Read the piece The Intercept refused to run: GLENN GREENWALD'S
blistering attack on the US media's conspiracy of silence over Hunter
Biden's laptops and the serious questions Joe still has to answer over
son's sketchy Chinese and Ukrainian business deals
Daily Mail
October 30, 2020
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has resigned from news outlet The
Intercept which he co-founded after claiming he was being silenced over
an article on Presidential candidate Joe Biden.
He says he was told his article would only be published if
critical points against the Democratic candidate were removed and he
says this forms part of a US media conspiracy of silence over Hunter
Biden's laptops and the serious questions Joe still has to answer over
his son's sketchy Chinese and Ukrainian business deals.
He argues that
political censorship has 'contaminated virtually every mainstream
centre-left political organization, academic institution and newsroom.'
Because his article was censored, Greenwald published it in full on his
website .
Read the full blistering article here.
THE REAL SCANDAL: U.S. MEDIA USES FALSEHOODS TO DEFEND JOE BIDEN FROM HUNTER'S EMAILS
By Glenn Greenwald
Publication by the New York Post two weeks
ago of emails from Hunter Biden's laptop, relating to Vice President
Joe Biden's work in Ukraine, and subsequent articles from other outlets
concerning the Biden family's pursuit of business opportunities in
China, provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media
outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to
suppress these stories.
One outcome is
that the Biden campaign concluded, rationally, that there is no need for
the front-running presidential candidate to address even the most basic
and relevant questions raised by these materials. Rather than condemn
Biden for ignoring these questions -- the natural instinct of a healthy
press when it comes to a presidential election -- journalists have
instead led the way in concocting excuses to justify his silence.
After the Post's first article, both that
newspaper and other news outlets have published numerous other emails
and texts purportedly written to and from Hunter reflecting his efforts
to induce his father to take actions as Vice President beneficial to the
Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors Hunter
sat for a monthly payment of $50,000, as well as proposals for lucrative
business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father.
Individuals
included in some of the email chains have confirmed the contents'
authenticity. One of Hunter's former business partners, Tony Bubolinski,
has stepped forward on the record to confirm the authenticity of many
of the emails and to insist that Hunter along with Joe Biden's brother
Jim were planning on including the former Vice President in at least one
deal in China. And GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who appeared in one of the
published email chains, appeared to confirm the authenticity as well,
though he refused to answer follow-up questions about it.
Thus
far, no proof has been offered by Bubolinski that Biden ever
consummated his participation in any of those discussed deals. The Wall
Street Journal says that it found no corporate records reflecting that a
deal was finalized and that 'text messages and emails related to the
venture that were provided to the Journal by Mr. Bobulinski, mainly from
the spring and summer of 2017, don't show either Hunter Biden or James
Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture.'
But
nobody claimed that any such deals had been consummated -- so the
conclusion that one had not been does not negate the story. Moreover,
some texts and emails whose authenticity has not been disputed state
that Hunter was adamant that any discussions about the involvement of
the Vice President be held only verbally and never put in writing.
Beyond
that, the Journal's columnist Kimberly Strassel reviewed a stash of
documents and 'found correspondence corroborates and expands on emails
recently published by the New York Post,' including ones where Hunter
was insisting that it was his connection to his father that was the
greatest asset sought by the Chinese conglomerate with whom they were
negotiating. The New York Times on Sunday reached a similar conclusion:
while no documents prove that such a deal was consummated, 'records
produced by Mr. Bobulinski show that in 2017, Hunter Biden and James
Biden were involved in negotiations about a joint venture with a Chinese
energy and finance company called CEFC China Energy,' and 'make clear
that Hunter Biden saw the family name as a valuable asset, angrily
citing his 'family's brand' as a reason he is valuable to the proposed
venture.'
These documents also
demonstrate, reported the Times, 'that the countries that Hunter Biden,
James Biden and their associates planned to target for deals overlapped
with nations where Joe Biden had previously been involved as vice
president.' Strassel noted that 'a May 2017 'expectations' document
shows Hunter receiving 20% of the equity in the venture and holding
another 10% for 'the big guy'—who Mr. Bobulinski attests is Joe Biden.'
And the independent journalist Matt Taibbi published an article on
Sunday with ample documentation suggesting that Biden's attempt to
replace a Ukranian prosecutor in 2015 benefited Burisma.
All
of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been
disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important
questions about whether the former Vice President and current
front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to
peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether
the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the
intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son's business
associates. But in the two weeks since the Post published its initial
story, a union of the nation's most powerful entities, including its
news media, have taken extraordinary steps to obscure and bury these
questions rather than try to provide answers to them.
The initial documents, claimed the New
York Post, were obtained when the laptops containing them were left at a
Delaware repair shop with water damage and never picked up, allowing
the owner to access its contents and then turn them over to both the FBI
and a lawyer for Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani. The repair store owner
confirmed this narrative in interviews with news outlets and then (under
penalty of prosecution) to a Senate Committee; he also provided the
receipt purportedly signed by Hunter. Neither Hunter nor the Biden
campaign has denied these claims.
Publication
of that initial New York Post story provoked a highly unusual
censorship campaign by Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, through a
long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story
pending its 'fact-check,' one that has as of yet produced no public
conclusions. And while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for Twitter's
handling of the censorship and reversed the policy that led to the
blocking of all links the story, the New York Post, the nation's
fourth-largest newspaper, continues to be locked out of its Twitter
account, unable to post as the election approaches, for almost two
weeks.
After that initial censorship
burst from Silicon Valley, whose workforce and oligarchs have donated
almost entirely to the Biden campaign, it was the nation's media outlets
and former CIA and other intelligence officials who took the lead in
constructing reasons why the story should be dismissed, or at least
treated with scorn. As usual for the Trump era, the theme that took
center stage to accomplish this goal was an unsubstantiated claim about
the Kremlin responsibility for the story.
Numerous
news outlets, including the Intercept, quickly cited a public letter
signed by former CIA officials and other agents of the security state
claiming that the documents have the 'classic trademarks' of a 'Russian
disinformation' plot. But, as media outlets and even intelligence
agencies are now slowly admitting, no evidence has ever been presented
to corroborate this assertion. On Friday, the New York Times reported
that 'no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian
disinformation' and the paper said even the FBI has 'acknowledged that
it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.'
The
Washington Post on Sunday published an op-ed -- by Thomas Rid, one of
those centrists establishmentarian professors whom media outlets
routinely use to provide the facade of expert approval for deranged
conspiracy theories -- that contained this extraordinary proclamation:
'We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign
intelligence operation — even if they probably aren't.
Even the letter from the former
intelligence officials cited by The Intercept and other outlets to
insinuate that this was all part of some 'Russian disinformation' scheme
explicitly admitted that 'we do not have evidence of Russian
involvement,' though many media outlets omitted that crucial
acknowledgement when citing the letter in order to disparage the story
as a Kremlin plot:
Despite this complete
lack of evidence, the Biden campaign adopted this phrase used by
intelligence officials and media outlets as its mantra for why the
materials should not be discussed and why they would not answer basic
questions about them. 'I think we need to be very, very clear that what
he's doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation,' said Biden Deputy
Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield about the possibility that Trump
would raise the Biden emails at Thursday night's debate. Biden's senior
advisor Symone Sanders similarly warned on MSNBC: 'if the president
decides to amplify these latest smears against the vice president and
his only living son, that is Russian disinformation.'
The
few mainstream journalists who tried merely to discuss these materials
have been vilified. For the crime of simply noting it on Twitter that
first day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had her name trend
all morning along with the derogatory nickname 'MAGA Haberman.' CBS
News' Bo Erickson was widely attacked even by his some in the media
simply for asking Biden what his response to the story was. And Biden
himself refused to answer, accusing Erickson of spreading a 'smear.'
That
it is irresponsible and even unethical to mention these documents
became a pervasive view in mainstream journalism. The NPR Public Editor,
in an anazing statement representative of much of the prevailing media
mentality, explicitly justified NPR's refusal to cover the story on the
ground that 'we do not want to waste our time on stories that are not
really stories . . . [or] waste the readers' and listeners' time on
stories that are just pure distractions.'
To justify her own show's failure to cover
the story, 60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl resorted to an entirely different
justification. 'It can't be verified,' the CBS reporter claimed when
confronted by President Trump in an interview about her program's
failure to cover the Hunter Biden documents. When Trump insisted there
were multiple ways to verify the materials on the laptop, Stahl simply
repeated the same phrase: 'it can't be verified.'
After
the final presidential debate on Thursday night, a CNN panel mocked the
story as too complex and obscure for anyone to follow -- a
self-fulfilling prophecy given that, as the network's media reporter
Brian Stelter noted with pride, the story has barely been mentioned
either on CNN or MSNBC. As the New York Times noted on Friday: 'most
viewers of CNN and MSNBC would not have heard much about the unconfirmed
Hunter Biden emails.... CNN's mentions of 'Hunter' peaked at 20 seconds
and MSNBC's at 24 seconds one day last week.'
On
Sunday, CNN's Christiane Amanpour barely pretended to be interested in
any journalism surrounding the story, scoffing during an interview at
requests from the RNC's Elizabeth Harrington to cover the story and
verify the documents by telling her: 'We're not going to do your work
for you.' Watch how the U.S.'s most mainstream journalists are openly
announcing their refusal to even consider what these documents might
reflect about the Democratic front-runner:
These journalists are desperate not to
know. As Taibbi wrote on Sunday about this tawdry press spectacle: ' The
least curious people in the country right now appear to be the
credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot
authoritarian societies.'
All of those
excuses and pretexts — emanating largely from a national media that is
all but explicit in their eagerness for Biden to win — served for the
first week or more after the Post story to create a cone of silence
around this story and, to this very day, a protective shield for Biden.
As a result, the front-running presidential candidate knows that he does
not have to answer even the most basic questions about these documents
because most of the national press has already signaled that they will
not press him to do so; to the contrary, they will concoct defenses on
his behalf to avoid discussing it.
The
relevant questions for Biden raised by this new reporting are as glaring
as they are important. Yet Biden has had to answer very few of them yet
because he has not been asked and, when he has, media outlets have
justified his refusal to answer rather than demand that he do so. We
submitted nine questions to his campaign about these documents that the
public has the absolute right to know, including:
- whether he claims any the emails or texts are fabricated (and, if so, which specific ones);
- whether he knows if Hunter did indeed drop off laptops at the Delaware repair store;
- whether Hunter ever asked him to meet with Burisma executives or whether he in fact did so;
- whether
Biden ever knew about business proposals in Ukraine or China being
pursued by his son and brother in which Biden was a proposed participant
and,
- how Biden could justify expending so much
energy as Vice President demanding that the Ukrainian General Prosecutor
be fired, and why the replacement — Yuriy Lutsenko, someone who had no
experience in law; was a crony of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko;
and himself had a history of corruption allegations — was acceptable if
Biden's goal really was to fight corruption in Ukraine rather than
benefit Burisma or control Ukrainian internal affairs for some other
objective
Though the Biden campaign indicated that
they would respond to the Intercept's questions, they have not done so. A
statement they released to other outlets contains no answers to any of
these questions except to claim that Biden 'has never even considered
being involved in business with his family, nor in any business
overseas.' To date, even as the Biden campaign echoes the baseless
claims of media outlets that anyone discussing this story is 'amplifying
Russian disinformation,' neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign
have even said whether they claim the emails and other documents --
which they and the press continue to label 'Russian disinformation' --
are forgeries or whether they are authentic.
The
Biden campaign clearly believes it has no need to answer any of these
questions by virtue of a panoply of media excuses offered on its behalf
that collapse upon the most minimal scrutiny:
First,
the claim that the material is of suspect authenticity or cannot be
verified -- the excuse used on behalf of Biden by Leslie Stahl and
Christiane Amanpour, among others -- is blatantly false for numerous
reasons. As someone who has reported similar large archives in
partnership with numerous media outlets around the world (including the
Snowden archive in 2014 and the Intercept's Brazil Archive over the last
year showing corruption by high-level Bolsonaro officials), and who
also covered the reporting of similar archives by other outlets (the
Panama Papers, the WikiLeaks war logs of 2010 and DNC/Podesta emails of
2016), it is clear to me that the trove of documents from Hunter Biden's
emails has been verified in ways quite similar to those.
With
an archive of this size, one can never independently authenticate every
word in every last document unless the subject of the reporting
voluntarily confirms it in advance, which they rarely do. What has been
done with similar archives is journalists obtain enough verification to
create high levels of journalistic confidence in the materials. Some of
the materials provided by the source can be independently confirmed,
proving genuine access by the source to a hard drive, a telephone, or a
database. Other parties in email chains can confirm the authenticity of
the email or text conversations in which they participated. One
investigates non-public facts contained in the documents to determine
that they conform to what the documents reflect. Technology specialists
can examine the materials to ensure no signs of forgeries are detected.
This
is the process that enabled the largest and most established media
outlets around the world to report similar large archives obtained
without authorization. In those other cases, no media outlet was able to
verify every word of every document prior to publication. There was no
way to prove the negative that the source or someone else had not
altered or forged some of the material. That level of verification is
both unattainable and unnecessary. What is needed is substantial
evidence to create high confidence in the authentication process.
The
Hunter Biden documents have at least as much verification as those
other archives that were widely reported. There are sources in the email
chains who have verified that the published emails are accurate. The
archive contains private photos and videos of Hunter whose authenticity
is not in doubt. A former business partner of Hunter has stated,
unequivocally and on the record, that not only are the emails authentic
but they describe events accurately, including proposed participation by
the former Vice President in at least one deal Hunter and Jim Biden
were pursuing in China. And, most importantly of all, neither Hunter
Biden nor the Biden campaign has even suggested, let alone claimed, that
a single email or text is fake.
Why is
the failure of the Bidens to claim that these emails are forged so
significant? Because when journalists report on a massive archive, they
know that the most important event in the reporting's authentication
process comes when the subjects of the reporting have an opportunity to
deny that the materials are genuine. Of course that is what someone
would do if major media outlets were preparing to publish, or in fact
were publishing, fabricated or forged materials in their names; they
would say so in order to sow doubt about the materials if not kill the
credibility of the reporting.
The
silence of the Bidens may not be dispositive on the question of the
material's authenticity, but when added to the mountain of other
authentication evidence, it is quite convincing: at least equal to the
authentication evidence in other reporting on similarly large archives.
Second,
the oft-repeated claim from news outlets and CIA operatives that the
published emails and texts were 'Russian disinformation' was, from the
start, obviously baseless and reckless. No evidence — literally none —
has been presented to suggest involvement by any Russians in the
dissemination of these materials, let alone that it was part of some
official plot by Moscow. As always, anything is possible — when one does
not know for certain what the provenance of materials is, nothing can
be ruled out — but in journalism, evidence is required before news
outlets can validly start blaming some foreign government for the
release of information. And none has ever been presented. Yet the claim
that this was 'Russian disinformation' was published in countless news
outlets, television broadcasts, and the social media accounts of
journalists, typically by pointing to the evidence-free claims of ex-CIA
officials.
Worse is the
'disinformation' part of the media's equation. How can these materials
constitute 'disinformation' if they are authentic emails and texts
actually sent to and from Hunter Biden? The ease with which news outlets
that are supposed to be skeptical of evidence-free pronouncements by
the intelligence community instead printed their assertions about
'Russian disinformation' is alarming in the extreme. But they did it
because they instinctively wanted to find a reason to justify ignoring
the contents of these emails, so claiming that Russia was behind it, and
that the materials were 'disinformation,' became their placeholder
until they could figure out what else they should say to justify
ignoring these documents.
Third, the
media rush to exonerate Biden on the question of whether he engaged in
corruption vis-a-vis Ukraine and Burisma rested on what are, at best,
factually dubious defenses of the former Vice President. Much of this
controversy centers on Biden's aggressive efforts while Vice President
in late 2015 to force the Ukrainian government to fire its Chief
Prosecutor, Viktor Shokhin, and replace him with someone acceptable to
the U.S., which turned out to be Yuriy Lutsenko. These events are
undisputed by virtue of a video of Biden boasting in front of an
audience of how he flew to Kiev and forced the Ukrainians to fire
Shokhin, upon pain of losing $1 billion in aid.
But
two towering questions have long been prompted by these events, and the
recently published emails make them more urgent than ever: 1) was the
firing of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor such a high priority for
Biden as Vice President of the U.S. because of his son's highly
lucrative role on the board of Burisma, and 2) if that was not the
motive, why was it so important for Biden to dictate who the chief
prosecutor of Ukraine was?
The standard
answer to the question about Biden's motive -- offered both by Biden
and his media defenders -- is that he, along with the IMF and EU, wanted
Shokhin fired because the U.S. and its allies were eager to clean up
Ukraine, and they viewed Shokhin as insufficiently vigilant in fighting
corruption.
'Biden's brief was to
sweet-talk and jawbone Poroshenko into making reforms that Ukraine's
Western benefactors wanted to see as,' wrote the Washington Post's Glenn
Kessler in what the Post calls a 'fact-check.' Kessler also endorsed
the key defense of Biden: that the firing of Shokhin was bad for Burima,
not good for it. 'The United States viewed [Shokhin] as ineffective and
beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine's corrupt oligarchs. In particular,
Shokin had failed to pursue an investigation of the founder of Burisma,
Mykola Zlochevsky,' Kessler claims.
But
that claim does not even pass the laugh test. The U.S. and its European
allies are not opposed to corruption by their puppet regimes. They are
allies with the most corrupt regimes on the planet, from Riyadh to
Cairo, and always have been. Since when does the U.S. devote itself to
ensuring good government in the nations it is trying to control? If
anything, allowing corruption to flourish has been a key tool in
enabling the U.S. to exert power in other countries and to open up their
markets to U.S. companies.
Beyond
that, if increasing prosecutorial independence and strengthening
anti-corruption vigilance were really Biden's goal in working to demand
the firing of the Ukrainian chief prosecutor, why would the successor to
Shokhin, Yuriy Lutsenko, possibly be acceptable? Lutsenko, after all,
had 'no legal background as general prosecutor,' was principally known
only as a lackey of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, was forced in
2009 to 'resign as interior minister after being detained by police at
Frankfurt airport for being drunk and disorderly,' and 'was subsequently
jailed for embezzlement and abuse of office, though his defenders said
the sentence was politically motivated.
Is it remotely convincing to you that
Biden would have accepted someone like Lutsenko if his motive really
were to fortify anti-corruption prosecutions in Ukraine? Yet that's
exactly what Biden did: he personally told Poroshenko that Lutsenko was
an acceptable alternative and promptly released the $1 billion after his
appointment was announced. Whatever Biden's motive was in using his
power as U.S. Vice President to change the prosecutor in Ukraine, his
acceptance of someone like Lutsenko strongly suggests that combatting
Ukrainian corruption was not it.
As for
the other claim on which Biden and his media allies have heavily relied
— that firing Shokhin was not a favor for Burisma because Shokhin was
not pursuing any investigations against Burisma — the evidence does not
justify that assertion.
It is true that
no evidence, including these new emails, constitute proof that Biden's
motive in demanding Shokhin's termination was to benefit Burisma. But
nothing demonstrates that Shokhin was impeding investigations into
Burisma. Indeed, the New York Times in 2019 published one of the most
comprehensive investigations to date of the claims made in defense of
Biden when it comes to Ukraine and the firing of this prosecutor, and,
while noting that 'no evidence has surfaced that the former vice
president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the
prosecutor general's dismissal,' this is what its reporters concluded
about Shokhin and Burisma:
The Times
added: 'Mr. Shokhin's office had oversight of investigations into
[Burisma's billionaire founder] Zlochevsky and his businesses, including
Burisma.' By contrast, they said, Lutsenko, the replacement approved by
Vice President Biden, 'initially continued investigating Mr. Zlochevsky
and Burisma, but cleared him of all charges within 10 months of taking
office.'
So whether or not it was
Biden's intention to confer benefits on Burisma by demanding Shokhin's
firing, it ended up quite favorable for Burisma given that the utterly
inexperienced Lutesenko 'cleared [Burisma's founder] of all charges
within 10 months of taking office.'
The
new comprehensive report from journalist Taibbi on Sunday also strongly
supports the view that there were clear antagonisms between Shokhin and
Burisma, such that firing the Ukrainian prosecutor would have been
beneficial for Burisma. Taibbi, who reported for many years while based
in Russia and remains very well-sourced in the region, detailed:
Taibbi
reviews real-time reporting in both Ukraine and the U.S. to document
several other pending investigations against Burisma and Zlochevsky that
was overseen by the prosecutor whose firing Biden demanded. He notes
that Shokhin himself has repeatedly said he was pursuing several
investigations against Zlochevsky at the time Biden demanded his firing.
In sum, Taibbi concludes, 'one can't say there's no evidence of active
Burisma cases even during the last days of Shokin, who says that it was
the February, 2016 seizure order [against Zlochevsky's assets] that got
him fired.'
And, Taibbi notes, 'the
story looks even odder when one wonders why the United States would
exercise so much foreign policy muscle to get Shokin fired, only to
allow in a replacement — Yuri Lutsenko — who by all accounts was a
spectacularly bigger failure in the battle against corruption in
general, and Zlochevsky in particular.' In sum: 'it's unquestionable
that the cases against Burisma were all closed by Shokin's successor,
chosen in consultation with Joe Biden, whose son remained on the board
of said company for three more years, earning upwards of $50,000 per
month.'
The publicly known facts,
augmented by the recent emails, texts and on-the-record accounts,
suggest serious sleaze by Joe Biden's son Hunter in trying to peddle his
influence with the Vice President for profit. But they also raise real
questions about whether Joe Biden knew about and even himself engaged in
a form of legalized corruption. Specifically, these newly revealed
information suggest Biden was using his power to benefit his son's
business Ukrainian associates, and allowing his name to be traded on
while Vice President for his son and brother to pursue business
opportunities in China. These are questions which a minimally healthy
press would want answered, not buried — regardless of how many similar
or worse scandals the Trump family has.
But
the real scandal that has been proven is not the former Vice
President's misconduct but that of his supporters and allies in the U.S.
media. As Taibbi's headline put it: 'With the Hunter Biden Exposé,
Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than the Actual Story.'
The reality is the U.S. press has been
planning for this moment for four years — cooking up justifications for
refusing to report on newsworthy material that might help Donald Trump
get re-elected. One major factor is the undeniable truth that
journalists with national outlets based in New York, Washington and West
Coast cities overwhelmingly not just favor Joe Biden but are desperate
to see Donald Trump defeated.
It takes
an enormous amount of gullibility to believe that any humans are capable
of separating such an intense partisan preference from their
journalistic judgment. Many barely even bother to pretend: critiques of
Joe Biden are often attacked first not by Biden campaign operatives but
by political reporters at national news outlets who make little secret
of their eagerness to help Biden win.
But
much of this has to do with the fallout from the 2016 election. During
that campaign, news outlets, including The Intercept, did their jobs as
journalists by reporting on the contents of newsworthy, authentic
documents: namely, the emails published by WikiLeaks from the John
Podesta and DNC inboxes which, among other things, revealed corruption
so severe that it forced the resignation of the top five officials of
the DNC. That the materials were hacked, and that intelligence agencies
were suggesting Russia was responsible, not negate the newsworthiness of
the documents, which is why media outlets across the country repeatedly
reported on their contents.
Nonetheless,
journalists have spent four years being attacked as Trump enablers in
their overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal cultural circles: the cities
in which they live are overwhelmingly Democratic, and their demographic
— large-city, college-educated professionals — has vanishingly little
Trump support. A New York Times survey of campaign data from Monday
tells just a part of this story of cultural insularity and homogeniety:
Wanting
to avoid a repeat of feeling scorn and shunning in their own extremely
pro-Democratic, anti-Trump circles, national media outlets have spent
four years inventing standards for election-year reporting on hacked
materials that never previously existed and that are utterly anathema to
the core journalistic function. The Washington Post's Executive Editor
Marty Baron, for instance, issued a memo full of cautions about how Post
reporters should, or should not, discuss hacked materials even if their
authenticity is not in doubt.
That a
media outlet should even consider refraining from reporting on materials
they know to be authentic and in the public interest because of
questions about their provenance is the opposite of how journalism has
been practiced. In the days before the 2016 election, for instance, the
New York Times received by mail one year of Donald Trump's tax returns
and -- despite having no idea who sent it to them or how that person
obtained it: was is stolen or hacked by a foreign power? -- the Times
reported on its contents.
When asked by
NPR why they would report on documents when they do not know the source
let alone the source's motives in providing them, two-time Pulitzer
Prize winner David Barstow compellingly explained what had always been
the core principle of journalism: namely, a journalist only cares about
two questions -- (1) are documents authentic and (2) are they in the
public interest? -- but does not care about what motives a source has in
providing the documents or how they were obtained when deciding whether
to reporting them:
The U.S. media often laments that people
have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed
as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more
reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining
about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is
responsible for it.
A media outlet that
renounces its core function -- pursuing answers to relevant questions
about powerful people -- is one that deserves to lose the public's faith
and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some
exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in
investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they
should be ignored.
As my colleague Lee
Fang put it on Sunday: 'The partisan double standards in the media are
mind boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent
media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate
media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear.' Discussing
his story from Sunday, Taibbi summed up the most important point this
way: 'The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more
about who benefits from information than whether it's true.'
