NYT gets called out for their sloppy & yellow journalism w/ Schweizer story

Newsweek, NBC, ABC, Newsmax and others don't agree with the NYT insinuated charges. "Sloppy journalism" "doesn't hold up" "insinuates scandal where there is none" "peppering their story w/ innuendo for a juicy pay to play story". Way to go NYT.

Needless to say the story produced by the NYT on Schweizers "Clinton Cash" insinuation of wrong doing by SOS Clinton reads like every other piece they write on the Clintons, full of innuendo and insinuation, misleading facts and omitting others.

It took the NYT a few days after getting their goods from conservative activist, Peter Schwiezer, for them to print the Uranium/Clinton story, so at least they fact checked some of Schweizer's details before publishing his POV. But they failed to even find out how the approval process works, so basically, they just re-wrote Schweizer's story.

Did everyone agree with the NYT and Schweizer's insinuations that were very close to accusations? Fox, yes. The typical haters, yes.. lots of accusations to make (Morning Joe, Chuck Todd, the rest of the clowns). Occasionally adding their own random theories. But not everyone agreed:

Obviously camp Clinton disagrees: This excerpt from the debunk.

Relying largely on research from the conservative author of Clinton Cash, today’s New York Times alleges that donations to the Clinton Foundation coincided with the U.S. government’s 2010 approval of the sale of a company known as Uranium One to the Russian government. Without presenting any direct evidence in support of the claim, the Times story — like the book on which it is based — wrongly suggests that Hillary Clinton’s State Department pushed for the sale’s approval to reward donors who had a financial interest in the deal. Ironically, buried within the story is original reporting that debunks the allegation that then-Secretary Clinton played any role in the review of the sale.

As reported by Media Matters, NBC News says "The NYT story doesn't hold up", ABC also agrees, the NYT doesn't hold up.

Newsweek pretty much captures it all:  [Schweizer's book] "reads like a hatched job", and speaks to the painfully poor logic of the entire book.

Disparate facts are treated like a logical series of events—a classic case of post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because of this," another argumentative fallacy. 

The other person NYT smears in the deal is Frank Guistra, long-time philanthropist, recipient of last year's first ever Dalai Lama humanitarian award. He had something to say too. He describes the NYT article as:

 "an attempt to tear down Secretary Clinton and her presidential campaign. If this is what passes for investigative journalism in the United States, it is very sad."

Very sad indeed.

Then Howard Dean calls out the NYT for the story, saying their political writers are "sloppy" and "substituting news for judgement". 

Even the NYT own Jack Krugman calls the NYT out.

Gene Lyons, who wrote about flawed NYT reports of Whitewater chimes in: Media Insinuates Scandal where there is None.

New Republic calls NYT out for "peppering their story w/ innuendo" for a "juicy pay to play story" (that amounts to yellow journalism but we already know that's how NYT rolls).

Hell, even NEWSMAX comes to the defense of the Clinton Foundation.

We know how the NYTimes reacts to obvious flaws in their Clinton reporting. They double down. Triple down and then some so I'm sure they'll have more nonsense to report shortly.

A stroll down memory lane of the NYT printing very serious false accusations...

Just a reminder to folks who think the NYT doesn't mislead the American public for financial or political reasons, let's take a look into the past at only 4, starting with their hand in selling the Iraq war by scaring Americans into believing Bush's lies about Saddam Hussein.

1. Their false, incorrect, misleading stories that helped sell the Iraq war to the public with "verified" stories, (that they later admit were not verified) about stories about Saddam's quest for weapons. Well apparently they were just given wrong information, oops:

The problematic articles (oops) varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. -NYT

Oh, the informants had an agenda, (sorta like a recent source of recent article insinuating something sinister, story false) great sources then, anyone else have agenda? Based on the content of NYT articles featured in my blog and on others', I'd say it's hardly unusual for NYT to use their paper to push an agenda. But the NYT has an excuse for selling misinformation about Saddam Hussein's weapon aquisition, and it's also part of their regular method of operation; not taking the time to verify.

"Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper". -NYT

Well that's interesting. Well surely after a mistake (?) that helped sell a war that killed 5,000 Americans and 200,000 Iraqis that would be sufficient enough to make sure the next time you insinuate or claim that a country in the Middle East has weapons of mass destruction you would double, triple, quadruple check. But that didn't happen, this did: (2) They pushed the exact same falsehoods regarding Syria/WMD.

And we know they love their Clinton hit-pieces that later turn out to be false, some of course setting off major consequences, like their (3) faulty Whitewater reporting and or (4) other bs that leads to investigations that last years. (I'll add this one in for good measure, pretty much the same insinuated charge as their recent story about Clintons and Uranium, but this debunked hit piece was in 2008)

Mistakes? The thing is, editors don't accidentally let reporters rush to report dictators that a U.S. president is on the verge of going to war, are ramping up seeking weapons. The NYT has an agenda and they have blood on their hands, a lot of it; You can be sure they have no problem pushing a Republican into the White House that will result in a stacked conservative SCOTUS that will impact 1,000's upon 1,000's of people's lives. Why they hate the Clintons and why they are so eager to put Jeb Bush into the White House isn't something I'm willing to speculate on, but don't forget that they don't care who is hurt, who will suffer or even how many will die as a result of whatever their agenda is.

NYT randomly defends author of anti-Clinton book on Twitter.

So a few days ago NYT made an exclusive deal for material from anti-Clinton book. Media Matters called it out, as did a few others. Twitter got a little twittery, (barely, it was like me and 5 others, lol), and others and I called out that the NYT didn't divulge his anti-Clinton bias in their intro of him.

Media Matters make the first claim that Peter Schweizer has connections to the Kochs and before the NYT has even written an article on the book they made a pre-release exclusive deal to get, a NYT political editor tweets that the author isn't linked to Koch. (Quite a defense too! Um... ?)

Why is the NYT defending an author of a book? Either it's a defense of their deal with a right-wing political activist, or maybe they have a vested interest in people taking the author seriously, and if all is on the up and up then neither of those 2 things should be an issue, so why defend?

Here's the NYT defending the interwebs accusation of the author of the latest anti-Clinton conspiracy book:

Well then, I guess the NYT writer speaks at Citibank events and says to never let up on their adversaries.. something like that, weird analogy in the first place.

https://vine.co/v/e7jvWLwgT31

Morning Joe: 'Clinton Cash' writer's anti-Clinton connections were not divulged

Morning Joe is correct. In fact, in the NYT recent write up there is little noted as to who this author is and what his writings or history are.

Morning Joe notes on his show: @ 8:01 "If in fact [Schweitzer] has any connection to Ted Cruz's super pac or with other organizations that are overtly anti-Clinton, that should be in any introductory piece, and it certainly wasn't in any report that I saw".

Let's check: Not in the NYT, that's for sure! Not in any of the over 20 paragraphs written by Amy Choznik

Here is NYT introduction of the writer:

“Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” by Peter Schweizer — a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities — is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.

That's it. They barely even mention his political leanings.

The only mention of his being possibly biased is couched in a paragraph about a pro-Democrat super PAC trying to "make the case that he has a bias" in the 9th paragraph.

Conservative super PACs plan to seize on “Clinton Cash,” and a "pro-Democrat super PAC has already assembled a dossier on Mr. Schweizer, a speech writing consultant to former President George W. Bush and a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution who has contributed to the conservative website Breitbart.com** to make the case that he has a bias against Mrs. Clinton."

*Does* the author has a bias? Let's take a look:

Media Matters says

Peter Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), a conservative group with close ties to a billionaire family funding Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential run. GAI has also received substantial support from groups backed by Charles and David Koch: 

But even a quick look at Wiki will tell you all you need to know: The Author, Peter Schweizer, who is the President of GAI, "The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) is a conservative investigative research organization" -Wiki

**Also, according the NYT, Schweizer "has contributed to Breitbart",  but according to Schweizer's facebook posts, he is currently a Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Larg.

And they omit completely that he is President of a conservative investigative research organization. 

NYT makes a deal for opposition research directly from conservative hit-piece writer...

Politico: Fox and NYT Makes Deal with Conservative Writer for Clinton Dirt

Here's the round up so far (and it's only been a day since one of their writers tweeted about their oppo research deal with the conservative hit piece author.

Not affectionate toward HRC, Daily KOS reports: NYTimes takes stenography from GOP hit book

Very unfond of Hillary Clinton, liberal blog 'Crooks and Liars', says, No matter what you think of her, this is something larger

Politico reports: NYT/FOX make a deal for anti-Clinton research

National Memo reports: Murdoch Empire colludes with "liberal media" to promote "Clinton Cash"


NYT Responds on Deal with Conservative Writer for Clinton Dirt, with an odd single sentence statement.

Esquire magazine weighs in: The day political journalism died and the people killed it

MediaMatters runs down who the author actually is, and what he does...and puts together a list of *some* of Schweizers lies and inaccuracies (smears).

Salon reports: The right's new expose just went mainstream, NYT got hooked

But would the NYT really spread serious allegations that are totally false. Yes. And its pretty bad. Here's a recent notable one. 

 

NYT pushed lies about chemical weapons in Syria for which there was no proof.

 

But more often they leave out information in order to insinuate or draw improper conclusions:

 

Here's a good example: Issa sent a letter directly to Hillary asking about her email and she ignored it!  

 

Orrrr, Issa sent a broader letter to 18 agencies and didn't hear back from Clinton. Which do you think the times wrote and which do you think is true. Well, NYT Clinton writers don't look at the big picture, only what looks juicy.

 

Nothing new, tons of similar garbage in March in their very busy month, got called out back then as well:

But surely these are professionals. Yeah, no, they're not.

 

And it's always good for business when they can write right-wing hit pieces on the Clintons... here's one of the NYT hit-piece writers bragging that he got on drudge (with his story that proved false)

 

Today on the campaign trail in fact, someone asked SOS Clinton about the book, after answering Clinton then noted Republicans are all about her and not the issues. She was then mocked by NYT writter Maggie H. But it turns out, it Maggie's own paper came to the same conclusion that Hillary had. Top of the imagine, the NYT 2 days ago. Bottom half of image, NYT Maggie twittering derisively about SOS Clinton.

 

 

A Negative Narrative in Every Story...

It's not a NYT story about Hillary Clinton unless there are cherry-picked negative statements about her. Let's take a look.

[NYT Narrative: Hillary Clinton is not genuine (oh, and her whole IA trip is just staged)]:

It's a very common NYT vs. Hillary Clinton tactic to find negative statements about her from others and only include those while not including any other types of statements. And here they go again.  These are from the last 7 paragraphs of the story. There are 4 statements by people in the whole article and these are them. And judging by the statements, something else isn't quite right either.

Iowans seemed to appreciate the attention, but also to recognize its artificiality. “I’m guessing this was a campaign manager advising her to do this,” said Corey Jones, a 17-year-old student in the small audience allowed in to watch Mrs. Clinton’s round-table discussion. “It doesn’t seem like it was her idea.”

Keith Stamp, a member of the college’s board of directors, said he was grateful that Mrs. Clinton had chosen their community for her first stop. “We know some of this is staged, but it’s about as good as it’s going to get when you’re running for president,” he said.

“She’s going back and fixing her mistake,” said Hallie Corum, 17, a high school student. “I don’t think it’s very genuine. It’s not open-forum. It’s all scripted.”

Others just wanted a chance to get to know the real Mrs. Clinton. Brianna Langdon, 20, who was chosen to participate in the round table, said her only real impression of Mrs. Clinton came from “Saturday Night Live.”

“They portray her as all about herself,” Ms. Langdon said, “so I’m hoping today to see that she’s not.

That last line "I hope she's not" is the NYT equivalent of concern trolling. They do it often. 'Something could be negative... but we hope not!' Concern trolling.

Like I said, I only write on a fraction of NYT articles, 5% at most, but I don't have to look for ones like this...they're ALL like this. Articles and stories about her competitors, however, are nothing like this.

More than a few people call them out in the comments. One made me smile:

"Another article in this paper says 'Hillary is trying to look normal...Where's the public editor? These both are supposed to be news articles, instead they are editorials. You New York Times folk better up your game, otherwise you'll go the way of Drudge. NO candidate should be subject to news articles like this. Save the opinions for the editorial page, where candidates are fair game."

NYT Robert Reich insinuates Hillary would "run on being the first woman" as a platform

Yes folks, that's right. We have a real pig on our hands by the name of Robert Reich.

He's not the only one, Fox did it as well. It's a little mini campaign meant to disparage SOS Clinton, obviously trying to make it seem like she's running on gender and nothing else, and worst of all, to pre-shame women who are excited about voting for a woman. This is one of the ugliest Hillary-detractor strategies I've seen, but I knew it was coming. Haters have *got* to know, once women get into Hillary, there's not much chance of getting them back, so this will be a theme that goes on for a long time and it will get worse.

As for this particular post, let's keep in mind, this is right after Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy and in a 2 minute video never mentioned being a woman, fighting for women or anything related to gender. Not once.

Let's take a look at R.Reichts' disgusting post on Facebook. This, folks, is the definition of asshat:

"A presidential candidate cannot run on being the first woman to be president, because that is not a platform. It does not tell the nation what she will do to respond to the nation’s needs. It also contradicts the underlying premise that a woman can do the job quite as well as a man and therefore gender should not matter. If gender should not matter, then, logically, a campaign cannot be based on gender. Hillary Clinton must make the case for why she should be president based on where she wants to lead the nation, and why, just as any man running for president must do. And that case must be made starting from the moment she declares her candidacy."

Fortunately many people were not stupid enough to fall for it and read his ass in the comments. This ugly shit should not be tolerated. When you see it, push back, call it out, twitter it, put it on your facebook and let people know exactly what it is;

Some great comments in response were:

-"I think a man wrote this"

-"I didn't see anything in Hillary's video that even hinted at "vote for me because I'm a woman."

-"As a platform no. But she can acknowledge her uniqueness."

-"I can say for certain that you are losing your mind if you think 'being a woman' is her platform, that in itself is sexist and pisses me off"

-"We want a president that gives a shit about the women. Male privilege needs to end."

-"The only people saying she's running solely on a "platform" of being female are her opponents". (Got that right)

-"Perhaps it's the men who have not paid attention to what she has been saying ".

-"I think your assumption that her race will be based on gender is mean-spirited and destructive".

-"Maybe you should shut up and listen to her".

-"I think you are full of shit. And rancor. And regardless of what you think, I want a woman president in my lifetime and you and the men on the right can kiss my ass! I had enough of this shit in 2008"

-"But it is still time for a woman president. And if people voting for her do so JUST because she is a woman? As long as she keeps the likes of Ted Cruz away from the presidency, that's all right with me..." 

-"OF COURSE she is going to run on an electable political platform. To imply otherwise is ludicrous and offensive. But damn right: We're going to elect our first woman president!" (<- uh oh, watch out RR and odious company, women are already excited to vote for her, and once they do, they're not going back)

(and of course there were many angry republicans posing as liberals 1%%%%!!!!, lol) 

Clinton reveals announcement, the NYT disparages and disembodies her...

On Friday the Clinton team revealed her announcement would be Sunday, what does the NYT do? First they describe her announcement like this:

The prolonged prologue to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s second run for the White House will reach its suspenseless conclusion.

Prolonged? There's like 6 more people to announce and only 2 have, but anyway, double standard, the usual... They complain a couple paragraphs later that before she has announced she hasn't announced why she's running. And then there's this, a disembodied image of Hillary Clinton, her face barely free of dark shadow. Not the first time they have completely disembodied her head. Can you spot the difference?

A little bit different than their stories and images for other contenders.

They write their next article hours later. Looks something like this. This photo doesn't actually fit the article, this photo says more about catching up or being in his shadow, rather than how to deal with running as a separate administration. And then the obvious, that she has no lower face.

NYT goes after Bill Clinton, including his looks... they get called out...

As ugly (and as weird) as ever, on a day that the NYT have to skip a 'we-hate-hillary' story, they go after her family, namely her extremely popular husband. At some point they even have to print a correction of one of their narratives.

[NYT Narrative: Bill is old, Hillary is unfriendly, and they think they're royalty]

Bill Clinton calls it out: And he's right, "creative writing" indeed.

Here's just the first quarter of the 'lets diminish Bill Clinton' story:



In that story, of course they manage to insult Hillary Clinton too, randomly referring to her as "less gregarious". Interesting choice of words. Bill is exceptionally gregarious, by comparison the vast majority of people would be less gregarious, if you really wanted to go there you would put "not as gregarious" or make mention of how gregarious *he* is as opposed to saying she is "less gregarious", so....

They continue to find random ways to belittle the former president:

This month in Miami, Mr. Clinton showed he could follow orders

 As I've mentioned before, 1/2 of the stories they write include "foreign donations"

The foundation, which has received millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments, has come under criticism for potential conflicts of interest while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state

And of course pushing the narrative that the Clintons are privileged and live in a bubble (as they randomly accuse them of being in this piece).

"...sends an aide to buy his dress shirts at Bergdorf Goodman, and when he steps out of his S.U.V., he sometimes spreads his arms awaiting an aide to put his jacket on each arm." 

Ironic since one of the reason the NYT dislikes the Clintons is that they are not the NYT fishbowl considers southern trash.

They at some point even refer to him as being chauffeured. They have to issue a correction:

Gawker calls out the press for their sad-ass reporting after NY Mag HRC piece....

Gawker calls out the press for their "bullshit" political reporting, lacks all politics...

As the 2016 presidential election draws closer, America's political press corps is warming up for what they do best: drone on about nothing of consequence. 

Advocates of press freedom are fond of quoting Thomas Jefferson when he said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." They are less fond of quoting Thomas Jefferson when he said, "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Jefferson was no fool. He understood both the vital importance of a free press to a democratic society, and the propensity of journalists to squander that freedom on absolute bullshit.

So why do reporters do this? Because it is easy. It is easier to cover campaigns like this, and it requires less thought, and it leaves journalists less prone to being attacked by one side or another, and it is, in general, purely speculative rubbish which cannot be truly refuted. So it is what we get. 

Read on:

Mark Halperin calls out the hacks and pundits for their creepy Clinton reporting

Even haters call it out: