RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
April 26 to May 2 The New York Times should revive its tradition of extensive Page 1 mea culpas to correct its misleading Trump-Russia coverage and its much-criticized "1619 Project," argues Tom Kuntz, the editor of RealClearInvestigations. But he says the "paper of record" is unlikely to do so for reasons that reflect deeper problems in journalism today. Kuntz, who worked at the Times as an editor for nearly three decades, writes that the "1619 Project" - touted to win a Pulitzer Prize next Monday, May 4 - is an exercise in "woke" advocacy journalism and thus of a piece with the Times's oppositional coverage of Donald Trump, the anti-woke president. His commentary draws on a wide variety of sources to focus on the Times's deeply flawed Trump-Russia coverage, for which it shared a Pulitzer with the Washington Post in 2018. He writes: - In the face of the Mueller Report's finding last year of no Trump-Russia collusion, the Times has improperly withheld from its readers a detailed explanation of its relationship with key sources of its misleading coverage - especially Fusion GPS, producer of the discredited Steele dossier.
- It does so even as the co-founders of Fusion GPS, in their recent book, go into detail about their access to top Times journalists, including Executive Editor Dean Baquet -- as early as the Democratic convention in July 2016.
- The Times has neither reported nor disputed any of the Fusion authors' claims of influence over the Times -- even as it devoted positive but misleadingly incomplete coverage to the book.
- Nor have other mainstream news organizations detailed their relationship with Fusion and partisan intelligence sources.
- The Fusion co-founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, write that in December 2016, Simpson told top Times national-security reporters "you fucking blew it" with an October 2016 article downplaying Trump's Russia ties -- just before handing over a redacted copy of dossier, and "collusion" ramped up to a media fever pitch.
- The Times hasn't explained who else lied to it -- including those with the influential Clinton law firm Perkins Coie whom Times journalists themselves have attacked on Twitter for deception.
- And journalists once employed by BuzzFeed and Politico with key insights into the Trump-Russia affair are now working for the Times, allowing the paper to enlist them in a more honest accounting - or not - of the dossier; the smearing of Carter Page; and the Ukrainian and Democratic election-meddling behind Trump's impeachment.
Kuntz argues that there are no longer any ethical considerations to prevent the Times from ditching its confidentiality agreement with Fusion: Simpson and Fritsch have gone public and, more important, they used the Times to advance a lie of historic proportions. But, Kuntz writes, the paper is unlikely to correct its Trump-Russia coverage for the same reason it has stood by its 1619 Project despite demands for corrections by leading historians: The two sets of flawed articles reflect the powerful cultural forces embraced by the Times and its liberal, affluent reader base that make journalism a tool for advancing political goals, be it identity politics - "1619" - or opposition to a President who is the antithesis of "wokeness." More Trump-Russia News Explosive Revelations in the Flynn Case
National Review
FBI agents planning an ambush interview with Trump's first National Security Adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, had a question:"What is our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"That damning quote is included in a new document the government was forced to turn over to Flynn's defense. Andrew McCarthy of the National Review argues the new document "proves Mr. Flynn's allegations of having been deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents. … [it] defeats any argument that the interview of Mr. Flynn on January 24, 2017, was material to any ‘investigation.' " In a separate article,John Solomon reportsthat the FBI was planning to drop its Flynn probe in early January, before that interview, "but then the lead agent in the larger Russia case, Peter Strzok, intervened to stop the case from being closed and pivoted the discussion toward seeking an interview with Flynn, FBI text messages show. In the text messages to his team, Strzok specifically cited ‘the 7th floor' of FBI headquarters, where then-Director James Comey" and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCane [sic] worked, as the reason he intervened." Meanwhile,Aaron Blake of the Washington Postis still pretending that the FBI had a legitimate reason for interviewing Flynn because Trump's incoming national security adviser might have violated the 1799 Logan Act "which prohibits private citizens from conducting diplomacy on behalf of the United States." Two people have been indicted under the Act, the last in 1852. In her Wall Street Journal column,Kimberley Strassel connects this new evidenceto a larger pattern of abuse at the FBI. One lingering question: When will former FBI Director James Comey issue a tweet claiming this latest evidence of malfeasance vindicates him? Forget "Where the Boys Are." In this extended spring break brought on by COVID-19, it's a "paper chase" in the form of tens of millions of dollars in aid going to hundreds of schools under double-secret probation for past chicanery. Steve Miller has the story for RealClearInvestigations: - Hundreds of schools on a federal watch list for financial or other problems got tens of millions of dollars as part of a $2.2 trillion federal coronavirus relief package.
- An RCI review found that 87% of the 447 troubled universities, for-profit colleges, and other institutions got coronavirus aid.
- Money went to all eight universities in last year's admissions scandals - in which actors including Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman and other wealthy parents were accused of bribery and fraud to get their kids into preferred schools.
- The revelations seem certain to add to growing concerns about how trillions of dollars are being spent by the federal government to fight the epidemic.
- Quote: "The money is going out so quickly it's going to reach the good, the bad and the ugly."
More Coronavirus Investigations U.S. Intel Confirms It's Probing if Virus Traces to Wuhan Lab
Wall Street Journal
It's possible experts might end up splitting the difference on the origin of COVID-19: The virus may not be manmade, but it may have originated in a Chinese government lab rather than a public "wet" market. That's the gist of this article, which reports that 1) the U.S. intelligence community publicly confirmed that it is trying to determine whether the coronavirus that has caused a global pandemic may have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, the city where the epidemic began and 2) the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that it concurs with a wide scientific consensus that "the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified." Many scientific experts who have studied the virus say it is highly unlikely that it escaped from the Wuhan lab and that the pandemic almost certainly began as a result of humans being infected from animals. Some biosafety experts, however, have questioned the Wuhan lab's safety procedures and have said it is possible that scientists there were studying the virus and it escaped. Why Virus Toll's Hard to Track: 1 in 3 Death Certificates Wrong
USA Today
Up to 1 in 3 death certificates nationwide were wrong before COVID-19, a problem that has taken on new significance now that the economy hinges on virus-related data. Experts said the inaccuracies are part and parcel of a patchwork, state-by-state system of medical examiners, coroners and doctors who have disparate medical backgrounds, and in some cases none at all. To some extent the government has admitted defeat: The National Center for Health Statistics has instructed those filling out death certificates to record COVID-19 as the probable cause if testing isn't possible and if the medical records or circumstances support that. Large, Troubled Firms Got Small-Business Bailout Bucks
New York Times
A panicked government decides to spend trillions of dollars in just a few weeks. What could go wrong? Maybe college aid (above)? Or how about the Paycheck Protection Program? It was supposed to provide low-interest loans and even free money to help prevent small companies from capsizing, but it's riddled with problems. This article reports that countless small businesses were shut out of the program even as a number of large companies received millions of dollars in aid. Instead of having the Small Business Administration decide which companies get funding, the process was essentially outsourced to banks. The banks collect fees for each loan they make but don't have to monitor whether the recipients use the money appropriately. Is anyone shocked, shocked? New York Paid $69M for Bogus Ventilators
BuzzFeed
This may or may not be the latest chapter in the Covid-19 face-offs between New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Trump administration. The dispute involves New York's March 30 decision to pay Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley, $69.1 million for 1,450 ventilators. At an astonishing $47,656 per ventilator, that was at least triple the standard retail price of high-end models. Not a single ventilator ever arrived and the state is trying to claw back the money. Now New York is trying to blame the Trump administration for the problem. The article reports that "a state official, speaking on background because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the terms of the deal, said New York entered into the contract with Oren-Pines at the direct recommendation of the White House coronavirus task force." The Task force, however, says it "was never informed of this contract and was not involved in it at all." The article reports that there is no evidence that Oren-Pines received a federal contract. Stay tuned. Also Coronavirus-Related Virus Peril Frees Hundreds of Thousands of Prisoners Globally, NYT
Secret Group of Scientists, Billionaires Pushing COVID-19 Plan, WSJ
The Virus Hunters Searching Bat Caves for the Next Pandemic, CNN
6 Virus Symptoms Showing Up in Patients Over and Over, Washington Post
How Sweden Faced the Virus Without a Lockdown, NYT Other Noteworthy Articles and Series More Support for Joe Biden's Accuser
Business Insider
The effort by the Democratic party and the mainstream media to dismiss allegations that Joe Biden sexually assaulted Senate staffer Tara Reade in 1993 crumbled this week as two more women emerged who may add more credibility to the allegation. Business Insider reporter Rich McHugh, an investigative journalist who served as a producer on Ronan Farrow's Harvey Weinstein reporting at NBC News, reports that one of the women -- a former neighbor of Reade, Lynda LaCasse, a Biden supporter -- says Reade told her about the alleged assault in detail in 1995 or 1996: "This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it." The women have come forward just days after video emerged of a woman that Reade says is her mother calling into CNN's Larry King Live in 1993 to talk about her daughter's "problems" with a prominent senator. None of these sources claim to have witnessed the assault. On Friday, Biden finally issued a statement and granted an interview in which he denied the allegation. How the Fake Beatles Conned South America
BBC
Everyone knows about the Fab Four, but what about the Fabricated Four - the American Beetles? They were faux nowhere men from Florida named Tom, Vic, Bill and Dave. In 1964, as Beatlemania swept the globe, they arranged a series of gigs in South America where millions awaited their arrival with bated breath because, well, it was something in the way their move south got lost in translation. The fans should've known better. Still, the lyin' lads not from Liverpool did their Pete Best not to spoil the party: "We wore our hair the same, we dressed the same, we wore suits. It was pretty good," Bill Ande, their lead guitarist, told BBC Culture. But when the Mendacious Moptops couldn't hide their non-talent away, it became a Tragical Misery Tour. And when they read the news, oh boy: "They have hair in their vocal cords! They sing bad, but they act worse!" went one headline. In other words, they were singing "B.S., I Love You" when what they really needed was "Help!" So the Southern Hemisphere in a sense told them get back to where they once belonged. |
