The media's relentless focus on Hillary Clinton's emails in 2016 not only overshadowed crucial policy debates but also inadvertently(maybe?) served Russian interests by amplifying a non-scandal. Now, as Trump faces a similar situation, the media has suddenly adopted a more cautious approach, revealing a troubling double standard that continues to favor Trump.
“The New York Times won’t discuss its decision not to print details of the hacked internal communications because the Times is apparently above it all and owes us nothing.”
Actually, they don’t owe us anything. The NYT is a for-profit company, not a national service. Its only obligation is to its shareholders. Its employees are there to help their employer maximize shareholder value and nothing else.
In 2016, as in 2020 and 2024, the company’s leadership decided that helping elect Donald is in their best interest. So, they are going to work to achieve that goal. Expecting that they will behave differently is naive and misguided. We all need to get used to the fact that there is no Fourth Estate in America. There’s the infotainment industry and that’s that.
The good news is that we don’t owe them anything; not our attention, not our clicks, not our money. Let them do their thing and ignore them. We don’t have to read what they publish.
They get to abuse the public trust because we allow them to do so. The NYT is relevant because make them relevant. You don’t see News of the World or the penny press newspapers (if there are any left) influencing public opinion because nobody cares what they have to say. We can do the same to the NYT and the rest of them. We don’t have to care. It’s not difficult.
Again, not sure how to NOT allow them (new fairness doctrine?), and it’s actually HARD for me not to care (cancelled subscription of 40 years!). I would like to think a sense of public obligation isn’t entirely monetary (especially for non-corporate citizens). Big sigh. I get your point, and the abuse is surely amenable to market forces, but even if they are immune to shame, I won’t discourage it.
It’s also purposeful! Who owns The NY Times? Wall St Journal etc? They want the Damn tax cuts for billionaires too! There IS no free press at all anymore! All owned by corporate heads with vested wealth in getting Republicans in power fewer regulations more tax cuts for the wealthy! Oligarchy reigns in America and world wide! Tax it ALL away! No one should be a billionaire! Built on the backs of working middle class people ALL of it! New class of silicon Robber Barons! Why this election is so crucial to protect democracy! Mary wonderful article! Thank you! Btw doesn’t “Uncle Trump” (so Dickensian I love it) know he won’t be going to jail? Most he ll get is ankle bracelet, lock down at Mar A Largo, restrictions on movement, 4 years of golfing secret service members at home. Security risks too great to put ANY ex President in jail!! Why doesn’t he quit he’s incompetent at ALL of it! Make health an excuse let Nikki Hayley take the race and bow out now?
The press has completely abandoned all pretense of objectivity or even attempting to educate the public on the truth of our reality. All corporate media is owned by billionaires who filter down their toxic worldviews to their subordinates through theur economic control. The beat reporters that don't write the propaganda their bosses assign them get fired and replaced with less scrupulous people who will. After decades of this there are no good reporters left at organizations like the NYT who have not compromised their ethics/values in some way to better defend capitalism to the masses. All the truly terrible reporting on Trump is hust an obvious consequence of this. Reporters have to keep pretending he is normal because their conservative bosses will fire them if they write the truth. Same reason they refuse to publish these leaks now, the rich want Trump re-elected and are putting their thumbs on the scale with the media to ensure it happens. All of these companies need to be broken up, journalism is dead in America and we need to tear it all down and start over again with only non profit news organizations whose only agenda is the greater good.
Will the MSM be so sanctimonious when a future leak is from the Harris campaign? Yeah, er, most unlikely. Because they are just dying to find a reason to tear her down.
How about executing the 'Right to Know " Rule and apply for those so-called "hacked" documents?
Donald is not as dumb as he acts. He's been putting his bully act together since early childhood according to that September 1996 article in Vanity Fair entitled "After the Gold Rush". He's manipulated his wives, his children, his staffs, personal and official, and anyone easily manipulated, such as the media. The fact of his sleeping with a book of Hitler's speeches (Ivana's wording) in a drawer of his nightstand came out in that Vanity Fair publication. That was 1996!!! Here we are, 28 years later and the building of the Fourth Reich is nearly complete.
Forget the movie canibal. Donald will do anything to distract us from the truth.
That Donald and Vladimir had a private meeting in their early love relationship should never have been allowed to happen. America has a right to know and we still have a right to know what those two were planning that we never demanded to know. The beginning of Project 2025 anybody?
To this day, from the time he was bullying your father, Mary, to his irresponsibility in handling his marriages because his explosive ego wouldn't let his dick go soft.
On rape trials he's guilty of child rape (case dropped for reason of death threats), a Hollywood hooker (paid to keep silent), a woman in a department store dressing room ("I've never seen that woman. She's not my type), really, Donald? Let's go back to your comment about grabbing pussies that came out in a scandal sheet.
I'll wrap his inability to stop fucking the willing or unwilling to mention his months long affair with Miss Maples that led to Ivana's divorcing him and his marriage to Ms. Marla.
Scandal is his hiding place. It's so frequent the press can't or won't keep up with it.
He's still doing it this very minute. The lies that he knows are lies that he counts on MAGAs to believe just to create public turmoil.
We've ignored all of it long enough to be on the brink of losing our Democracy. Now the hint that he'll run away to Venezuela where we won't be able to have him deported to pay for every last one of his sins against America and the world.
He's not afraid. He's still manipulating. If he leaves and America explodes he'll blame it on the Harris/Walz team because..."I was away from the country."
I’ve said almost my entire adult life that journalists need to be required to have licenses by a licensing board just like other professions that we entrust our lives to like doctors, nurses, lawyers, etc. Then the public can check the credentials of the journalist and know that peer journalists are monitoring the quality of their work and expect them to adhere to the truth.
Anyone remember Judith Miller being held accountable just 2 short decades ago???
I would go further and suggest Donald was the perfect manipulable mob boss by those with equally brutal intentions but way smarter like Steve Bannon and Elon Musk and Leonard Leo and etc. etc.
Stephen Colbert: Working for Trump was like working for a “mob boss" so were you surprised that you got whacked? Because that’s what they do.
James: Comey: Actually was surprised that would be a crazy thing to do. Why would you fire the FBI director who’s leading the Russia investigation?
Colbert: Because you’re leading the Russia investigation.
Comey: It makes me sick to my stomach to think we might have had an impact, I hope and pray we didn’t. But I hope this doesn’t sound strange, it wouldn’t change the decision.
Cobert: You get back in the time machine, go back another 70 years, and kill baby Hitler. But then you come back to October and you don’t release the emails.
-------------------
I'm feeling sick now, and not a little. These double standards are killing our country.
Exactly. I took Radio Journalism in high school during the early 1960s. The 5 Ws were the name of the game: Who, What, When, Where and Why. When that was settled it was How.
IMHO the mainstream corporate media hasn't learned anything. They just don't want to do anything that might make the "close race" narrative not keep going.
I remember my Ma telling me when I was a child in the 1950s that the news media and their way of manipulating the political races were the ones deciding who wins. She knew what she was talking about even back then.
Better than even money that the emails are pretty damning, which is why they won't publish because that would blow up *any* chance of a horserace election.
Yes, I would ask them why during Bush/Cheney's regime it was OK for them to erase (lose) 22 MILLION emails from 2003-2005 about his wars. Obama didn't bother looking into it either. Everything they make an issue about has already been done X 1000 by them & their fascist cabal. For the media to pretend this is "conspiracy theory" is just laziness, unprofessional, & malpractice in journalism. They also don't care to discuss where the $3Trillion went during Bush/Cheney's time. They don't inquire about it. They don't inquire about Jarod Kushner & Trump trying to let Covid go untreated in Blue states like NY & CA because ...they didn't vote for him so who cares. They don't investigate or inquire about Jarod taking $2Billion dollars from the Saudis after delivering Khasshogi to the Prince who murdered him. They don't connect the dots....they don't look into the fact that Khasshogi was writing about the corruption of the Saudis & the Trump campaign. Kushner was taking classified information & turning it over to the Prince, who was using it to hunt down, arrest, & murder his opponents in Saudi Arabia. MBS had a financial relationship with Trump & AMI! I hear nothing from the press on this.
It’s all so very disheartening and sad. Will the subterfuge and evil ever relent? Will the perpetrators of these ongoing atrocities ever be prosecuted? Will we ever be allowed to see the truth?
We will get the truth no matter what, because there are always courageous journalists not married to MSM, that will get the story. The CIA records have the truth of what they've done. WE must demand access & we must shutter the agency. We have 13 or so other intel agencies, we don't need the bad karma of CIA. The CIA drew first blood to our democracy & murder of JFK. They have been with the GOP since they began & that's the other thing they don't want people to know. That's the reason why the media won't report or write about it...they're scared. It's how Bush got installed (his Dad was CIA since 1950s), they've never been for U.S. democracy. NSA & other intel agencies must be investigated to ensure they're not corrupt, along with FBI.
I remember a while back when CNN stopped researching before broadcasting. The news was a matter of guessing after that. It didn't take long until the rest of them followed suit.
Do you remember when that was? I think I stopped watching CNN after they ousted it’s creator Ted Turner III. It’s been crap ever since. Now I wonder which right wing cretins were involved with it & was Murdoch & Ailes a part of that…. I used to watch CBS, NBC until Msnbc I think. The lying didn’t really start until after 1996 with Fox.
I agree with you, Mary.
"It’s just remarkable that when the corporate media finally learns a lesson, it still benefits Donald Trump."
It confounds me that they do not understand how dangerous Donald's 2nd term would be.
Thank you. 💙
They do understand. Which could explain their decision to withhold.
They understand, Caroline. They want IN on it.
For them as well as the rest of us.
Not even Double Standards -- simply No Standards.
The media's relentless focus on Hillary Clinton's emails in 2016 not only overshadowed crucial policy debates but also inadvertently(maybe?) served Russian interests by amplifying a non-scandal. Now, as Trump faces a similar situation, the media has suddenly adopted a more cautious approach, revealing a troubling double standard that continues to favor Trump.
“The New York Times won’t discuss its decision not to print details of the hacked internal communications because the Times is apparently above it all and owes us nothing.”
Actually, they don’t owe us anything. The NYT is a for-profit company, not a national service. Its only obligation is to its shareholders. Its employees are there to help their employer maximize shareholder value and nothing else.
In 2016, as in 2020 and 2024, the company’s leadership decided that helping elect Donald is in their best interest. So, they are going to work to achieve that goal. Expecting that they will behave differently is naive and misguided. We all need to get used to the fact that there is no Fourth Estate in America. There’s the infotainment industry and that’s that.
The good news is that we don’t owe them anything; not our attention, not our clicks, not our money. Let them do their thing and ignore them. We don’t have to read what they publish.
Not sure abusing the public trust is entirely a matter of debt, Walter.
They get to abuse the public trust because we allow them to do so. The NYT is relevant because make them relevant. You don’t see News of the World or the penny press newspapers (if there are any left) influencing public opinion because nobody cares what they have to say. We can do the same to the NYT and the rest of them. We don’t have to care. It’s not difficult.
Again, not sure how to NOT allow them (new fairness doctrine?), and it’s actually HARD for me not to care (cancelled subscription of 40 years!). I would like to think a sense of public obligation isn’t entirely monetary (especially for non-corporate citizens). Big sigh. I get your point, and the abuse is surely amenable to market forces, but even if they are immune to shame, I won’t discourage it.
It’s also purposeful! Who owns The NY Times? Wall St Journal etc? They want the Damn tax cuts for billionaires too! There IS no free press at all anymore! All owned by corporate heads with vested wealth in getting Republicans in power fewer regulations more tax cuts for the wealthy! Oligarchy reigns in America and world wide! Tax it ALL away! No one should be a billionaire! Built on the backs of working middle class people ALL of it! New class of silicon Robber Barons! Why this election is so crucial to protect democracy! Mary wonderful article! Thank you! Btw doesn’t “Uncle Trump” (so Dickensian I love it) know he won’t be going to jail? Most he ll get is ankle bracelet, lock down at Mar A Largo, restrictions on movement, 4 years of golfing secret service members at home. Security risks too great to put ANY ex President in jail!! Why doesn’t he quit he’s incompetent at ALL of it! Make health an excuse let Nikki Hayley take the race and bow out now?
I’m curious if Wikileaks had access to the leaked info. Does anyone know?
The press has completely abandoned all pretense of objectivity or even attempting to educate the public on the truth of our reality. All corporate media is owned by billionaires who filter down their toxic worldviews to their subordinates through theur economic control. The beat reporters that don't write the propaganda their bosses assign them get fired and replaced with less scrupulous people who will. After decades of this there are no good reporters left at organizations like the NYT who have not compromised their ethics/values in some way to better defend capitalism to the masses. All the truly terrible reporting on Trump is hust an obvious consequence of this. Reporters have to keep pretending he is normal because their conservative bosses will fire them if they write the truth. Same reason they refuse to publish these leaks now, the rich want Trump re-elected and are putting their thumbs on the scale with the media to ensure it happens. All of these companies need to be broken up, journalism is dead in America and we need to tear it all down and start over again with only non profit news organizations whose only agenda is the greater good.
Will the MSM be so sanctimonious when a future leak is from the Harris campaign? Yeah, er, most unlikely. Because they are just dying to find a reason to tear her down.
Yes, they are.
Happy to report I have cancelled my NYT subscription.
I did years ago, WAPO more recently 😉
I also cancelled my Washington Post subscription.
How about executing the 'Right to Know " Rule and apply for those so-called "hacked" documents?
Donald is not as dumb as he acts. He's been putting his bully act together since early childhood according to that September 1996 article in Vanity Fair entitled "After the Gold Rush". He's manipulated his wives, his children, his staffs, personal and official, and anyone easily manipulated, such as the media. The fact of his sleeping with a book of Hitler's speeches (Ivana's wording) in a drawer of his nightstand came out in that Vanity Fair publication. That was 1996!!! Here we are, 28 years later and the building of the Fourth Reich is nearly complete.
Forget the movie canibal. Donald will do anything to distract us from the truth.
That Donald and Vladimir had a private meeting in their early love relationship should never have been allowed to happen. America has a right to know and we still have a right to know what those two were planning that we never demanded to know. The beginning of Project 2025 anybody?
To this day, from the time he was bullying your father, Mary, to his irresponsibility in handling his marriages because his explosive ego wouldn't let his dick go soft.
On rape trials he's guilty of child rape (case dropped for reason of death threats), a Hollywood hooker (paid to keep silent), a woman in a department store dressing room ("I've never seen that woman. She's not my type), really, Donald? Let's go back to your comment about grabbing pussies that came out in a scandal sheet.
I'll wrap his inability to stop fucking the willing or unwilling to mention his months long affair with Miss Maples that led to Ivana's divorcing him and his marriage to Ms. Marla.
Scandal is his hiding place. It's so frequent the press can't or won't keep up with it.
He's still doing it this very minute. The lies that he knows are lies that he counts on MAGAs to believe just to create public turmoil.
We've ignored all of it long enough to be on the brink of losing our Democracy. Now the hint that he'll run away to Venezuela where we won't be able to have him deported to pay for every last one of his sins against America and the world.
He's not afraid. He's still manipulating. If he leaves and America explodes he'll blame it on the Harris/Walz team because..."I was away from the country."
And under the bus his leftovers will go.
Richard La France
I’ve said almost my entire adult life that journalists need to be required to have licenses by a licensing board just like other professions that we entrust our lives to like doctors, nurses, lawyers, etc. Then the public can check the credentials of the journalist and know that peer journalists are monitoring the quality of their work and expect them to adhere to the truth.
Anyone remember Judith Miller being held accountable just 2 short decades ago???
I would go further and suggest Donald was the perfect manipulable mob boss by those with equally brutal intentions but way smarter like Steve Bannon and Elon Musk and Leonard Leo and etc. etc.
Sir, thank you for the analysis. Very well written and informative. The truth stands on its own, but it is difficult and troubling at best.
You're welcome.
Stephen Colbert: Working for Trump was like working for a “mob boss" so were you surprised that you got whacked? Because that’s what they do.
James: Comey: Actually was surprised that would be a crazy thing to do. Why would you fire the FBI director who’s leading the Russia investigation?
Colbert: Because you’re leading the Russia investigation.
Comey: It makes me sick to my stomach to think we might have had an impact, I hope and pray we didn’t. But I hope this doesn’t sound strange, it wouldn’t change the decision.
Cobert: You get back in the time machine, go back another 70 years, and kill baby Hitler. But then you come back to October and you don’t release the emails.
-------------------
I'm feeling sick now, and not a little. These double standards are killing our country.
Journalism 101 failure. Plain and simple. Then and now.
Exactly. I took Radio Journalism in high school during the early 1960s. The 5 Ws were the name of the game: Who, What, When, Where and Why. When that was settled it was How.
Never happens.
IMHO the mainstream corporate media hasn't learned anything. They just don't want to do anything that might make the "close race" narrative not keep going.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...
I remember my Ma telling me when I was a child in the 1950s that the news media and their way of manipulating the political races were the ones deciding who wins. She knew what she was talking about even back then.
Mainstream media are hypocrites, just like 98% of the GOP. They should be ashamed, but they also have no morals, so they aren’t. Jerks.
NYT is a business and indeed owes us nothing. People put it on a pedestal, now they need to push it over and watch it crumble.
Better than even money that the emails are pretty damning, which is why they won't publish because that would blow up *any* chance of a horserace election.
Yes, I would ask them why during Bush/Cheney's regime it was OK for them to erase (lose) 22 MILLION emails from 2003-2005 about his wars. Obama didn't bother looking into it either. Everything they make an issue about has already been done X 1000 by them & their fascist cabal. For the media to pretend this is "conspiracy theory" is just laziness, unprofessional, & malpractice in journalism. They also don't care to discuss where the $3Trillion went during Bush/Cheney's time. They don't inquire about it. They don't inquire about Jarod Kushner & Trump trying to let Covid go untreated in Blue states like NY & CA because ...they didn't vote for him so who cares. They don't investigate or inquire about Jarod taking $2Billion dollars from the Saudis after delivering Khasshogi to the Prince who murdered him. They don't connect the dots....they don't look into the fact that Khasshogi was writing about the corruption of the Saudis & the Trump campaign. Kushner was taking classified information & turning it over to the Prince, who was using it to hunt down, arrest, & murder his opponents in Saudi Arabia. MBS had a financial relationship with Trump & AMI! I hear nothing from the press on this.
It’s all so very disheartening and sad. Will the subterfuge and evil ever relent? Will the perpetrators of these ongoing atrocities ever be prosecuted? Will we ever be allowed to see the truth?
It's up to us.
We will get the truth no matter what, because there are always courageous journalists not married to MSM, that will get the story. The CIA records have the truth of what they've done. WE must demand access & we must shutter the agency. We have 13 or so other intel agencies, we don't need the bad karma of CIA. The CIA drew first blood to our democracy & murder of JFK. They have been with the GOP since they began & that's the other thing they don't want people to know. That's the reason why the media won't report or write about it...they're scared. It's how Bush got installed (his Dad was CIA since 1950s), they've never been for U.S. democracy. NSA & other intel agencies must be investigated to ensure they're not corrupt, along with FBI.
I remember a while back when CNN stopped researching before broadcasting. The news was a matter of guessing after that. It didn't take long until the rest of them followed suit.
Do you remember when that was? I think I stopped watching CNN after they ousted it’s creator Ted Turner III. It’s been crap ever since. Now I wonder which right wing cretins were involved with it & was Murdoch & Ailes a part of that…. I used to watch CBS, NBC until Msnbc I think. The lying didn’t really start until after 1996 with Fox.