What do you know. The
New York Times and
Washington Post, having entered into an agreement to base their reporting on a Republican operative's allegations against Hillary Clinton, haven't been eager to report on problems with those allegations. Continuing Media Matters' stellar coverage of Peter Schweizer and
Clinton Cash, Eric Boehlert
points out that:
Defending its alliance, the Post's Chris Cillizza wrote, "We are information-gatherers at heart. Our job as reporters and editors and, more broadly as an organization, is to vet all of the information that comes at us to see what should be reported, what shouldn't and what needs to be followed-up on."
But isn't there an assumption that if the Post found Clinton Cash to be filled with errors the Post would report that fact? Isn't that part of Cillizza's job as an information gatherer?
Instead, just three days ago, the Post's The Fix was still touting the significance of Clinton Cash, stressing why readers ought to pay attention to it. The write-up included no mention of the steady stream of revelations about factual missteps in the book.
Indeed, they've gone along with some dubious points: Reporting on the claim that speaking fees led Hillary Clinton to approve a deal with a Russian uranium-mining company, the
New York Times downplayed the host of other agencies that had to sign off on the deal, not to mention the fact that Clinton did not handle the State Department's review of it. But the problems with
Clinton Cash aren't restricted to speculation that doesn't pan out. Schweizer
got the facts wrong in his allegation that a telecommunications company got its first USAID contracts after paying Bill Clinton for a series of speeches—it wasn't the company's first USAID contract and Clinton wasn't paid for the speeches. In another case, Schweizer relied on a
hoax press release to make his point.
And:
While Clinton’s stance toward India evolved over the years, a review of then-Sen. Clinton’s statements and votes while the Indian nuclear deal was under debate shows that one of the key facts in Schweizer’s argument on the topic is false — Clinton actually publicly stated her support for the deal in 2006. Another is in dispute – Schweizer writes that Clinton voted to cap India’s fissile production, when she actually voted against a measure that did that, though she did support a weaker one that imposed some limits.
You'd think the
Times and the
Post, having committed to reporting on Schweizer's research, might report on the problems with that research. But then again, the
Times and the
Post decided to take seriously opposition research by a guy who last summer
spoke at a Koch brothers political strategy summit, saying that "The question is, are we going to let up? And I would contend to you that we cannot let up." Schweizer hasn't let up in his commitment to attacking Democrats. It's just too bad he's gotten two major American newspapers to let up in their commitment to reporting.
