What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? Ten days after the New York Times published a train wreck of an exclusive about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, the fallout continues. Kurt Eichenwald walked through many factual errors and “fundamentally deceptive” frames in the report about a “criminal referral” that never existed. The Times’ Public Editor Margaret Sullivan dug into how a story “fraught with inaccuracies” ended up on the front page. Matt Purdy, the “top-ranking editor involved with the story,” told Sullivan, “We got it wrong because our very good sources had it wrong.” New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet suggested the mistakes “may have been unavoidable.”
Really? No chance you got played by “very good sources” who are out to get Hillary Clinton? It wouldn’t be the first time. Representative Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Benghazi and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, made a strong case that the Times fell for a familiar “ploy” of letting partisan anonymous sources “mischaracterize” documents reporters have not seen. The Clinton campaign’s official response is devastating, which may be why Baquet refused to publish it.
Some mistakes are inevitable when covering current events on a tight deadline, but thankfully, few political writers will ever commit malpractice on this scale. Aspiring journalists everywhere should study the cautionary tale. I liked Josh Marshall’s “thought experiment” for reporters “about to publish a big piece or something a lot rides on”:
Pretend that the story blows up in your face. And you have to explain to me or your editor what went wrong. If you’re the reporter in that case, you take your lumps but when you have that conversation, you really want to be able to say and explain how you covered every base, checked every box on the list and it still went wrong. When you go through that exercise it often makes you think of some box that hasn’t been checked that you really want to have checked if you find yourself in a real version of that hypothetical conversation.
I hope the Times will assign Matt Apuzzo and Michael S. Schmidt to different beats, because they have lost all credibility to report on Clinton.
This post is an open thread: all topics welcome.
5 Comments
Open thread
Uncle Joe? Too late? Too old? Just askIng. Hearing a few rumbles. Not just Maureen Dowdisms.
rockm Sun 2 Aug 12:48 PM
depends on what you mean by too late
I don’t think anyone will beat Hillary Clinton, barring some extraordinary collapse by her campaign. But that would have been true regardless of when Joe Biden joined the race. In some polls he’s close to Bernie Sanders even without campaigning. So it’s not too late for him to run and maybe finish second or a close third in a bunch of primaries.
Maureen Dowd’s column was a disgrace. I haven’t read her work regularly for a long time. It’s a waste of valuable NYT real estate in my opinion.
desmoinesdem Sun 2 Aug 2:41 PM
Run, Joe, Run!!!
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry…
rockm Mon 3 Aug 9:34 AM
Caucus
I am so torn up about the primaries inside. I want to ensure that we have a Democratic President. I am a huge Hillary fan after all she has done with the Children’s Defense Fund, in Arkansas, while FLOTUS and as a Senator, and of course as SoS. But main concern is that she is not being forthcoming on her positions on several key issues that are important to me. One is the environment. I loved her proposal regarding solar power. I just think that we need something more to be passionate for, like coming out against Keystone or talking about eliminating coal based power. I also would like to know more about her positions in regards to Wall Street. She came out against bringing back Glass-Steagall, which made me upset. I would like to see a massive increase in the minimum wage across the board, not just for fast food workers. And I would like to see some monopolies broken up. I just don’t think she is on the right side with these topics.
My other concern of course is that Bernie Sanders is not a viable alternative. I like Bernie. I have a Bernie Bumper sticker and a Hillary one and I really can’t decide which to use. I have known about Bernie since he was a guest in 2003 on Air America. But I don’t know that some of his past and his positions will hurt him among America’s dumb general election voters, especially Independents, who in my opinion are notoriously uninformed. I think the GOP and the compliant corporate media will have a field day with his honey moon to the USSR. I think that they will be bashing the term socialist and really driving home how “crazy” he is, even though he isn’t and those positions are smart and right for America. I think we already know Hillary’s “scandals” and I think she would be better than any republican. I just don’t know what to do.
My heart is with Sanders and my head is with Hillary for the general election. I guess I would like to see her campaign come out with something spontaneous. Like marijuana legalization support or support of more intrusive regulations into wall street or corporate America. I will vote for any Democrat over the Republican guaranteed. I just don’t know who is best for 2016. I think Scott Walker will be the GOP nominee. And I think that Hillary is more credible to those independent voters who frankly are less educated on policy matters. It doesn’t mean she isn’t, in fact I think she may be more informed than Sanders. Doesn’t mean she will act on those facts.
#Disillusioned #Arrrrgh
leja2016 Mon 3 Aug 1:43 PM
I also feel conflicted
for many of the same reasons. Hillary’s excuse for not commenting on Keystone XL is that she was secretary of state when the project was proposed. I would like to hear her speak more broadly about tar sands oil, though. Her solar power plan is excellent, and I’m glad she supports President Obama’s Clean Power Plan for coal plants, but if we are serious about climate change, we need to keep as much of the tar sands oil in the ground as possible.
Clinton would be the most qualified candidate Democrats have nominated in my lifetime. She would be the strongest general-election candidate, no doubt in my mind about that. She is not as progressive as I would like her to be on some of my key issues, which is why I haven’t signed a supporter card already.
desmoinesdem Mon 3 Aug 2:02 PM