The 2016 Election and the Demise of Journalistic Standards
Michael Goodwinis the chief political columnist forThe New York Post. He has a B.A. in English literature from Columbia College and has taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Before joining the Post in 2009, he was the political columnist forThe New York Daily News, where he served as executive editor and editorial page editor and led its editorial board to a Pulitzer Prize. Prior to that, he worked for 16 years atThe New York Times, beginning as a clerk and rising to City Hall Bureau Chief. He is the co-author ofI, Kochand editor ofNew York Comes Back.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered on April 20, 2017, in Atlanta, Georgia, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar.
I’ve been a journalist for a long time. Long enough to know that it wasn’t always like this. There was a time not so long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it. Among the many firsts, last year’s election gave us the gobsmacking revelation that most of the mainstream media puts both thumbs on the scale—that most of what you read, watch, and listen to is distorted by intentional bias and hostility. I have never seen anything like it. Not even close.
It’s not exactly breaking news that most journalists lean left. I used to do that myself. I grew up atThe New York Times, so I’m familiar with the species. For most of the media, bias grew out of the social revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Fueled by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the media jumped on the anti-authority bandwagon writ large. The deal was sealed with Watergate, when journalism was viewed as more trusted than government—and far more exciting and glamorous. Think Robert Redford inAll the President’s Men. Ever since, young people became journalists because they wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, find a Deep Throat, and bring down a president. Of course, most of them only wanted to bring down a Republican president. That’s because liberalism is baked into the journalism cake.
From Martha Stewart to Frank Quattrone to Steven Hatfill, former FBI director James Comey has left a long trail of highly questionable obstruction of justice cases that he used to make a name for himself.
Following countdown clocks on cable outlets and dramatic claims in the media about what devastating testimony to expect, James Comey sat down before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week. The hearing ended up being abit of a let-downfor critics of President Trump who hoped to get him impeached (or removed via the 25th amendment!) as soon as possible. Comey admitted that Donald Trump had told the truth when he wrote that the former FBI director had thrice told him he was not under investigation in the Russia meddling probe. Comey admitted that Trump had twice encouraged him to get to the bottom of the Russian meddling issue.
But the media chose to run with a dramatically different narrative. That narrative was if James Comey had not proven obstruction, he came pretty darn close.
“Is Trump Guilty Of Obstruction Of Justice? Comey Laid Out The Case,” was thebig takeawayfrom NPR’s Domenico Montanaro.
“Comey Bluntly Raises Possibility of Trump Obstruction and Condemns His ‘Lies’,”exultedtheNew York Times, describing his testimony as “a blunt, plain-spoken assessment” by a man who was “humble, folksy and matter-of-fact.”
TheNew Yorkerwas even more breathless. “Comey’s Revenge: Measuring Obstruction,”wroteEvan Osnos. “[T]his was not a political partisan tossing off a criticism of a rival; this was a career prosecutor, who served Republican and Democratic Presidents, presenting a time line of specific statements from the President that he described as either untrue or potentially criminal.”
MSNBC agreed. And I watched an hour of CNN the night of the hearing with the sober legal analysis of Jeffrey Toobin, who declared repeatedly that he’d never seen such obstruction of justice in the history of the world. I’m only slightly exaggerating.
REGIME CHANGE BY ANY OTHER NAME? by VICTOR DAVIS HANSON — NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, to appear in October from Basic Books
May 22, 2017
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: We are now watching insidious regime change, aimed at removing the president of the United States not because of what he has done so far, but because of his personality and what he might do to the Obama agenda — and because for a variety of cultural reasons, our elite simply despises his very being.
Truth or consequences? Obama skated for far worse misdeeds. Election machines in three states were not hacked to give Donald Trump the election. There was never a serious post-election movement of electors to defy their constitutional duties and vote for Hillary Clinton. Nor, once Trump was elected, did transgendered people begin killing themselves in alarming numbers. Nor were there mass resignations at the State Department upon his inauguration.
Nor did Donald Trump seek an order to “ban all Muslims” from entering the U.S. Instead, he temporarily sought a suspension in visas for everyone, regardless of religion, from seven Middle Eastern states that the Obama administration had earlier identified as incapable of properly vetting travelers to the U.S. The first lady did not work for an elite escort or prostitute service. She never said that she and young Barron Trump would not be moving to the White House. Barron does not have autism. Trump’s father never ran racist ads as a supposed candidate in a purported political campaign. Kellyanne Conway denies that in a private conversation between segments on MSNBC, she privately remarked to hosts that she had to take a shower after working for Trump. Donald Trump never suggested to the Mexican president that the U.S. was going to invade Mexico. Nor did Trump plan to mobilize the National Guard to send back illegal aliens. He did not remove a Martin Luther King bust from the White House. There was no evidence that he ever promised to ease Russian sanctions (much less that he promised the Russians he would be “flexible” after he was elected). He did not short the FBI of resources to conduct an investigation into supposed Russian collusion. He did not go to Moscow and watch prostitutes in his bed urinate where Barack Obama had previously slept. His deputy attorney general did not threaten to resign over the Comey firing.
Jim Kouri, CPP, is founder and CEO of Kouri Associates, a homeland security, public safety and political consulting firm. He’s formerly Fifth Vice-President, now a Board Member of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, a columnist, and a contributor to the nationally syndicated talk-radio program, the Chuck Wilder Show.. He’s former chief of police at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at St. Peter’s University and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country.
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:
A former Department of Justice prosecuting attorney who now works as an independent government watchdog has said that he believes then-Secretary of State Clinton — was responsible for leaking classified intelligence regarding the military plans of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish State’s intelligence and military officials with the goal of destroying Iran’s facilities used to create a nuclear bomb.
According to documents obtained by the non-profit group Freedom Watch, which is headed by Larry Klayman, who once served in the U.S. Justice Department, Secretary Clinton and her closest staff members were the likely sources of the leaks to New York Times reporter David Sanger. Klayman also said Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents revealed that the Clinton leaks to the media were perpetrated with the knowledge of the Obama White House’s national security team, including Susan “Benghazi” Rice and Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett.
In a special report for the print and broadcast news industry watchdog group Accuracy in Media, Conservative Base editor Jim Kouri reported that Hillary Clinton while the Secretary of State leaked classified information to the Iranian government. While many law enforcement and intelligence officers expected at the very least a probe of her behavior, Hillary Clinton never faced even the hint of an investigation and the denizens of America’s newsrooms ignored the allegations.
Meanwhile today, President Donald Trump is being investigated for an evidence-lacking accusation that he colluded with Russian boogeyman Vladimir Putin to derail Clinton’s presidential aspirations.
The family of the Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., blasted reports that he was a source of emails leaked to WikiLeaks.
Rod Wheeler, a retired Washington homicide detective and Fox News contributor investigating the case on behalf of the Rich family, made the WikiLeaks claim, which was corroborated by a federal investigator who spoke to Fox News.
“My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks.”
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:
The old left insists that social differences will fade away under Socialism. The intersectional left believes that without social deconstruction, Socialism will just mean white supremacy and hetero-cis power.
The old left believes that the true enemies are the billionaires and that working class white men must be enlisted to fight them. The intersectional left will take money from billionaires to fight working class white men who are the real enemy. That is the Bernie and Obama split in a nutshell. Obama will take money from Wall Street to fight white men. Bernie wants white men to fight Wall Street. Both factions of the left are utterly deranged. Their ideologies are built on hatred and can only cause misery. And they are now fighting each other for control of the left, the Dems and the country.
The Democrats have ended their unity tour more divided than ever. Unlike Republican quarrels, their war is mostly ignored by the media. And yet it will define what the left and its plan to take over the country will look like.
When Hillary lost, she didn’t just lose the White House. She also lost the DNC. Her loyalists, already discredited for their brazen tampering to disenfranchise Sanders supporters, had to make way for Obama’s people. The Clinton legacy is over. The Dems belong to Obama now.
Or do they?
When Obama inherited the DNC from the Clintons, he also inherited their bitter enemy.
Michael Goodwin is the chief political columnist for The New York Post. He has a B.A. in English literature from Columbia College and has taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Before joining the Post in 2009, he was the political columnist for The New York Daily News, where he served as executive editor and editorial page editor and led its editorial board to a Pulitzer Prize. Prior to that, he worked for 16 years at The New York Times, beginning as a clerk and rising to City Hall Bureau Chief. He is the co-author of I, Koch and editor of New York Comes Back.
One of President Trump’s biggest supporters and prayer warriors is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Alveda King.
