Journalistic Malpractice

I am going to spare you the details, about the Russian collusion hoax, but the Columbia Journalism Review has just published a major analysis of the New York Times approach to the story. As you probably know, the CJR is a fair and objective source. It leans neither left nor right.

By it's analysis, the Times tossed journalistic ethics to the winds and became a propaganda outlet for the anti-Trump left. It did not report the news, but ginned up a fake story in order to destroy a sitting president. So much for respecting democracy.

Jeff Gerth’s four-part piece is a damning indictment of the Times and its former editor Dean Bacquet.

The CJR concludes:

But outside of the Times’ own bubble, the damage to the credibility of the Times and its peers persists, three years on, and is likely to take on new energy as the nation faces yet another election season animated by antagonism toward the press. At its root was an undeclared war between an entrenched media, and a new kind of disruptive presidency, with its own hyperbolic version of the truth. (The Washington Post has tracked thousands of Trump’s false or misleading statements.) At times, Trump seemed almost to be toying with the press, offering spontaneous answers to questions about Russia that seemed to point to darker narratives. When those storylines were authoritatively undercut, the follow-ups were downplayed or ignored.

And, 

Trump’s attacks against media outlets and individual reporters are a well-known theme of his campaigns. But news outlets and watchdogs haven’t been as forthright in examining their own Trump-Russia coverage, which includes serious flaws. Bob Woodward, of the Post, told me that news coverage of the Russia inquiry ” wasn’t handled well” and that he thought viewers and readers had been “cheated.” He urged newsrooms to “walk down the painful road of introspection.”