Kurt Eichenwald Profile picture
May 20, 2019 19 tweets 8 min read Read on X
1. I found a letter this weekend that reminded me of an interesting event from 1991 that did not reveal until now. It might seem like nothing, but to me it is a demonstration of what is wrong with journalism - reporters don't know what they dont know, and dont try to find out....
2...the reason I use this as an example is because it involves good reporters acting in real life without ever thinking they might not know the whole story.

So, in 1991, the publisher at the @nytimes announced the company was starting a clothing drive that was very complex...
@nytimes 3...this wasn't just "bring in clothes" - it was an entire system where clothes arrived packaged and sorted and were at the loading dock, piled into a shipping truck, within an hour, then off to a delivery location by that same afternoon. Drop off points were on every floor....
@nytimes 4...in movable bins right next to the elevator. The bins disappeared everyday within an hour. This was a hassle-free system where a small number of people did tons of work. Over the course of the first year, it collected 2 tons of clothing.

The theme, as expressed by the....
@nytimes 5...publisher, was that everyone had clothes in their closets they never wore, that this was like the old story of stone soup, where everyone could contribute a little and make something great.

There were multiple people who were responsible throughout the newsroom for....
@nytimes 6...reminding people to bring in clothes. The person in my area kept reminding me, aware that I had never brought in anything. I replied my wife and I truly had no spare clothes we could bring in. I was chastised by two reporters for not trying, for not thinking of others, etc...
@nytimes 7...they never asked WHY I didn't have any clothes to spare. The reason was simple:

I had conceived of and put together the entire project. I pitched it to the publisher, but asked him never to reveal it was my idea - I thought people would be more likely to do it if they....
@nytimes 8...though the program was his, not mine. He appointed a woman in the employee relations program to help me.

We ran multiple tests to see if the whole thing worked, because - again - it was complicated. We needed clothes for these tests. The clothes we used were mine....
@nytimes 9...so the reason we had none to give is because we had already given them all away to the very program that the other reporter/s were lecturing me about. I stayed silent - although I would have explained if someone had asked - because I did not want it to be undermined as...
@nytimes 10...not being a program from the publisher.

Sometime after I was balled out by other reporters for not giving, the employee relations person and I received this letter from the publisher. He gave us both a secret $500 publishers award for working so hard on this..
@nytimes 11...now, publisher awards are always publicly announced, with the recipients on posters in the newsroom. Not this time - secrecy, we knew was important.

So, the lesson for journalism: With ONE additional fact, I went from selfish to not. I went from not caring to caring a lot..
@nytimes 12...and this is what is wrong with journalism. There is ALWAYS one fact. Sometimes, even the formation of the question shows the journalist has not thought through the story. Except for daily stories where reaction was to an event, I NEVER asked an interview subject....
@nytimes 13.."how do you respond to this allegation against you from someone else" because I am automatically adopting that allegation as the perspective of the story. I always asked tons of general question, then more specific, to gather multiple sides of a story and then pick through..
@nytimes 14...the facts to figure out what is the most accurate and fair representation of the story.

I have had a lot written about me over the years. Easily 90% of it has been wrong. Easily 95% of the time, it was written without the reporter contacting me. And every time....
@nytimes 15...reporters presented it as truth. When I give speeches, I often ask "how many of you have read or seen a story that you have personal knowledge about the underlying facts." Bunches of hands go up. Then I ask, "How many think the story was wrong?" And most of the hands stay...
@nytimes 16...up. This is usually NOT about bias. It is about laziness. It is why, in the buildup to the election, "her emails her emails her emails" were endless stories - even though the "rule" cited went unread by people writing. I know this because the rule authorized what she did....
@nytimes 17...this would have been fine except, everyone also agreed that Trump had no chance of winning, and so - based on that unreported agreement - everyone pretty much ignored him except the Washington Post and Newsweek.

So, the lesson from my simple tale to reporters: When you...
@nytimes 18...dont ask questions, when you don't start from a perspective of "any side could be telling the truth, or all of them could be wrong", when you dont think "what possible errors am i making" you will make errors.

Every single time.
@nytimes 19...and if the reporters who bawled me out remember this and see this - dont worry about it. I was more amused than mad.

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More from @kurteichenwald

Oct 26
As someone who has been a journalist for almost 40 year, working as a senior writer at the New York Times, Newsweek, etc, the decision by @WilliamLewis, a Murdoch alum, to cripple the @washingtonpost by abandoning endorsements, is one of the most craven actions I've ever seen../1
...taken in the industry. Make no mistake, this wasn't just cowardice. It was @WilliamLewis and perhaps @JeffBezos dragging a now-once great paper into the sewer because of their own political beliefs. If Lewis et al wanted to abandon endorsements, fine. But you don't do it.../2
@WilliamLewis @JeffBezos ...days one of the most consequential elections in history. We have on one side a convicted felon, deemed an ignorant fascist by his own people, who half this country believes is, in fact, a fascist, and on the other side a woman half the country believes is a communist.../3
Read 14 tweets
Sep 16
Make no mistake: The "Haitians are stealing your pets to eat them" lie is a variant of the blood libel that Jews have faced for centuries: In that, Jews are stealing Christian babies to use their blood bake food (Matzah).

Trump and Vance are lying about legal residents..../1
....accusing them of stealing beloved members of the family, and eating them. The point of the Haitian Blood Libel is the same as the original Blood Libel: To create an "other," to unify the hateful and ignorance against an imaginary enemy in their midst, all to seize power.../2
...so please, stop calling the attack on lawful American residents from Haiti as a "lie." Call it was it is: The #HaitianBloodLibel generated by Trump and Vance. A century ago they would have used Jews. And Fox News would have been the May 1934 volume of Der Stürmer.../3
Read 4 tweets
Aug 26
The appeal filed by Jack Smith on Judge Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents cased underscores an embarrassment that should not exist in modern times, things that were evident in her ruling. Cannon is clearly either stupid or corrupt..../1
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
...there are SO many elements to her nonsense in her ruling that have been just jaw dropping (ruling that past participles are the same as past tense, and on and on) but Smith thankfully points out the two that most annoyed me: She described what was the central finding in.../2
...US v Nixon as nothing more than "unpersuasive dicta." In fact, it was the foundation of the SCOTUS ruling and had been fully briefed by both sides. Second, she used the TITLE of a statute to overrule what the statute said, even though it includes an explicit statement.../3
Read 6 tweets
Aug 25
I have been holding my tongue for a long time, but I am SICK of self-identified evangelicals saying they read things in the Bible that 1. Aren't there or 2. Are being massively misrepresented and 3. DO happen to be garbage appearing on Facebook posts. I am writing this only.../1
...because these are the same kinds of people who misquote or cherry pick the Bible to justify their hatreds and self-worship. Worse, they say it with such self-confidence that other evangelicals (who are constantly found in polls to be the most Biblically illiterate, worse..../2
...than atheists. Mormon's know it best, even though their scripture if the Book of Mormon.) Anyway, here is the latest on the Holiness of Trump "based" on the Bible. It comes from Lee Greenwood and Ted Nugent's wife who says she "read" her claims in the Bible. (She didn't)..
Read 16 tweets
Aug 9
Trump's lies sometimes involve a series of events from his past blended together into one where he is the center of the universe. His lie about going down in a helicopter with Willy Brown:
1. Three of his executives went down in a helicopter in 1988 and died. (Trump lied that...1
...he was supposed to be on that flight but backed out at the last second.)
2. He met with Willie Brown in the 1980s.
3. He flew in a helicopter with Jerry Brown (and Gavin Newsom) during his presidency, during which he fretted that the helicoptercopter would go down.

While..2
...like I said, he often blends stories into one where he is at the center of an adventure or he is the hero of the tale, this one is so bizarre that I suspect we are watching an increasing dementia, which is in the family. Someone with a habit of blending memories...3
Read 4 tweets
Jun 28
That SCOTUS overruling ANOTHER precedent - this one that established the Chevron doctrine, which has been cited in literally thousands of federal cases - was signaled by the court in 2022. Then I said the ruling in West Virginia v. EPA was the most important in decades.../1
...because it showed that the conservatives were gearing up to take regulatory administration out of the hands of experts and place it in the hands of the political hacks that now occupy our courts . It is an obscene power grab by this court, which has already ripped away.../2
...the authority of Congress, state legislatures, state courts etc. whenever it wants to drive policy. No precedent is safe. Stare decisis is over. This is an activist court unlike any in our country's history.

Mark Lemley broke down the court's imperial power grabs, and how..3
Read 4 tweets

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