The media, right now, is combing over the postmortems of the Clinton Campaign in yet another “tell-all” book while ignoring their own role in hyping up the email leaks from Wikileaks, now a known front for Russian intelligence and disinformation campaigns.
The New York Times has never apologized for its shoddy reporting of the emails issue. Nate Silver rightly calls out the New York Times on their bad reporting and editing on the Clinton campaign in his tweets today.
And nor did the New York Times walk back its atrociously false article about the FBI finding no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
This New York Times story came right after the one by David Corn reporting on what would then become the Christopher Steele dossier. Here’s an excerpt from the NYT article:
And no evidence has emerged that would link him or anyone else in his business or political circle directly to Russia’s election operations.
And from the David Corn article that had appeared earlier in the day:
Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer's conversations with Russian sources, noted, "Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance." It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him." It also reported that Russian intelligence had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on "bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls.”
We now know that there are reams of evidence, documents, photos, and so much more between the Trump campaign and Russia. And James Comey himself had confirmed that there was an active FBI investigation, as ironically reported by the New York Times on March 20, 2017.
WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, took the extraordinary step on Monday of announcing that the agency is investigating whether members of President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Mr. Comey’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee created a treacherous political moment for Mr. Trump, who has insisted that “Russia is fake news” that was cooked up by his political opponents to undermine his presidency. Mr. Comey placed a criminal investigation at the doorstep of the White House and said officers would pursue it “no matter how long that takes.”
Then there’s the new information that the FBI used that very same dossier as initially reported by David Corn at Mother Jones to bolster its investigation in asking for a FISA warrant of one of Trump’s aides.
Washington (CNN) The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump's campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.
The dossier has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to US officials briefed on the probe.
This includes approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of Carter Page, two of the officials said. Last year, Page was identified by the Trump campaign as an adviser on national security.
Officials familiar with the process say even if the application to monitor Page included information from the dossier, it would only be after the FBI had corroborated the information through its own investigation. The officials would not say what or how much was corroborated.
Then there’s the New York Times again, back in January 11, 2017, calling the Steele dossier “sensational, and unverified” when that same dossier was used to corrobate the FBI’s request for a FISA approval.
Mr. Trump denounced the unproven claims Wednesday as a fabrication, a Nazi-style smear concocted by “sick people.” It has further undermined his relationship with the intelligence agencies and cast a shadow over the new administration.
Imagine if the New York Times had actually reported on Trump’s ties to Russia, his casinos going bust, the Russian crime mob businesses who operated out of Trump tower, we’d be seeing very different word clouds now.
Charles Pierce is also right to call out The New York Times for its biased, slanted coverage against Hillary Clinton, and the free press they basically gave to Trump in covering his promises on the wall, anti-immigrant rants, and his nativism policies.
Will The New York Times Ever Fix Its Clinton Problem?
The paper of record has failed us in this regard.
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In July, the Times ran a shoddy story in which the newspaper reported that a criminal investigation into HRC's famous use of a private email server had been launched by the Department of Justice. The story fell apart almost immediately, and then-public editor Margaret Sullivan burned the bones of it in a subsequent column. This was bad reporting, but the story's authors didn't make this up. It was what they were told by their sources, identified as "senior government officials." Remember when Jayson Blair blew up, and the Times promised to end the promiscuous use of anonymous quotes? Yeah, that was cool.
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The Comey story broke on a day in late October while I was driving through New Hampshire between a Trump event in Manchester and another one way out in the boonies, and I can tell you that the story blotted out the sun. By the time he got to the small mill town, everybody in the gym at the little Christian school knew so much about the Comey letter that Trump only had to make a head-fake toward it to get the crowd to bringing the roof down.
That moment turned the campaign for good. There's no point in denying it. For more than 25 years now, it was the Times that wrote the Clinton Rules and brought them down the mountain as surely as Charlton Heston brought the tablets of the law down Mount Horeb. This is a great newspaper with people who do great work, but one that somehow leaves its greatness between the cushions of the sofa when it comes to dealing with one family in our politics. It's truly weird.
Weird is a very good description of the slanted bias the New York Times has had towards the Clintons, while seemingly ignoring Trump’s own problems in the election in favor of reporting every single word he said to rile up his racist, sexist base.
So what’s Hillary Clinton doing today while the New York Times and other media outlets are poring over every word in yet another Clinton tell-all gossip book? Talking about saving the elephants.
"It became clear to everyone that this was not just a terrible crisis when it came to the elephant population, it was a trade, a trafficking that was funding a lot of bad folks, a lot of bad actors," she said. "It was being used to take ivory and sell it in order to buy more weapons, and support the kind of terroristic activity that these and other groups were engaged in."
Clinton noted that while China was the biggest market for illegal ivory, the United States was the second-biggest. "So China is going to be a key player but we are, too," she said.
The former Democratic presidential candidate noted that Saturday was Earth Day, "and we are marching on behalf of science," referring to marches throughout the U.S. on Saturday.
"And part of science is understanding the intricate relationships that we share with all those on this planet and particularly large mammals like elephants, who have a role to play both in reality and in our imaginations," she said.
To think this incredibly smart, educated woman isn’t President today because of an overhyped story with irresponsible reporting by the New York Times is very sad. One would’ve imagined her giving a strong, public speech in defense of our environmental laws and regulations on Earth Day by passing new regulations in the EPA today.
But instead, we have Trump who rolled back environmental regulations and allowed coal companies to pollute our waters.