixation on President Biden’s sister is a perplexing choice.

In the past five days, USA Today still has not published anything in its print edition about Kushner’s deal with the Saudi government.

Washington Post Pushes Republican Talking Points About Hunter Biden

Also last Sunday, The Washington Post’s print edition ran a story about Republican accusations against Hunter Biden, titled “Unraveling the tale of Hunter Biden and $3.5 million from Russia.” The story, which first appeared online two days earlier, made the mistake of prioritizing the misleading Republican attacks over explaining the truth of the matter.

For example, after opening with two accusatory quotes from Trump and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who had every reason to launder their political smear through the press, the article waited until seven paragraphs later to actually declare, “We found no evidence that Hunter Biden was part of those transactions.” So, what exactly was the news value of reprinting these Republican lies?

Two articles the Post published in response to the Times story about Kushner’s actual deal with the Saudis could have been useful counterweights to the Republican smear campaign currently targeting the president’s son.

Post staff writer Aaron Blake wrote an article titled, “After Trump’s contentious courtship of the Saudis, $2B for Jared Kushner,” which detailed how Kushner may have secured his financial backers through political favors. Furthermore, national correspondent Philip Bump also wrote a piece titled “You say a president’s relative is part of iffy international deals?” which confronted the right-wing fixation with Hunter Biden by juxtaposing it with the seemingly obvious corruption inherent in Kushner’s investment firm.

But, unfortunately, these articles appeared only online and not in the paper’s print edition, where prime real estate was reserved for rehashing attacks on Biden.

The Wall Street Journal Hammers “Hunter’s Laptop,” But Remains Silent On Jared

The Wall Street Journal, the quasi-respectable news operation of the Murdoch media empire, has not run any articles on Kushner’s business deals. However, opinion writer Holman W. Jenkins Jr. ran a column in Thursday’s print edition titled “Media Bias and Hunter’s Laptop,” with the somewhat ironic declaration, “The press won’t claw back its credibility until it admits why it buried the story.”

In the past, the Journal’s news side actually helped to debunk Republican accusations against Joe Biden regarding his son’s business deals, during the controversy over Trump’s attempted extortion of the Ukrainian government in an effort to create political dirt against the Biden family. However, the opinion side summarily ignored it at the time.

Methodology

Media Matters searched articles in the Factiva database for The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA Today for the term “Kushner” and any of the terms “Saudi,” “crown prince,” “Salman,” “billion,” or “fund” within the headline or lead paragraph from April 8, 2022, through April 13, 2022. We also searched articles in the Factiva database for the same newspapers for the term “Hunter” in the headline or lead paragraph during the same time period.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters. Research contributions from Rob Savillo.

Inflation Is A Global Dilemma -- So Why Does Press Blame Biden?

Inflation Is A Global Dilemma -- So Why Does Press Blame Biden?

Reprinted with permission from PressRun

News that U.S. inflation inched up 0.5 percent last month set off another round of excited media reports, as news outlets pounded one of their favorite themes in recent months. Convinced that rising prices are the defining economic issue of the day — not huge job gains, record-setting GDP predictions, or boosted wages — the press continues to portray inflation as a uniquely American problem that’s hounding Democrats.

“President Joe Biden suffered a new blow to his economic agenda this week,” Politicoannounced, pointing to the new inflation figures. “That prompted the Biden White House to scramble to do damage control in the face of attacks by Republicans.” The Associated Press on Wednesday stressed that inflation is “heaping pressure on President Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve to address what has become the biggest threat to the U.S. economy.”

The New York Times: “A troubling development for President Biden.” The Washington Post headline: “Democrats Worry Biden Could Pay the Political Price For Rising Inflation.” (The first person quoted in the piece was a GOP pollster.)

What’s missing from the inflation coverage is the consistent acknowledgement that the trend of rising prices is a global phenomenon, fueled by the pandemic. The Politico report made no mention of worldwide inflation, neither did the Times or Post dispatches; the AP included just one sentence.

Dismissed or downplayed is the fact that systemic, record-setting inflation has taken hold in virtually every major economy:

• “Germany: Annual Inflation Hits Highest Rate Since 1993”

• “Italian Inflation Hits Highest In More Than A Decade On Energy”

• “Mexico Ends Year With Inflation At 7.36%, Most In 20 Years”

• “Russian 2021 Inflation Accelerates To 8.39%, Preliminary Data Shows”

• “Spain's Annual Inflation Jumps To 6.7% At End Of 2021, Highest Since 1989”

• “UK Inflation Hits 10-Year High Ahead Of Key Bank Of England Meeting”

• “Canada's Annual Inflation Rate Matches 18-Year High, Set to Keep Rising"

Thanks to international reporting, we know inflation is on the rise around the world. But news consumers here have to search that information out because it’s rarely included in coverage of the U.S. economy. Most often, domestic inflation is presented in a silo, independent from the global economic trend that has been sparked by a worldwide virus.

Meanwhile, the press eagerly trumpets Republican claims that Biden’s agenda is responsible for inflation, while failing to point out that it wasn’t the infrastructure bill or Covid relief legislation that prompted inflation to jump to 4.7 percent in Canada, 5.1 percent in the U.K and and 6.7 percent in Spain. Inflation is occurring everywhere, so it’s not Biden’s policies that are to blame. The press prefers a more linear narrative, and seems to deliberately leave out the international context. That allows journalists to frame the story as a Dem vs. GOP one, as if policy adjustments from Biden would cure inflation.

Today’s unfortunate economic trend is clearly caused by the pandemic, which warped global supply and demand patterns, creating a mismatch that has driven prices higher. Energy costs and shipping bottlenecks are two major, driving factors. One reason inflation sprouted so quickly in the U.S. is that consumer demand is booming as the economy has recovered from Covid faster and stronger under Biden than most people ever thought possible.

Still, Republicans claim Biden is driving up prices by passing large spending bills. Government spending is bad because it fuels inflation, the GOP claims over and over in the press.

Yet eager Republicans just helped pass a $768 billion defense budget. When Trump was president, Senate Republicans supported pumping trillions of dollars into the economy in order to battle the effects of the pandemic shutdown. The GOP, with help from the press, is still able to frame inflation as a problem Biden created and must be penalized for. The Post: “Republicans argued the new inflation numbers were another sign that Biden’s policies are not working.”

There’s nothing subtle about what the GOP is doing. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) last year told the Wall Street Journal that rising prices were a “gold mine” for Republicans, suggesting the party hopes consumers will continue to have to pay higher prices this year.

The press trumpets that GOP message. Inflation is a “political nightmare for Biden,” CNN recently stressed. The Associated Press, while conceding that consumer spending is way up, claimed inflation was “casting a pall” and that upward prices, not plummeting unemployment, dominated water cooler talk in the U.S. When weekly jobless claims recently fell to a 52-year low, the New YorkTimes ran yet another excited Biden inflation piece on the following day’s front page. News of the historic jobless numbers ran on page B3.

It was no surprise that a recent AP poll found consumers fixated on inflation: “Income Is Up, But Americans Focus on Inflation.” Why is that? Americans are inundated with the media’s constant inflation coverage, most of which omits the fact the trend is now happening all around the world.

Reprinted with permission from PressRun