1. With even Trump's State Dep saying the Clinton email "scandal" was a lot of smoke about nothing, let's go back to my 2016 articles that said - after I read the rule Clinton purportedly broke - that the email story was meaningless & that journalists were doing a terrible job...
2...this is NOT about congratulating. This is about explaining why it is important to think critically, to recognize just because something is said in a headline or article doesn't mean it's right. There are weasel words used, there are "rules" cited that no journalist reads...
3...I got the bejeezus kicked out of me for these articles - just like I did for my Russia articles - and all of them have since proved to be exactly right. And with the email stories, it wasn't because I had some secret source. It was because I read the public documents...
4...so, let's begin. This article notes the Times cited a "rule" Clinton purportedly broke and gives the citation of the law. But apparently, *even though they cited it* none of them read the law because it said the exact opposite of what they claimed.... newsweek.com/hillary-clinto…
5...I'm sorry, I just noticed. That article wasn't from 2016. My articles were from *2015* long before Clinton was the candidate. I wrote it because the recklessness of the journalism just p*ssed me off....
6... a few months later, the Times ran a story about a criminal referral and, using documents, cited that it had to do with mishandling of classified information. Sooooo...I read the documents. And that is not even close to what they said....newsweek.com/hillary-clinto…
7...finally, early 2016. At that point, I knew that Colin Powell and the staff of Condoleezza Rice had done the same thing as Clinton - only worse. So to make a point, I wrote an article explaining why Powell and the staff had done nothing wrong... newsweek.com/2016/02/19/col…
8...next in 2016, my favorite. A State Department report - the first one - is issued the day before this article, and all reporters huff again citing a couple of phrases out of context in the 79 page report. I, again, read the damn thing & was shocked...
newsweek.com/hillary-clinto…
newsweek.com/hillary-clinto…
9...it said virtually nothing that other news articles were claiming. In fact, it confirmed there WAS no Clinton email scandal. And a lot of that, again, had to do with the rules that were in place while she was Secretary of State.
Why did it seem I was the *only* reporter...
Why did it seem I was the *only* reporter...
10...who was reading this stuff? I didn't care about Clinton - that wasn't my job. I *do* care, deeply, about accurate reporting, about reporters not cutting corners or shaping narratives in the breathless pursuit of Pulitzers (and trust me, I know for a fact this happens)..
11...the bottom line: "Scandals" in the news are simple. They take a couple of points, add them up, ignore the complex stuff and scream "SCANDAL!" But as I have shown repeatedly with the Biden "scandal" - when you dig into details, there is nothing there.....
12...so please, when you hear "scandal!" online (promoted by Russians and partisans) or even read them in the newspaper, know this: If there is breathless pursuit by every reporter, relying on this information almost certainly provided by partisans in Congress, be suspicious....
13...if someone comes in *actually citing the rules* when someone is accused of rule breaking, and the rules dont back up the claim, pay attention. When someone comes in *actually citing details of a report* and it doesn't match what other articles are saying that cite a phrase..
14...recognize this: There are no Pulitzers for saying "there is nothing to this." No one wins an award for countering the widely-accepted common belief. No one is celebrated for saying, "actually, the rules say opposite." And there are people in my profession who keep their...
15...eyes on the journalism prize, and so start to cut corners and ignore things that run counter to the position they have taken in article after article. No one likes to say "I was wrong" particularly when fame, professional accolades, are shared-certainty are at risk.
