Thread by @SethAbramson

A note to aspiring journalists: never do what Haberman does here. A known liar has written a book for cash in which she gives an account of events that makes no sense in medicine, logistics or the personal history of anyone involved. Never be a mere stenographer for BS like this.

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1442849000143695883

(PS) As she does in her own writing, Haberman uses the self-aggrandizing words of a known liar—though they make not even superficial sense—as a cudgel with which to batter journalists, political analysts and Trump critics who have responsibly cast a harsh light on his presidency.

(PS2) See my thread from earlier today—written as the author of the longest account of Trump's 2019 Walter Reed trip in print—for details on just a few ways Grisham's story appears to be impossible. Then consider that Haberman won a Pulitzer for credulously repeating liars' lies.

(PS3) But I'll add a few items. Colonoscopies require many hours of preparation Trump didn't do. Colonoscopies are not given without anesthesia. Trump would not have gotten a colonoscopy while he had the symptoms of a cold or flu. Colonoscopies are not done on an emergency basis.

(PS4) Colonoscopies aren't done when the hospital in question doesn't know a patient is coming in. The Secret Service doesn't fail to secure a safe path to the hospital for a procedure it knows about in advance. Trump left for the hospital disheveled and with stacks of paperwork.

(PS5) The White House repeatedly lied and said Trump was undergoing part of a routine physical—when we now know the trip was not part of any physical. Contemporaneous accounts reveal that Melania had no idea what was going on; there'd be no reason to keep a colonoscopy from her.

(PS6) Before Trump left for the hospital, Pence was made aware he might need to temporarily take over the duties of the POTUS. In Grisham's account, that wasn't discussed and would never have been necessary because Trump planned all along to have a colonoscopy without anesthesia.

(PS7) I'm not saying Grisham wasn't told it was a colonoscopy; perhaps she was. I'm saying that what Haberman is now declaring isn't just that Grisham said what she said but that what Grisham said is in fact accurate. Any journalist would look at the facts and cast doubt on that.

(PS8) But because Haberman is profoundly irresponsible and untrustworthy, she's going farther than this and using Grisham's superficially implausible story to chastise other journalists who wrote responsibly and at length about the ongoing mystery of Trump's 2019 hospital visit.

(PS9) There's even a chance it was a colonoscopy. But no journalist would take Grisham's word for this in a book that's self-aggrandizing, an attempt at self-rehabilitation, written for a large sum of money, and remains un-cross-examined even as it flies in the face of the facts.

(PS10) Keep in mind this is a book whose author claims that she became the first White House press secretary in American history never to do even a single press briefing solely to protect the American people from Donald Trump's lies. This is the person Haberman trusts implicitly.

(PS11) And Haberman's M.O. of trusting and acting as a stenographer for liars in order to stay on their good side and maintain access to them now has her parroting a claim that a draft dodger, germaphobe and known coward underwent a brutally invasive procedure without anesthesia.

(PS12) There are other ways to report on the things liars do than flattering their lies to maintain access to them. For instance, independent journalists, unlike Pulitzer Prize winners like Haberman, watch hours and hours of far-right media to catch liars in their contradictions.

(PS13) Increasingly, what we see corporate media doing is having its journalists justify their professional status by using their relationships to write stories—rather than the OSINT any sufficiently smart and dedicated researcher could do to get *much more reliable* information.

(PS14) If you've tracked Haberman's career—in which she consistently misstates journalistic principles when she isn't violating them—you've noticed her chief hostility is toward OSINT. The reason: it lets independent journalists eclipse her feckless, unreliable access journalism.

(PS15) So—as a longtime journalism professor—my advice to aspiring journalists is to use sources you trust and, when that's impossible, use OSINT to find instances in which untrustworthy sources have made statements against their own interest. Do *not* be a stenographer for lies.

(NOTE) Trump also tried to have the doctors at Walter Reed sign non-disclosure agreements before whatever medical treatment he was seeking; at least one refused to do so—and consequently wasn't part of the procedure. Why would a routine colonoscopy require an *extraordinary* NDA?