RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/04/04/the_new_york_times_vs_realclearpolitics_150733.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Ten days after the 2020 election, Tom Bevan, co-founder and president of RealClearPolitics, received an email from a New York Times reporter who covers the media. The reporter, Jeremy W. Peters, advised Bevan that his newspaper was working on a story about RCP and asked for responses to various questions and accusations. Four days later, Peters’ critique was published under the headline “A Popular Political Site Made a Sharp Right Turn. What Steered It.”

The sleight-of-hand was right there in the headline. The New York Times simply declared that RCP “made a sharp right turn,” and suggested it will document how this happened.

The Times’ story asserted that during the period of counting absentee and late-arriving mail-in ballots, RCP took three days longer than other news organizations to call Pennsylvania for Joe Biden. It noted disapprovingly that we aggregated stories from other news outlets quoting Trump supporters who questioned the election results. It suggested that the RCP Poll Averages were manipulated to be favorable to Donald Trump. Peters focused on RCP staff layoffs in September 2017, and claimed we’d hired partisan Republicans to replace them. He reported that the RealClear Foundation, a nonprofit that supports our journalism, receives contributions from conservative donors. He also called into question a RealClear Investigations exposé naming the whistleblower whose complaints led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Jeremy Peters declined to be interviewed for this rebuttal, though he was courteous about it. Nor did he reach out to me in 2020, beyond contacting Tom Bevan. It didn’t hurt my pride, but I’m the most experienced newsman at RCP; I oversee our original content, I direct our reporters, and I have written more words for RealClear than anyone else.

Nor was there any bad blood between me and the “paper of record.” In the 1980s, the Times credited my groundbreaking coverage of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. In the 1990s, Howell Raines tried to hire me. Three books I’ve co-authored have been positively reviewed by the Times. When I covered the White House for National Journal, the Times’ book editor asked me to review a book about Dick Cheney. I have had friends at that newspaper. Although I’m not famous, I’m not unknown in Washington journalism. What I’m best known for is being relentlessly nonpartisan. If someone is writing about bias at my organization, calling me would have been the obvious place to start.

I shouldn’t have waited three years to respond to the Times but will do so now.

‘Rightward Turn’ and Post-Election Coverage

The thrust of the Nov. 17, 2020, Times article was that RCP had “taken a rightward, aggressively pro-Trump turn over the last four years.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/04/01/media-tailspin-continues-as-public-trust-in-news-outlets-crumbles-ii-tipp-poll/

Can the U.S. media ever reverse their reputation for dishonesty and bias and end their current tailspin? Given how the public currently views them, the answer is “not likely,” the latest I&I/TIPP Poll suggests.

Each month I&I/TIPP Poll asks registered voters from around the country to gauge their trust in the major media that supply them with news, features and other information.

Specifically, two questions were asked:

“Generally speaking, how much trust do you have in the traditional or established news media (Example: Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, CBS News, etc.) to report the news accurately and fairly?”

And, “Generally speaking, how much trust do you have in the alternative news media (Example: New York Post, Washington Times, NewsMax, The Daily Caller, RealClearPolitics, etc.) to report the news accurately and fairly?”

Responses to the first question make up the “Traditional Media Trust Index,” while answers to the second are included in the “Alternate Media Trust Index”; 1,419 Americans responded to the national online poll, which was taken from Feb. 28-March 1. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.

How well are the media doing their job of informing Americans? Not very, voters overwhelmingly
say. In fact, only one-third (34%) trust traditional media, and six in ten (61%) don’t. A third (32%)
say they have “little trust,” and another 29% have “no trust at all.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/nbc-news-officially-bans-republicans-from-working-there/

For the longest time, the media played this game of pretending that it doesn’t consist entirely of a bunch of leftist activists who exist to promote their political agenda and attack those of their political opponents.

The pretense is wearing thin. And who knew that Ronna McDaniel of all people would be the breaking point? But it’s kind of like the way that the media’s attacks on dishwater liberals like McCain and Romney, portraying them as Hitler 2.0 just because they posed a threat to Obama, helped kill the media’s credibility.

The attacks on McCain and Romney made it clear that it wasn’t about “conservatives” or “right-wingers”, the media was out to destroy anyone running as a Republican and would tell the same lies about them.

Now NBC News has officially banned Republicans, even ones like Ronna McDaniel, from working there.

Ceasar Conde, the Chair of NBCUniversal News, issued a statement purging Ronna McDaniel while declaring that, “no organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned.”

Conde claimed that McDaniel was hired in order to present “audiences with a widely diverse set of viewpoints”, but that gets in the way of a “cohesive and aligned” newsroom where everyone shares the same politics.

In his conclusion, Conde claims that NBC News still wants to “seek voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/18/elon-musk-is-now-more-trustworthy-than-every-major-news-outlet/

Shortly after Donald Trump made remarks at a rally in Ohio, Joe Scarborough posted on X: “Donald Trump’s America. And he is proud of it. Promised another ‘bloodbath’ if he loses again.” The picture was from the Jan. 6 riot.

Soon after, however, Scarborough deleted the post.

We can’t say for certain why, except that he hit the delete button shortly after Elon Musk responded to “Morning Joe” with this comment:
The same can’t be said for almost every other major news outlet, which ran blood-curdling headlines about Trump’s supposed call to violence if he loses. Here’s a small sample:

Trump predicts ‘bloodbath’ if he loses 2024 election, ramps up anti-migrant rhetoric

Trump says there will be a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses the election

Trump Says There Will Be a ‘Bloodbath’ and Elections Will End if He Isn’t Reelected

Trump says country faces ‘bloodbath’ if Biden wins in November

Mary Trump’s Dire Warning After Donald Trump’s ‘Bloodbath’ Remark

An Even Darker Trump: Warns Of ‘Bloodbath’ If Not Elected

In Ohio, Trump warns of ‘bloodbath’ if he doesn’t win election

Donald Trump talks about ‘bloodbath,’ attacks immigrants as he rallies for Republican Senate pick in Ohio

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ap-fact-focus-elastically-redefines-terms-to-defend-biden/

Reading the “fact-checkers” in the press sometimes triggers memories of the comic book hero Plastic Man, who could contort into all sorts of shapes. Take the Associated Press, and immigration reporter Elliot Spagat in San Diego.

The headline was “Fact Focus: Claims Biden administration is secretly flying migrants into the country are unfounded.” Spagat had to redefine all sorts of words like “secretly” to defend President Joe Biden’s fly-over-the-border policies.

The Spagat dispatch began: “In his Super Tuesday victory speech, former President Donald Trump elevated false information that had gone viral on social media, claiming the Biden administration secretly flew hundreds of thousands of migrants into the United States.”

AP noted that on Jan. 26, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (if you can call them that) reported “327,000 immigrants were vetted and authorized for travel.” The government flew in more than 67,000 Cubans, 126,000 Haitians, 53,000 Nicaraguans and 81,000 Venezuelans.

Trump said, “Today it was announced that 325,000 people were flown in from parts unknown — migrants were flown in airplanes, not going through borders … It was unbelievable.”

How was this false? Spagat elastically argued, “But migrants are not being flown into the U.S. randomly.” Trump never said “randomly,” or “secretly.” He said “parts unknown.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/13/media-gaslight-the-public-about-the-disastrous-biden-transcripts/

Soon after the transcripts of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden were released, the mainstream press — as though handed talking points by the White House — said they weren’t nearly as bad as Hur had made them out to seem in his report.

“Paints a nuanced portrait,” says the Washington Post. “Transcript shows nuance,” says The Hill. “The interview transcript is more complicated,” says the Associated Press. “Shows memory lapses, but also detailed exchanges,” says NBC News.

CBS News even dismissed evidence of dementia — “Biden appears to be reaching for words he cannot find. Twice, the phrase ‘fax machine’ eludes him, and he confuses Iraq and Afghanistan for Iran” — by saying that such “missteps appear to be common lapses for Mr. Biden who for years has struggled with names and dates in public speaking engagements.”

So, you see, no problem here.

But read the transcript yourself. It’s not “complicated,” or “nuanced.” As we suspected, it provides the perfect context for Hur’s contention that Biden is an old man with memory problems.

For example, we counted 37 instances where Biden says “I don’t remember” during his interviews with Hur. That’s a lot of nuance.

The transcript also shows that Biden flat-out lied to the public about Hur bringing up Beau’s death, or that Hur asked him when he died. What actually transpired should be deeply troubling to anyone who cares about the nation.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/08/joe-biden-an-american-autocrat-according-to-the-new-york-times/

The left seems increasingly resigned to the fact that Donald Trump could defeat Joe Biden in a rematch this November. So much so that it is busy speculating about the hellscape Trump II will unleash.

He will destroy democracy. He will rule as an authoritarian. And so forth.

The New York Times took another stab at it Thursday in its daily email newsletter, The Morning.

David Leonhardt, who runs the newsletter, says that a good way to understand how Trump might govern in a second term is to look at his “affinity” for Viktor Orban, the conservative prime minister of Hungary, who has become the bête noire of the left.

So, Leonhardt does what journalists always do when they are trying to understand something: they talk to other journalists. In this case, the Times’ Central and Eastern Europe bureau chief Andrew Higgins.

Leonhardt’s first question to Higgins sets the tone for the rest of the newsletter: People often describe Orban as autocratic. But he’s not a ruler who jails or kills his opponents. Can you describe how he suppresses dissent?

The point is to scare readers about what Trump will do if he wins in November.

We can’t say whether Higgins’ portrayal of Orban is accurate — we doubt it’s even close to the mark. But we noticed something in Higgins’ answers. All his attempts to define Orban as an autocratic ruler apply to President Joe Biden, not Trump.

So, as an experiment, we swapped the names from Orban to Biden and replaced other references. We were struck by the results.

But judge for yourselves. Here is Thursday’s The Morning newsletter, updated. (All of our changes to the original are indicated in bold.)