NY Times Clinton Debacle

This post is almost an addendum to my July 25, 2015 post entitled “Right Wing Dirty Tricks.” In that post I quoted from Dylan Byer's July 24, 2015 Politico article about the NY Times changing a story in which it had reported that two inspectors general asked “...the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation 'into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state.'” This New York Times story obviously put Hillary Clinton in a bad light, and it was inaccurate. The facts that have now come to light and the outcry over the inaccuracy of a story that could influence a Presidential election has now forced the NY Times to back even farther away from its original story. The Times had to admit that Hillary was not the subject of a criminal investigation, and they even had to say there was a “security referral” rather than a criminal investigation of anyone. Furthermore the Times had to admit that in regard to the classified information found in Hillary's E-mail account “it’s doubtful whether the information was marked as classified when she sent or received those emails.”

In The New York Times, July 28, 2015 “Public Editors Journal Page” there is an article entitled “A Clinton Story Fraught With Inaccuracies: How It Happened and What Next?” By Margaret Sullivan.

Ms. Sullivan acknowledges the errors in the original story, adding that “[e]ventually, a number of corrections were appended to the online story, before appearing in print in the usual way – in small notices on Page A2.”  In saying this she all but explicitly admits that the handling of the corrections was inadequate given the magnitude of the errors and the potential consequences.

Ms. Sullivan blames the inaccuracies on the incorrect (read unreliable) statements anonymous sources made to Times reporters, Matt Apuzo and Michael Schmidt. She quotes editor Matt Purdy as saying: “The reporters and editors were not able to see the referral itself .. and that’s the norm in such cases; anything else would be highly unusual, he said. So they were relying on their sources’ interpretation of it.”

And why would the reporters and their editors do this highly unusual thing? Ms Sullivan says it was because the reporters were in too much of a rush to get the story in print and scoop the competition. I find that troubling. What I find even more troubling is the self serving statement that follows:

“None of this should be used to deny the importance of The Times’s reporting on the subject of Mrs. Clinton’s email practices at the State Department, a story Mr. Schmidt broke in March. Although her partisans want the focus shifted to these errors, the fact remains that her secret email system hamstrung possible inquiries into her conduct while secretary of state both by the news media and the public under the Freedom of Information Act and by Congress. And her awarding to herself the first cull of those emails will make suspicion about what they contained a permanent part of the current campaign.”

Let me remind Ms. Sullivan that The Freedom of Information Act would not make available to her or the New York Times any classified documents or E-mails containing classified documents. Furthermore, Hillary's predecessors used their private E-mail accounts in much the same manner, and no one questioned them about culling those accounts. So why has this become such a big thing? Is it because of other phony issues such as Benghazi?

It is this sort of crap that made me look up Eric Boehlert's article “Can The New York Times Salvage Its Clinton Coverage?" on Media Matters. More specifically it was that article's sub-title: “Email Blunder Fits Disturbing Pattern Of Misinformation” that drew my attention.

Until now I did not think misinformation regarding Hillary Clinton was specifically a New York Times problem. What I mean by that is that the right wing has an absolute hatred of Hillary Clinton, and most news outlets have been quoting outlandish accusations about her without making any attempt to verify or debunk the claims made. What the times has done in this instance, however, goes way beyond hiding behind a quote or lazy reporting, and this is not the first time the Times reporting has been questionable in regard to the Clintons!
 
As Mr. Boehlert wrote: “If you were surprised by the Times' face-plant, then you haven't been paying attention. Media Matters has been chronicling the Times' problematic Clinton coverage in recent months. (And for years.) Yet it wasn't until the email fiasco that the paper's ongoing Clinton troubles exploded into full view, prompting condemnations as journalists and commentators not only questioned the Times' competence, but also its fairness.”