RUTHFULLY YOURS

Sherlock Holmes knew the significance of dogs that don’t bark — a skill that would have seen him spot in an instant what is so wrong with the New York Times “fact check” of the candidates’ claims, counterclaims and tossed-off assertions during yesterday’s third presidential debate. As an example of an event viewed through the distorting prism of partisanship it is hard to beat. Consider the very first entry:

Mr. Trump said that health insurance premiums were “going up 60, 70, 80 percent,” and “next year, they’re going to go up over 100 percent.”

This was rated “overstated”, yet the Times’ explanation actually agrees with Trump’s appraisal (emphasis added):

“Increases of 25 percent to 45 percent or more have been approved in some states. But increases of 80 percent or more are rare.”

Rare they may be, but evidently they do happen. So Trump was correct. More than that, the Times’ “fact check” supports his contention that Obamacare is a disaster, yet makes no comment on increased premiums of between “25 percent to 45 percent”. Should Times reporters be afflicted with salary reductions of that size, one can imagine annoyance in the newsroom being widespread.

How could this be? How is it that a news organisation which purports to be America’s journal of record gets it so wrong?

Well, part of the explanation resides in the Times’ opinion of itself, best summed up by a former editor who arrogantly quipped that “it hasn’t happened until the Times reports it.” So, if Hillary lies and the Times looks the other way, she’s blameless. If an upstart news organisation gets the wood on dirty tricks, as Steve Kates notes, those revelations won’t count for a hill of beans when the Times ignores them.

And there is one other factor to explain such selective blindness — a factor the Times itself touched upon in a recent profile of Ben Rhodes, US deputy national security adviser and a lead architect of much of Obama’s foreign policy. Here it is:

“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

For what it is worth, the Times’ fact-checking can be read via the link below. Oh, and do notice the biggest dog that didn’t bark: no examination of Trump’s assertion that Mrs Clinton’s operatives and Democrat associates are in the business of voter fraud, ballot-stuffing and making sure the dead vote early and often. It didn’t bark because the Times declined to let that matter out of its kennel in the first place.

Tech giants like Google and Facebook always deny that their platforms favor some viewpoints over others, but then they don’t do much to avoid looking censorious. This week a conservative radio host and author is wondering why YouTube classifies his educational web clips as “potentially objectionable” material.

Dennis Prager’s “PragerU” puts out free short videos on subjects “important to understanding American values”—ranging from the high cost of higher education to the motivations of Islamic State. The channel has more than 130 million views, and the spots tend to include an expert guest and background animation. As you might guess, the mini-seminars do not include violence or sexual content.

But more than 15 videos are “restricted” on YouTube, a development PragerU announced this month. This means the clips don’t show up for those who have turned on filtering—say, a parent shielding their children from explicit videos. A YouTube spokesperson told us that the setting is optional and “based on algorithms that look at a number of factors, including community flagging on videos.” Yet it’s easy to imagine a flood of users reporting a political video—microagressed college students have a lot of free time—and limiting a viewpoint’s audience.

Here are some of the topics that are apparently too sensitive to learn about and discuss freely: Did Bush Lie About Iraq?; Israel’s Legal Founding; Why Did America Fight the Korean War?; Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women? PragerU started a petition calling for YouTube to remove the restriction, and more than 66,000 people have signed.

YouTube is free to set its own standards, but the company is undercutting its claim to be a platform for “free expression.” If anyone there would like to brush up on the concept, Mr. Prager has a video about it.

In the post-debate analysis of Trump/s spot-on rebuttal of Team Clinton’s exploitation of the 2005 Trump “locker room” remarks, Megyn Kelly sparred with Trump manager Kelly Anne Conway over Trump’s trotting out of some of Bill’s “bimbo eruptions” in a pre-debate press conference. In what will undoubtedly be Team Clinton’s defense, Megyn Kelly claimed that Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick denied any rape in a 1998 affidavit.

Close, but no cigar, Megyn. The story is a little more complicated than that. It was not that her story was false as Megyn Kelly implied. Like many rape victims, Broaddrick felt no one would believe her and she simply wanted to put it behind her and not be forced to relive it, particularly in any legal setting: she resisted interviews, fearing no one would believe her charge against a popular President. As Breitbart reported in 2014:

In January of 1999, a month after Clinton’s impeachment by the House — and in the midst of the Senate trial grappling with whether Monica Lewinsky should testify — Broaddrick finally agreed to meet NBC’s Lisa Myers for an interview… Broaddrick’s decision to go forward with an interview came after “she contemplated all the layers of tawdry rumor about her that had multiplied in the wake of the other, larger scandal involving the president.”…

Broaddrick continued to refuse to cave to the media’s requests for interviews. In 1997, she was subpoenaed by Jones’ attorneys, yet she continued to deny the assault.

“I didn’t want to be forced to testify about one of the most horrific events in my life,” she told Myers. “I didn’t want to go through it again.”

Broaddrick still refused to come forward when Kathleen Willey accused the President of unwanted sexual advances, saying that she “wasn’t brave enough to do it.”

When Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s office approached her in April of 1998, however, Broaddrick finally agreed to provide the details of Clinton’s alleged sexual assault, saying she feared lying to a federal grand jury. Starr would also grant her immunity from prosecution for perjury….

Starr never pursued Broaddrick’s allegations, however, because he was investigating charges of obstruction of justice against Clinton. Since Broaddrick was not alleging that the President urged her to lie, her allegations of the assault never went forward.

Broaddrick feared the retaliation of Team Clinton as well as the glare of a disbelieving media. Res she signed an affidavit denying the rape, again trying to avoid being forced to relive the horrible experience. But she told Starr and his office the affidavit was false. Starr didn’t pursue the rape story not because it was false, but because it was not part of his obstruction of justice investigation.

At the Trump press conference, Broaddrick, tired of being accused of being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, and afraid that her attacker would once again occupy the White House with the woman who orchestrated the attacks on Bill Clinton’s “bimbo eruptions”, repeated her accusation:

MATTHEW TYRMAND IS A JOURNALIST BASED IN POLAND AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF OPEN THE BOOKS….RSK
To the Editorial Board of the Washington Post:

This past Friday evening you posted an editorial under “The Post’s View” entitled “Donald Trump is normalizing bigotry.” In this post you utilized my Breitbart column (“WaPo’s Anne Applebaum Embarks on Kremlin-Style Disinformation Offensive Vs. The Antii-Globalist Right”) to give credence to the thesis in your post’s title. The column I posted earlier in the week at Breitbart.com exposed some of the lesser known cross currents (for non-Poles) of recent Polish political history and your columnist’s (Anne Applebaum) connection to the previous government.

As I know the editorial board is aware, Mrs. Applebaum is married to the former Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, whose party was ejected from power in a clean democratic election in 2015. This election resulted in a diametric changing of the Polish political guard and delivered an unprecedented unilateral mandate to govern without coalition to the Law & Justice party for the first time in modern Polish history (I highlight this since your columnist has not). But well before the rotation of parties in government, Mr. Sikorski was dismissed from his ministerial position after it became apparent to all that he too was embroiled in the “Aferatosmowa” hidden tapes scandal that decimated many Civic Platform, Sikorski’s ruling party, careers and reputations and paved the way for the dramatic turnover in government. This is not something Mrs. Applebaum has ever disclosed despite the distinct pertinence this has with regard to covering Poland and especially in writing about the new government whose leading figures’ enmity with Mr. Sikorski’s turfed-out party is well known in political circles. This is in clear violation of this paper’s “Standards and Ethics” as defined in the described “Conflict of Interest,” Section A, opening lines: “This newspaper is pledged to avoid conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest, wherever and whenever possible.” as well as by the final lines of Section A: “We avoid active involvement in any partisan causes- politics, community affairs, social action, demonstrations- that could compromise or seem to compromise our ability to report and edit fairly.” Any columns referencing Poland would need to have Mrs. Applebaum’s detailed marital disclosure to avoid a violation of these statutes. I have not seen any disclosures.

In utilizing my column as proof of bigotry you failed to link to the column but rather chose to link to a Mediate analysis of it (“Breitbart Attacks WaPo Columnist For Being A ‘Jewish, American Elitist’”),reducing the opportunity for your readership to ascertain for themselves if this highly charged allegation was accurate. You used the words “repeatedly” and “gratuitously” to describe the frequency of my reference to her “Jewish origin.” In a 1400 word essay the word “Jewish” appeared exactly twice and with no over or under tone attached (most who read would have to agree). Any such perceived “dog whistle” is resultant from a reader’s prejudices, NOT from the author’s intent. This supposedly “gratuitous” bigotry was a descriptor applied in one small section (two consecutive sentences) that was relevant to the debate for the primary reason that in her September 19th Washington Post column (“In Poland, a preview of what Trump could do to America”) she suggests the sitting defense minister, Antoni Macierewicz (a bitter rival of her husband’s, also glaringly undisclosed) is an anti-Semite by stating that he has “given credence to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”