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UPDATE: I go back and forth on this title as maybe it wasn’t such a regression but business as usual?

We all know how bad the 2016 coverage was where the fact that the Trump campaign was under investigation for collusion with Russian interference was totally obscured in favor of the media’s obsession over Clinton’s damn emails.

This was similar to the media in 1972 where prior to the election no one other than Woodward and Bernstein took Watergate remotely seriously. However, once the election was over and Nixon won in a landslide the media finally decided to do more about Watergate than handwave it away. Then like in 2016 the NY Times-the allegedly liberal Grey Lady-was the worst offender. In 1972 WaPo did have W&B. In 2016 the NYTimes was again the worst offender. Who can forget the coverage the day of the Comey letter?

Then a couple days after the NYT had a story with rogue anti Clinton FBI agents saying the Russia investigation was a nothingburger.

FN: OTOH to be fair to Baquet he has also proved utterly unwilling to engage in the slightest bit of what he and his fellow MSMers demand of Clinton-introspection post the  Times’ 2016 debacle.

So not only did the Times carpetbomb us with the Emailgate obsession but they dismissed Russiagate. WaPo-though hardly innocent, after all Chris Cillizza worked there at the time-did warn about the possibility of a ‘minor email scandal’ electing a dangerous racist demagogue. They were right and prescient. But this was in September, 2016 and the cows had long left the barn by then. Had it come out in September, 2015 it might have done some real good.

Since the election the media has done some very good work in terms of investigative journalism on Russia, on Trump-certainly the recent piece about Trump being a trust fund baby is a sterling example of such excellent journalism we’ve seen over the last two years.

Still it was kind of obvious that he was a trust fund baby even before we got evidence that he is.

This goes to a kind of deep philosophical question of mine: do we have to always wait for evidence or can we use our ‘intuition’ as well?

And our media is often tardy in bringing us clear unambiguous evidence. If Trump says he’s a wholly self made man do we have to believe him until we have clear empirical evidence that he’s not? That would make us vulnerable to confidence men-like Trump-the world over.

FN: To be sure, again there’s value in investigative journalism and Ken Dilanian isn’t wrong-you do need to substantiate intuition but on the other hand MSM journalists give short thrift to intuition-without which you couldn’t investigate anything at all.

In a fascinating interview Michael Wolff had with Baquet’s NYT after the publishing of his sequel book Siege Wolff discussed this exact point regarding the MSM”s style of journalism-what Jay Rosen dubs the View From Nowhere style of journalism. Wolff argues that the beauty of being an independent journalist like him is you don’t have to negotiate against yourself regarding what you actually know like  the MSMers do.

To be clear this NYT deep dive into Trump’s taxes and finances was very important and incisive-and the journalists who worked on it deserve all the kudos in the world. And Dilanian’s point isn’t wrong-even if you do know something uncovering corroborating evidence is valuable.

Honestly the bigger criticism of the MSM during the Trump era is that even though have done a lot of great investigative work they have largely failed to contextualize it-there were 200 great scoops about Trump and Russian interference but at the end of it each story tended to stand alone. And now the Beltway has largely put all its great work on the shelf declaring ‘Mueller is over. We have fatigue with Mueller. Time to pretend this is a normal ‘President’ with a normal reelection coming up in 2020.

One reaction to Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter-that to this day the MSM narrative has not eschewed-was We understand you’re disappointed Democrats but this is reason to celebrate the President didn’t conspire with Russia. 

This was actually wrong on the facts-there is plenty of evidence of Trump conspiring with Russia-the latest bombshell reporting revealing Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine to investigate Biden’s son confirms that Trump is continuing to carry Putin’s water-after all he just recently called for Russia’s readmittance to the G7; it was expelled for its aggression against Ukraine-and Trump wrongly withheld aid to Ukraine Congress had already approved unless they investigated Biden. All this once again underscores Trump is an ongoing national security threat. 

But to claim this is something to be happy about was very telling-the MSM was saying essentially Wah we don’t want to believe our ‘President’ conspired with Russia so we’re going to fame our narrative accordingly. 

So the MSM has basically undermined all its own great investigating into Trump-Russia by adopting Barr’s fake letter about no collusion no obstruction total exoneration. 

They’ve falsely told the public it’s all over and there’s nothing to see here-at least nothing important. The essential narrative has never changed since Coverup AG Barr’s fake letter even if the Coverup General himself has been roundly criticized and discredited While he’s not widely respected his false claims continue to inform the MSM narrative.

Indeed the night of the fake exoneration this was the narrative you heard from the MSMers: this is it. It’s over. Yes new details will emerge and broaden the picture but the basic narrative won’t change. So the Beltway largely undermined its own reporting-as none of it’s supposed to matter now. Supposedly everything is settled-though it hasn’t been-the real question now being if Congress is going to do anything about  it or not.

End of FN.

In any case, after the election-with that woman safely defeated-the media has done excellent work on Russia-though far less so on Emailgate-no doubt as it reminds them of their own shoddy coverage.

FN: Indeed, as noted in Chapter A there was only one small point in time where some very interesting reporting was done on Comeygate-there were three major pieces by the Times, VanityFair, and-find outlet Mike-in early May.

Again Nance’s Law-coincidences take a lot of planning. What planning got us the coincidence that all the major Comeygate reporting came out just before Trump fired Comey? It’s almost like it was meant to set the stage for justifying his firing…

 

They’ve even figured out that sometimes you have to call Trump and his hacks liars-you can’t always give him the benefit of the doubt or he can roil you. No doubt a great many Pulitzers have been won over the last two years.

FN: This lesson has been uneven-some outlets have learned this, others, notably the Times remain very squeamish.

But a very strange thing has happened-the Kavanaugh nomination fight. Almost overnight I detected something different than the top of the line investigative journalism we’ve come to know and love over the last two years. He said she said. That phrase says it all. This is how the media has treated the allegations by Christine Ford-and Debbie Ramirez, not to speak of Julie Swentick who has frankly been slandered many times in the way the media has failed to cover her. We keep hearing that she has no corroborating evidence when the truth is quite different.

The GOP did everything they could to make this a battle of ‘he said she said’ and the MSM has fallen into this trap, hook, line, and sinker. What he said-she said means is that it’s just two people asserting things and we have no independent way of verifying them so we can believe what we choose to believe or not believe-again in a post fact world of alternative facts. 

So GOP partisans will believe what they want to believe, Dem partisans will believe what they want to believe and everyone is equally justified in believing what they believe; ironic the way Kellyann Conway was skewered on alternative facts as the MSM largely agrees-there are no facts just opinions.

This benefits the GOP doubly in this context as it is pathologically dishonest-but this is not a problem as the media refuses to admit there is any lying, just differences of opinion-and it currently has the majority. So if there is no truth it all comes down to partisan power and there’s no basis to judge decisions beyond the political horse race lens.

Democrats for partisan reasons choose to believe Dr. Ford. Republicans for their own partisan reasons choose to believe Brett Kavanaugh-though they try to have it both ways in claiming they also believe Christine Ford which is literally impossible-and everyone is free to believe whichever partisan ‘story’-a la Richard Rorty-they’d prefer.

He said-she said means we’re operating in a frame of pure moral relativism where there simply is no truth. We’re in Kellyann Conway’s world of alternative facts. You believe 2+2=4? Well good for you but I happen to believe it equals 5 and my opinion is worth just as much as yours.

Certainly the very poorly designed Senate Judiciary hearings-though this was poorly designed by design-pushed you into the he said-she said frame. Dr. Ford testified and then Kavanaugh did. None of the many other witnesses-Mark Judge who she asserts was there with them when the allegations took place-not other friends add classmates of each of them, many who could corroborate many of her claims-though the GOP kept claiming otherwise-not Dr. Ford’s husband, or her therapist both of who she told of this alleged attempted rape long before Kavanaugh was nominated.

What the GOP keeps claiming is that the FBI investigation offers no corroboration of her allegations. But if this is so you wonder why they won’t allow us to look at the report. The media for its part has been badly fooled by this ‘no corroboration’ canard.

Part of it is no doubt simple ignorance-these are journalists not lawyers. They are journalists and don’t understand corroboration in a legal rather than a journalistic sense. In the Russia investigation for a long time they were skeptical that there was any evidence because they  don’t understand that there are other kinds of evidence besides direct evidence-as Seth Abramson points out, the majority of evidence is circumstancial. Regarding Russiagate, there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence which absolutely is admissible in court. While no piece of circumstantial evidence is normally dispositive of guilt by itself,  many such pieces like in Russiagate are, threaded together, very powerful evidence.

A similar thing is happening with the media with Kavanaugh where the GOP has been using a bastardized definition of ‘corroboration’ that means the only way to corroborate her story is an eyewitness to the crime. Of course, if this were true than it’d be exceedingly difficult to convict many rapists as most rapes don’t have witnesses.

So the large number of Kavanaugh’s classmates who can attest that he was a heavy drinker is probative of her testimony-as she described him as blackout drunk. But much of the media has bought the GOP canard that Kavanaugh’s drinking is irrelevant. Indeed, we’re now hearing that the FBI was ordered not to attempt to corroborate wether or not Kavanaugh was a blackout drunk even though it’s relevant both to his honesty and to corroborating the underlying crime.

Another canard the media has failed to push back on is the due process canard. But this has nothing to do with due process as he’s applying to the highest Court on the land not facing prison like the Parkland Five who Trump wanted to be executed and refused to relent on even after-ahem, evidence corroborated they were innocent.

As his employer, we the People and the People’s Senate have the right to reject Kavanaugh’s job application for any or no reason. Yet the GOP has created a canard that unless he can be proven to be a sexual assaulter beyond a reasonable doubt he’s simply owed a place on the Supreme Court. Indeed you often hear that if Democrats have any other reasons for why he shouldn’t be on the Court other than the sexual assault allegations-in addition to-this is somehow cheating,  a violation of due process. This is how gentle Kavanaugh’s standard is-unless he can be proven to be a sexual assaulter beyond a reasonable doubt you have to confirm him or his due process is violated.

Then there is the very rich faux outrage of Mitch McConnell #MoscowMitch

FN: The MoscowMitch moniker emerged recently-long after the Kavanaugh fiasco. You-as usual-had purity pony liberals who declared we can’t sink to their level in giving McConnell a nickname-others this was a return to McCarthyism-as if that’s the problem of 2019. But McConnell recently relented on putting election security legislation on the floor and the catalyst was clearly his discomfort with # MoscowMitch. In other words, this was something liberals have done right-proving Chris Rock’s premise that you have to know how to fight a bully.

End FN

and friends who are griping about an unfair process. Poor Kavanaugh has been treated so unfairly! That he should actually face a real vetting process before being elevated to life time on the Supreme Court is treated like some great injustice. Of course, post Merrick Garland, McConnell and friends have forfeited the right to ever be indignant about process again. Yet the media took the faux indignation of McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Grassley, Orrin Hatch and friends perfectly seriously and without irony. Particularly regarding the heavy weather the GOP made over the timing of the release of information of Dr. Ford’s charges. This conveniently ignores the bombshell that Kavanaugh actually was aware of Debbie Ramirez’s charges against him prior to being nominated in July.

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/10/02/game-changer-kavanaugh-knew-about-debbie-ramirezs-allegations-before-trump-nominated-him/

Yet this story while known by the media has gotten very limited play. The startling implications of it haven’t been sussed out-for starters as Kav knew it’s highly unlikely Trump and the GOP didn’t know. Besides that it makes them look like total hypocrites for belaboring the outrage over why Dr. Ford’s allegations weren’t made public for two months. In truth it would have made no difference-what the GOP is really upset about is that they went public and complicated Kavanaugh’s nomination.

The big fail for the media today was that they went back to he said she said journalism-while throughout much of the Trump ‘Presidency’ they’ve treated truth as an actual thing that is discoverable-they rightly have treated assertions by Trump and his Russia House with a good deal of skepticism. But today it was back to horse race politics and total nihilism.

‘Democrats say X, Republicans say Y, gee I wonder what the voters will say?’ My point is not that they should take the Democrats side, but what journalism means is to actually investigate if X or Y-or maybe none of the above-is true. But mostly the coverage amounted to ‘Republicans are confident that they can plow Kavanaugh through’ and that the polls allegedly show that the Kavanaugh is a boon to GOP Senate candidates.

Katy Tur-who’s one of the best MSM reporters out there-seems to have caught the he said she said fever. She kept saying ‘But whatever the morality of it, what’s the politics, will this help the Republicans keep the Senate? Are they confident they can get Kavanaugh through?’

The best moment on her show today-Thursday, September, 4-was when news that Heidi Heitkamp announced she’s a no. 

This seemed to stun Tur and her colleagues-after all her numbers are tanking and Kavanaugh is very popular in North Dakota a state Trump won by a huge margin. Yet she was committing political suicide. Maybe she just wanted to do the right thing, maybe unlike Tur and friends she didn’t want to ignore the morality of it.

Even better was when her brother-a talk radio host-came on and explained that with due respect to Tur and her colleagues he doesn’t put much stock in the polls-pointing out she was down by 10 last election was well.

Tur was taken aback-why would someone consider something other than polls?

UPDATE: Heitkamp did get creamed though she did raise a lot of money after her no. Still at least she can look at herself in the mirror. And I still feel that looking at this through the narrow horse race lens was a very bad look for the media. When they with next breath demand Bill Clinton somehow retroactively resign the fact that they could care less about sexual assault they just hate the Clintons couldn’t be clearer.

UPDATE 2.0: Contrast this empty demand for Clinton’s retroactive resignation with the fact that the MSM’s silence has been deafening on Trump-no major news outlet has demanded he resign even with news of his attempt to extort Ukraine to investigate Biden’s son.

As to what’s happening to the media, that’s an interesting question. You hear different theories. Nicole Wallace, the former Bushie who has been about as Never Trumper as they come has suddenly gone from moral outrage to ‘he said she said’ journalism during the Kavanaugh fight. What happened? It turns out she knows Kavanaugh and his family. Is her social relationships  effecting her coverage? What’s interesting is how many of the Never Trumper recovering GOPers seem to be making different noises now in the Kavanaugh fight.

Jeff Flake probably did a pretty good job of expressing how they feel when he argued that he may be critical of Trump but he is a conservative. Yes but Flake has been regaling us for two years with tales about how unfit Trump is for office, how he corrupts our public debate, endangers our rule of law and standing in the world. And yet if the choice is either protecting our rule of law and standing in the world and a conservative Supreme Court Flake goes with the conservative Supreme Court. So clearly he doesn’t think Trump the big threat he claims. Even if Trump chose Kavanaugh to protect him from Russia.

Most Never Trump conservatives choose conservatism over opposition to Trump in a pinch it seems.

This is how Republicans got to Trump in the first place If Trump’s racialist authoritarianism is the only way to achieve conservatism’s ideological wins then they’ll choose Trump no matter how dangerous they claim to believe he is. Indeed, this is the clear bargain in #DeepStateThroat’s NYT piece. Despite what hacks like Kellyann Conway tried to suggest, the author was clearly a Never Trump Republican who saw Trump as an existential threat but still liked the tax cuts, the allegedly phenomenal GDP growth-though in truth  it’s about the same as the Obama economy- some deregulation, etc

The Flake position is Trump is a terrible threat but not so terrible that you should in any way compromise on your conservative ideological goals to stop him. In fact, you could take a completely coherent position on Kavanaugh as a principled conservative who while you agree with him on most issues-Roe, etc-still remain very concerned over his view that Trump is above the law.

Flake has time and again stated that Trump must not obstruct the Mueller investigation. Yet he ended up perfectly willing to vote for Trump’s SJC nominee clearly chosen to protect him from the Mueller investigation. Yet Never Trump conservatives have mostly been-at best muted-if not downright defending Kavanaugh rather than recognizing him for what he is-a clear threat to the Mueller probe.

A Vox piece does a good job of demonstrating how #NeverTrump in many cases is really #ActuallyTrump. 

The exceptions are the true recovering Republicans like Frum, Max Boot, and Jennifer Rubin. But many are acting as if the Democrats have somehow been too vociferous in their criticism of Kavanaugh forcing them somehow to have to defend him. That outrageous speech of Kav at last week’s hearing was so bad he had to offer up a faux mea culpa in the WSJ last night.

But it was very effective in touching a certain spot in the conservative Republican brain that led to rabid agreement. ‘Anger over President Trump, revenge on behalf of the Clintons.’ 

Even anti Trump conservatives found this guttural scream seductive. Modern conservative Republicanism is at bottom about negative partisanship-it’s about how much we all hate the Democrats. It’s about the fact that given a choice between a child molester or attempted raper, or a colluder with Russia and a Democrat we’ll take door number one every time.

Speaking of negative partisanship, there’s Morning Joe who’s been trying to pass for an almost early morning cable style salon for the #Resistance. Joe of course came up in the same rabid movement to impeach Bill Clinton for any pretext as Kavanuagh and Lindsay Graham did and his early morning three hour show-for some reason the allegedly liberal MSNBC chooses him to kickoff the first three hours of the new day-did a great deal to give us ‘President Trump’ through his absurd obsession with Emailgate during the election. But now he’s allegedly anti Trump.

But his coverage has been notably pro Kavanaugh.

Why the sudden switch? Partly because Kavanaugh has this impact on many allegedly Never Trump recovering Republicans-even if they claim Trump is a threat they refuse to admit that this makes Kavanaugh himself a huge threat-first and foremost to the Russia investigation.

In addition there’s apparently a major pro Kavanaugh group advertising on Morning Joe-so maybe that explains part of his switch. Yet it’s not just individual reporters, or #NeverTrumpers it’s the media in general. They’ve done a terrible job on this, especially once the subject became sexual assault.

While the media has done a lot of great work over the last two years their retreat to ‘he said she said’ stenography has been very disappointing and inopportune. As for #MeToo there is still clearly a lot of work to do as we have not come nearly as far in the 27 years post Anita Hill as we make like to believe.

UPDATE: No matter how strong the #MeToo movement may be it’s still not strong enough to transcend partisanship-it wasn’t in 1991 regarding Anita Hill and not today.

 

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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