The old rule of journalists and the motives of their sources: “All I care about ‘are the documents verifiable’ and ‘are they in their public interest.’”
Now, says Glenn Greenwald — that is, after the 2016 election, in which journalists repented of their reporting that sure seemed to have helped defeat Hillary Clinton, their dearly beloved candidate — the rules have changed.
“As the 2020 campaign began approaching,” Mr. Greenwald related on System Update (#315), “and all of these institutions and establishment sectors were desperate to ensure Trump didn’t win a second term and Biden won instead, they did something that is now screwing them. And they deserve it so much because what they did was so corrupt. What they did was they announced that from now on, ‘even if we got in our hands material we that we know is authentic … and even if they are of great public interest, even if they shed enormous light on one of the two presidential candidates … if they believe it comes from a foreign country and it’s designed to influence our election.” Greenwald says this is a brand new rule. Journalists “radically revised” the rules of journalism to protect their candidates.
But now there is a dump of emails from the Trump campaign. Oh, how they would love to release them, promote them, comment upon them, etc. But their new rule means they cannot.
That is, if they honor it in a non-partisan way.
Place your bets now. Will they repudiate their rule and go back to doing journalism (and also helping their party), or will they stick to their new rule which usually (but not in this case) helps their candidates?
1 reply on “The News Media’s New Rule”
The mainstream of the media will seek to find something that allows them to rôle-play as if they are not reversing themselves. They want to be able to say “Oh, well, in that case…”.
For example, a very large number of Americans might be spammed with links to an archive of the e.mail. Or some outlet of lesser significance might break ranks and start reporting on specific content. And then the mainstream of the media will say “Oh, well, in that case…”.
But, if that something cannot be found relatively quickly, then the mainstream of the media will more baldly reverse itself, avoiding discussion of the reversal as such; and, when drawn into such discussion, insisting that the challenger is simply trying to divert attention from the content of the e.mail.
Meanwhile, we see yet another illustration of how d_mn’d stupid are the typical folk in politics. When they’re not recording everything in electronic media, they’re confessing to some agent of James O’Keef. Bless their hearts!