American Media Is Failing You Journalism has become partisan promotion Charles Lipson
https://spectator.us/american-media-failing-russiagate-obamagate-hunter-biden/
American journalism has lost its bearings, and we are all paying the price. The Washington Post is exactly right when it says, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’ It is ironic, then, that the Post is part of the problem, not the solution. Like the New York Times and other major news organizations, it is less a neutral observer than a protagonist on a mission.
Before turning to the latest story killed by the mainstream media, consider their abysmal performance on the two biggest stories from 2016 to 2019. America’s mainstream media didn’t just make a few mistakes on those stories. It didn’t just give them some partisan spin. It missed both stories completely. It got them utterly wrong, and it did so for years.
Failure #1: The media bought the Russia collusion story
Except for Fox News, all the major TV networks and national newspapers adopted the Russia collusion narrative and drove it forward. They relied almost entirely on leaked stories from anonymous sources, deeply opposed to Trump, mostly at the FBI and CIA, plus some Democrats on Capitol Hill. Together, they not only got a Special Counsel appointed but got him free rein. Robert Mueller’s prolonged investigation, managed by his deputy, Andrew Weissmann, hamstrung the presidency and helped the Democrats win the House in 2018.
All this time, Schiff was a media darling, repeating his claim that he had proof positive that Trump actively worked with the Kremlin. In fact, Schiff was sitting on secret testimony, given by all Obama’s top officials in national security and law enforcement. Under oath, all of them said they had no evidence of Trump working with Russia. Schiff knew that, of course, but he repeatedly told the press the opposite. Not surprisingly, he refused to release the testimony since it betrayed his lies. Schiff’s secrecy allowed the Obama-era officials to go on CNN and MSNBC and tell viewers Trump was a Russian asset who had worked with Putin to win the White House. When the deception was finally revealed, the media yawned.
The larger point here is that anti-Trump animus was so strong it overrode basic standards of journalistic integrity and judgment. That animus, coupled with disgruntled officials eager to destroy Trump, led to three years of dreadful reporting, spinning up flimsy tales of foreign contacts into an ominous-but-false suggestion of treason.
Failure #2: The media failed to investigate spying on Trump
While the press and cable channels were chasing the wrong story and reporting it incorrectly, they missed a far bigger one. There is now ample evidence that Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, his transition to the presidency and his early months in office were spied upon.
We won’t know the full story until US Attorney John Durham issues indictments and perhaps publishes a report. But we already know the main elements and, once again, we know the mainstream media missed it completely. What is that story? It is that the Obama administration used the most powerful tools of intelligence and law enforcement to spy on an opposition political campaign and impede the transition of power. After the new administration took over, the spying and leaking continued, thanks to holdover officials and bureaucrats who opposed Trump.
This is a huge story, one that goes to the heart of our constitutional government. But we have learned almost none of it from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC. To put it bluntly, they missed the story.
They missed them both for the same reason: they hated Trump so deeply and considered him such a danger to the country that they didn’t do their basic job as journalists. Since they travel in packs, they all went over the cliff together.
Even if reporters and editors think the opposition agenda is better for the country, that perspective belongs on the editorial pages and in clearly-labeled analysis. It has corrupted what used to be ‘hard news’.
Looming Failure #3: Refusing to investigate Biden family corruption
We are seeing the same motives and the same mistakes play out, once again, as documents and witnesses emerge about the Biden family, describing what they say is a long-running ‘pay-to-play’ scheme.
There are now three separate sets of damning documents covering overlapping scandals. One is Hunter’s ‘laptop from hell’, abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. The second is a cache of some 27,000 emails to and from Bevan Cooney, one of Hunter Biden’s disgruntled ex-business partners. The third and most recent is another cache of documents plus an extensive, on-the-record TV interview with Tony Bobulinski, an international business executive and another of Hunter’s former partners.
The lack of direct evidence linking Joe Biden to these schemes is crucial. That’s why they need investigating and serious reporting. They aren’t getting it. This concerted media blackout has allowed the Biden campaign to wave away all charges of corruption without offering any real explanation.
What went wrong?
In a sense, the mainstream media is like the rest of America, deeply divided along partisan lines, smug in its contempt for those with different views. As journalists, though, they have a professional responsibility to investigate and report, not to spike stories that favor the ‘wrong’ side or ease the path for sketchy stories that help the ‘right’ one. They have failed in that basic responsibility. Our country is the loser for it.
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