Displaying posts categorized under

MEDIA

Anonymous Sourcing Under Siege: CNN, NY Times Bungle Trump Reports Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David A. Vise on how press can avoid major mistakes.

David A. Vise, the author, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Washington Post for 23 years. He has also written several acclaimed non-fiction books, including ‘The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Phillip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History.’

CNN’s publication and retraction of a story about the Trump-Comey conflict illustrates the biggest bias in journalism: the bias in favor of “The Story.”

Similarly, the high-profile reporting by The New York Times on alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was at least partially refuted by Comey. He asserted that “in the main” a February story about alleged contacts between Trump lieutenants and Russian government officials was not true. Hours later, the New York Times reported Comey’s comments, but largely stood by their original story.

From my 23 years as a reporter at The Washington Post, I learned from journalism’s giants that bias must be guarded against with vigilance. Legendary Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee grilled reporters when major stories were based, as the CNN and Times stories were, on anonymous sources. Time and time again, Bradlee emphasized the importance of “getting it right,” a need that is heightened when nameless sources are used.

The pressure on reporters and columnists to publish stories that grab headlines and attention often causes them to overreach. This is what Bradlee’s successor as Editor, Len Downie dubbed “the bias in favor of The Story,” something Downie pushed editors to be aware of, and guard against.

This doesn’t mean that anonymous sources should not be used.

Frequently, cultivating sources that don’t want their names revealed is the only way for journalists to report important news and insights. In fact, the biggest journalism story of the last century, The Washington Post’s pursuit of Watergate—which led to the resignation of President Nixon in 1973—was based on an anonymous source known as “Deep Throat,” who was cultivated in part by my mentor, Bob Woodward.

Nevertheless, the darkest day in Washington Post history occurred just eight years later in 1981 when the newspaper was forced to give back a Pulitzer Prize it won for stories about a six-year-old heroin addict named Little Jimmy. Two of the best in the business, Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee, oversaw that coverage as editors, but reporter Janet Cooke duped both of them into believing a tale she had made up completely—and which prompted a massive police search for the non-existent boy.

On the day The Post won the Pulitzer, Cooke admitted she had fabricated the story and Bradlee, for his part, commissioned a major independent investigation into The Post newsroom to determine what went wrong and how it could be prevented in the future. Safeguards were adopted, and nothing else like it has since occurred at the newspaper.

Bradlee once told me, “We don’t write the truth. We write what people tell us.” Having said that, he demanded that stories meet a high standard for credibility and guarded the newspaper’s reputation for accuracy zealously.

Comey Wasn’t Investigating Trump — But Look Who Said He Was By Dan McLaughlin ****

There are a number of important takeaways from today’s Comey hearings, but one of the big ones elaborated on a point I hit yesterday in discussing Comey’s prepared statement: Trump was never under FBI investigation during the time that Comey headed the FBI, Comey personally told Trump that three times, and Trump grew increasingly frustrated that Comey wouldn’t clear the “cloud” over his head by publicly saying so. Indeed, Trump’s explanation to Lester Holt of why he fired Comey is entirely consistent with this.

But with Comey’s repeated and emphatic testimony that Trump was not under investigation, we have some new revisionist history: wildly backtracking liberals and Democrats claiming that nobody ever said Trump was under FBI investigation. And this is simply untrue. Here’s a sampling of what Democrats, liberals, and the media were saying back when Comey was privately reassuring Trump that he wasn’t under investigation:

Salon, January 20 headline: “The FBI is leading an investigation into Donald Trump’s connections with Russia” — first line, “The FBI is leading a multi-agency investigation into possible links between Russian officials and President-elect Donald Trump.”

Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, March 20: “The FBI is investigating a sitting President. Been a long time since that happened.”

The FBI is investigating a sitting President. Been a long time since that happened.
— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) March 20, 2017

The New York Times March 20 headline: “F.B.I. Is Investigating Trump’s Russia Ties, Comey Confirms”

The Times: “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.’”

Russell Berman in The Atlantic, March 20 headline: “It’s Official: The FBI Is Investigating Trump’s Links to Russia”

Jason Linkins in the Huffington Post, March 20: “we have a president under FBI investigation. How do you like that?” In an article headlined “Let’s Revisit All Those Times Trump Surrogates Said You Can’t Elect Someone Under FBI Investigation.”

Jack Moore in GQ, March 20 headline: “James Comey Confirms the FBI Is Investigating Trump’s Russian Connections”

Limelite, a blogger at DailyKos, March 20 headline: “Let’s Not Mince Words: Trump & Cohort Under FBI CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION.” Article: “The truth is that the facts are Director Comey is heading a criminal investigation into the past and present illegal activities of Donald Trump and a number of his former and present advisors whom he gathered to his 2016 presidential campaign. Let us be clear. Very clear. The FBI is not investigating of the basis of conspiracy theories, rumors, political axes to grind, or Russian propaganda. The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation based on factual evidence.”

LeftOfCenter, a blogger at Crooks & Liars, March 21 headline, quoting MSBNC’s Joe Scarborough: “On Election Day, Trump Was The ONLY ONE Under FBI Investigation, Not Hillary Clinton” More from Scarborough: “The FBI reports that there’s an investigation between the White House, the President’s campaign and collusion with Russia . . . ”

Last night on CNN:Jeffrey Toobin: Comey’s statements on Trump highlight president’s ‘obstruction of justice’

Toobin is, to put it mildly…..a …..colossal jerk…..rsk

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN legal analyst and staff writer for The New Yorker, was fired up over former FBI James Comey’s prepared remarks on Wednesday, calling President Donald Trump’s purported maneuvers an “obstruction of justice.”

During his appearance on CNN, Toobin blasted Trump and said, “There is a criminal investigation going on of one of the President’s top associates, his former national security adviser, one of the most — handful of most important people in the government. He gets fired. He’s under criminal investigation and the President brings in the FBI director and says, ‘Please stop your investigation.’ If that isn’t obstruction of justice, I don’t know what is.”

On Trump’s firing of Comey in May

Toobin: Comey firing a ‘grotesque abuse of power’ “This is the kind of thing that goes on in non-democracies, that when there is an investigation that reaches near the President of the United States, or the leader of a non-democracy, they fire the people who are in charge of the investigation.”

CNN Forced to Issue Correction After Comey’s Written Testimony Refutes Report By Debra Heine

CNN was forced to issue a correction Tuesday, after former FBI director James Comey’s written testimony contradicted its damaging report about the president.

“The most trusted name in news” had reported that Comey was expected on Thursday to dispute President Trump’s claims that Comey had told him on multiple occasions that he was not under investigation.

In his termination letter to Comey on May 10, Trump mentioned that the Comey had told him three times that he was not under investigation: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,” the president wrote.

But in the former FBI director’s written testimony for his opening statement in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey confirmed that on three separate occasions he had told Trump that he was not under investigation for collusion with Russia.

Via The Hill:

The report, titled “Comey expected to refute Trump,” was based on unnamed sources and said Comey’s conversations with the president “were much more nuanced,” and that Trump drew the wrong conclusion.

The story was complied by four CNN journalists, including Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus.

Borger reiterated the report’s claims in an appearance on CNN Tuesday.

“Comey is going to dispute the president on this point if he’s asked about it by senators, and we have to assume that he will be,” said Borger, the network’s chief political analyst. “He will say he never assured Donald Trump that he was not under investigation, that that would have been improper for him to do so.”

Comey’s opening statement did, however, mention asserting that Trump was not under investigation, however the statement failed to specify whether Trump was not under criminal investigation, but only said there was no counter-intelligence investigation on the president.

CNN’s sources were spectacularly wrong.

Surveillance in the Obama Era Senator describes another potential abuse of intelligence powers, media yawns.By James Freeman

How far did the Obama Administration go in collecting intelligence on Americans, including members of the political opposition? This question has aroused little curiosity in much of the press corps or among Democratic politicians like Rep. Adam Schiff, who used to at least pretend they were concerned about government monitoring of telephone networks. But for citizens who still care about such potential threats to liberty, there was interesting news on Friday.

Specifically, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said during an appearance on Fox News:

I have reason to believe that a conversation that I had was picked up with some foreign leader or some foreign person and somebody requested that my conversation be unmasked. I’ve been told that by people in the intelligence community. All I can say is that there are 1,950 collections on American citizens talking to people that were foreign agents being surveilled either by the CIA, the FBI or the NSA. Here’s the concern: Did the people in the Obama Administration listen in to these conversations? Was there a politicizing of the intelligence gathering process? So what I want to know: Of the 1,950 incidental collections on American citizens, how many of them involved presidential candidates, members of Congress from either party and if these conversations were unmasked, who made the request? Because I want to know everything there is about unmasking, how it works and who requested unmasking of conversations between foreign people and American members of Congress.

Mr. Graham added that he does not know if he was in fact unmasked. But he made clear that he intends to learn the extent of the executive branch’s surveillance of him:

…I’ve sent a letter to the NSA, to the FBI and the CIA requesting any collection on Lindsey Graham. Now if you’ve got a reason to believe that a member of Congress is committing a crime, then you go get a warrant to follow us around like you would any other citizen. But I meet with foreign leaders all the time. And I would be upset if any executive branch agency listened in on my conversations, because I’m in another branch of government.

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) has been saying for a while that two reporters have told him that he too was surveilled by the Obama Administration, according to the journalists’ sources within government. And then last month Mr. Paul said, also on Fox News, that a Senate colleague had confided that he believed he was also surveilled by the Obama Administration. Today a spokesman for Sen. Paul tells this column that the Kentuckian was referring to Sen. Graham and adds:

Senator Rand Paul remains very concerned about potential abuses committed by the Obama administration that led to members of congress being surveilled or unmasked. He has discussed potential legislative reforms with Senator Graham on preventing the executive branch from spying on the legislative branch in the future.

That’s fine to consider sensible legislation, but first let’s find out if the existing laws have been followed. Along with Messrs. Graham and Paul, the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team were swept up in the net of Obama-era intelligence collection. Mr. Graham, Mr. Paul and of course Mr. Trump were all competitors in seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. All of this raises the question: which Republican presidential candidates in 2016 were not surveilled? CONTINUE AT SITE

The New York Times Just Outed the CIA’s Top Iran Spy Bre Payton

In an article published Friday, The New York Times outed the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) top spy overseeing the organization’s efforts in Iran. The paper justified its outing of the undercover CIA spy and his role within the agency by saying it was necessary since the agent is “leading an important new administration initiative against Iran.”

Yes. That really happened.

In an article entitled “C.I.A. Names New Iran Chief in a Sign of Trump’s Hard Line,” the newspaper of record revealed that Michael D’Andrea, who previously led the hunt for Osama bin Laden, will now be in charge of the agency’s operations in Iran.

As the Times explained in its report, Iran is “one of the hardest targets” for the CIA to keep tabs on.

“The agency has extremely limited access to the country — no American embassy is open to provide diplomatic cover — and Iran’s intelligence services have spent nearly four decades trying to counter American espionage and covert operations,” the article noted.

So the Times has apparently made it the newspaper’s mission to make the agency’s work much more difficult and far more dangerous by publicly identifying the man in charge of its covert operations in the Persian country. The paper’s rationale? The report’s authors claimed that because the newspaper already outed D’Andrea in 2015 as the official in charge of a CIA drone program, ignoring desperate pleas from the CIA at the time to keep his name secret in order to protect both the agent and overall national security, it was kosher to out him as the agency’s new Iran chief in 2017.

Here’s what the Times article says (emphasis added):

The C.I.A. declined to comment on Mr. D’Andrea’s role, saying it does not discuss the identities or work of clandestine officials. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because Mr. D’Andrea remains undercover, as do many senior officials based at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va. Mr. Eatinger did not use his name. The New York Times is naming Mr. D’Andrea because his identity was previously published in news reports, and he is leading an important new administration initiative against Iran.

The bolded portion of the excerpt above links to a piece dated April 25, 2015, in which D’Andrea is identified as the man in charge of growing the CIA’s drone programs in Yemen and Pakistan. But the paper’s real reason for outing D’Andrea, who was depicted as a character known only as “The Wolf” in the film “Zero Dark Thirty,” is that he’s an Iran hawk likely to oppose the previous administration’s attempts to normalize the nation by giving it billions of dollars, trading it terrorists for hostages, and blessing its nuclear program.

Conspiracy theories and the death of a Democratic National Committee staffer by Wayne Allyn Root

Our country has become a Banana Republic. Anything minor Trump does is leaked (a crime), taken out of context, hyped through the roof, and then turned into hysterical headlines by the media.https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/wayne-allyn-root/commentary-conspiracy-theories-and-the-death-of-a-democratic-national-committee-staffer/

But if Democrats conspire to fix an election and a Democratic National Committee staffer winds up killed, you hear nothing about it in the mainstream media. We’re not talking about a conversation here. We’re talking about a real-life murder.

It may be an ordinary street murder by thugs, but just the idea that it could be attached in any way to the DNC makes it off limits to discuss. It’s verboten. We see a total mainstream media blackout. But let’s put the shoe on the other foot and see what the media would say.

What if a Republican National Committee staffer was murdered in the streets of Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2016?

What if WikiLeaks publicly stated that this RNC staffer leaked the 44,000 emails that showed Donald Trump and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus conspired to fix the GOP presidential primary and cheated Jeb Bush out of victory?

What if those emails proved a former RNC chairman now working for CNN cheated and gave debate questions in advance to Donald Trump, so he would always have the perfect answer?

What if Trump and the RNC chairman were badly embarrassed by this leak of sensitive, private documents … and Trump’s chances of being elected president were damaged … and the RNC chairman wound up fired because of this leak?

What if the cold-blooded killing of this RNC staffer looked more like an assassination — with the killers never even attempting to grab his wallet, cash, watch or jewelry?

What if WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information on the murder of this staffer, yet no reward was ever put up by the Trump campaign or the RNC?

Climate and the New York Times The newspaper is hoping to persuade readers to burn more carbon.By James Freeman

Much has been written lately about the intolerance of New York Times readers toward anyone who does not share their belief that emissions of carbon dioxide will destroy the planet. But this week the newspaper gave its readers cause to wonder whether even the Times shares this belief.

At least on the surface, the Manhattan-based news organization is keeping the faith. The various items in Friday’s editions amount to a collective primal scream against President Donald Trump’s decision to exit the Paris climate accord. As of this writing, the home page of the paper’s website features stories claiming that Mr. Trump’s decision was “stupid and reckless” as well as “disgraceful” and based on “dubious data” from “distorted reports.” A news report says that Mr. Trump made a political “calculation” to ignore the popular will and instead placate his base. Meanwhile a Times column carries the subtle headline, “Donald Trump Poisons the World.”

But the Times seems to have made its own calculation about the risks of environmental catastrophe. And the only reasonable conclusion is that folks at the Times don’t think burning carbon is quite as dangerous as you might think from reading their product.

Even as the newspaper warns about impending doom if Americans don’t limit their emissions, the Times has also been trying to persuade its readers to dramatically increase theirs. In print and online this week, the Times has proudly presented advertisements for an exciting product offering called, “Around the World by Private Jet: Cultures in Transformation.” It sounds delightful, assuming you like the company:

Fly around the world in a customized Boeing 757 jet for the ultimate in luxury travel. Spend 26 days visiting such places as Israel, Cuba, Colombia, Australia, Myanmar and Iceland. Four award-winning New York Times journalists will accompany you, each for several days as you visit areas where they have expertise.

The Times promises, “In the air, your private jet comes with lie-flat beds and a dedicated cabin crew and chef.” Most Americans, who are generally not as well-heeled as the Times’ target demographic, probably couldn’t leave carbon footprints this big if they tried. And it wouldn’t be easy for the Times to design a less efficient means of circling our beloved planet. This week the print version of the advertisement noted there would be just 50 travelers—on an aircraft that can carry more than 200.

The concept of this trip doesn’t seem to square with the message being conveyed in the newspaper’s news and opinion pages, to say the least. Could it be a rogue operation from some overly aggressive and less environmentally sensitive staff in the Times marketing department? That seems unlikely, because at least according to the online description of this fabulous adventure, one of the “experts” on this journey is none other than New York Times Company Chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. CONTINUE AT SITE

At the New York Times, a Public Execution The paper fires its public editor for resisting the Resistance. By Kyle Smith

‘Democracy dies in darkness,” declares the Washington Post, in a line that Dean Baquet, editor of the rival New York Times said, not inaccurately, “sounds like the next Batman movie.” Now the Times has joined the WaPo in dumping its designated internal soul-searcher (dubbed the “public editor” at the New York paper, “ombudsman” at the Washington one). So a more fitting DC Comics–style motto for both papers would be “Who will watch the Watchmen?”

That line (from Alan Moore’s Watchmen, with a nod to Juvenal) became painfully relevant to the Times’ exceptionally conscientious public editor, Liz Spayd, when she was fired and her position eliminated this week. Spayd served less than a year of her announced two-year term. News broke only on May 31 that her last day on the job would be two days after that, and the office of public editor would be replaced with a “reader center.” Read the comments beneath a Paul Krugman column sometime and you’ll gain some sense of what that might be like.

Why so hasty, premature, and unceremonious a sacking? Spayd, who said upon her appointment last summer that “I’m not here to make friends,” was apparently a little too good at not making them. A peeved Baquet called one of her efforts a “bad column” and “fairly ridiculous.”

Worse, Spayd was morally on the same team as lynch mobs, according to Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress in his piece “The dark history of how false balance journalism enabled lynching.” This was a slippery-slope argument in response to Spayd’s having said that journalists shouldn’t “apply their own moral and ideological judgments to the candidate.” Millhiser believed that the many felonies committed by Hillary Clinton in the course of shielding her e-mail from public scrutiny and removing classified information from secure channels was a non-story and that the Times should shut up about it.

The Atlantic attacked Spayd by approvingly quoting bloggers who wrote that Spayd, a 25-year veteran of the Washington Post who rose to the position of managing editor of that paper before editing the Columbia Journalism Review and then moving on to the Times, is “inclined to write what she doesn’t know” and that her work has become “iconic in its uselessness and self-parody.” Slate accused her of “squandering the most important watchdog job in journalism” by being too solicitous of the readers, notably when she wrote a column under the “smug” headline “Want to attract more readers? Try listening to them” and when she “sympathized with readers’ chauvinistic gripes about the Times’ sports page.” (The “chauvinists” quoted by Spayd were saying things like “Why are there big stories on Nordic surfing, German ice water swimming and Brazilian badminton and hardly any beat coverage of the Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Devils or Islanders?” The sports editor replied, in Spayd’s paraphrase, that “routine game coverage is not a priority.” Did I mention that the public-editor column was the second-funniest part of the resolutely humorless paper, after the corrections column?)

After Spayd told Tucker Carlson that some tweets by professionally neutral Times news reporters that displayed open contempt for and hostility to Donald Trump were “outrageous” and “over the line” and should face “some kind of consequence,” the blue-checkmark battalions rose up to denounce Spayd, calling her “the worst possible public editor for the Trump era” and “a disgrace,” adding that the Times had “embarrassed itself” by hiring her.

Spayd did her best to be even-handed in the eleven months she held the job. The angry Left could not forgive this.

Are Democrats and the Establishment Media Doing Russia’s Job by Creating Chaos? By Michael van der Galien

Conservative website The Daily Caller has published a thorough analysis of the Washington Post’s report accusing Jared Kushner of requesting a secret, secure line of communication with Russia so the incoming Trump administration could talk to the Russians without any interference from the Obama administration. It’s worth your time to read it completely, but here are some key quotes:

WaPo also claimed American intelligence agencies discovered the ploy through an intercepted open phone call by Kislyak to Moscow. Observers have noted that Kislyak, a seasoned spy, made the phone call on an “open line,” and therefore knew it was likely to be intercepted.

[…]

To date, there has been no independent verification the letter is real or that WaPo’s description of its contents is accurate. The Washington Post editors also never explain why they withheld the letter.

Why would they withhold it? Sure, there may be reasons to do so in order to protect a source, but if the letter is anonymous, that’s not a possible excuse. In any case, on we go:

The story is weakened further since its reporters only cite unnamed government officials to confirm the anonymous letter’s charges.

[…]

“I don’t know who leaked this information, but just think about it this way — you’ve got the ambassador of Russia reporting back to Moscow on an open channel, ‘Hey, Jared Kushner’s going to move into the embassy,’” Graham said on CNN.

Former U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenova told TheDCNF other unreleased parts of the letter could undermine the credibility of the author and discredit the allegations about Kushner.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan government watchdog group dedicated to openness and transparency, said he thought there could be references that show the letter’s author had a partisan agenda, which WaPo reporters wanted to hide.