Highlights:
- For writing the truth about Trump, Paul Krugman is absurdly being painted as a Clinton shill
- In a sane world, Paul Krugman’s reputation shouldn’t be at risk today. But it is.
- News consumers will take away the inaccurate conclusion that Hillary and Trump are both equally crooked.
- Fabricating scandals, mainstreaming conspiracy theories and drawing false equivalences about Hillary isn’t good journalism.
- If there’s a story backed by substance that’s of a scale equivalent to Trump’s myriad scandals, fine. Until that story emerges, it makes zero sense to artificially induce one to the benefit of a prospective clown-dictator.
Salon has a poignant article from Bob Cesca about the collective media now going after Paul Krugman as a “shill” for exposing the media for committing malpractice when it comes to reporting about Hillary and Trump.
Salon:
Desperately slamming Krugman: Columnist unfairly targeted for anti-Trump, pro-Hillary commentary
Not only is the establishment press irritated with Krugman’s latest article, “Hillary Clinton Gets Gored,” in which he highlights the journalistic malpractice evidenced in the news media’s amplification of Hillary Clinton’s non-scandal scandals over Donald Trump’s lengthy menu of real scandals and obscene negatives, but also, strangely, a vocal faction of the left believes Krugman is water-carrying for his “beloved candidate” Hillary.
The article pointed to by Cesca as a prime example is this one here, from Glenn Greenwald at “The Intercept:
The Unrelenting Pundit-Led Effort to Delegitimize All Negative Reporting About Hillary Clinton
Bob Cesca notes:
After a full month in which Trump’s campaign bungled and botched its way through the first third of the general election, and completely absent any newsworthy reason to shift to a “Trump redemption” narrative, the press is rapidly fabricating one. Even though Trump’s charitable foundation was investigated and fined by the Internal Revenue Service for a pay-to-play deal in Florida, cable news is instead emphasizing the Clinton Foundation’s alleged scandal in which nothing illegal has been uncovered. Worse, we’ve already witnessed the mainstreaming of white nationalism, as political analyst Soledad O’Brien observed on CNN over the long weekend. We’re also beginning to see news segments about Hillary’s alleged health issues — her coughing jag on Tuesday became national news, thanks to Trump and the screeching commandant of his paranoid flying monkeys, Alex Jones.
Even the so-called liberal network, NBC, reported on Hillary’s health:
This is precisely the kind of malpractice Krugman wrote about.
Krugman and Cesca are right, of course. The media is committing malpractice here. This is not even a case of creating false equivalency. The media obsesses about the “Clinton Foundation” which has done nothing but good in the world and “pay for play” allegations without a scintilla of proof, while completely ignoring the multiple misdeeds of Trump’s foundation, which has been found to be involved in actual “pay for play” with Pam Bondi, Florida’s AG, fined by the IRS for doing so, to drop an investigation into Trump University in exchange for political contributions and hosting fundraisers.
Bob Cesca goes on to show how the media is mischaracterizing the candidates — “over-emphasizing Hillary’s minuscule email and foundation stories while de-emphasizing Trump’s more scandalous, disqualifying negatives” and with that trying to “Gore” Hillary where 16 years ago George W. Bush was lifted up as a regular, straightforward guy while Gore was the wooden guy who was also shifty and dishonest (remember “I invented the Internet” guffaw?), as correctly pointed out by Krugman’s article Hillary Clinton Gets Gored.
Cesca points out that some of the ridiculous piling on comes from the left, former Sanders and current Jill Stein supporters:
Trump’s base aside, there are those in the press and on the left, amazingly, who fail to grasp how potentially catastrophic Trump’s presidency would be. While many begrudgingly acknowledge Trump’s downsides, there’s an entirely disingenuous movement afoot to yank Hillary down to Trump’s level. Indeed, many of the culprits tend to be former Bernie Sanders supporters who currently endorse Green Party nominee Jill Stein. Check the comments below and you’ll probably see a few. They earnestly believe Hillary and Trump are generally on the same level, while some of them will tell you with a straight face that Hillary is much worse than Trump. Bigger picture, they further believe that a Trump presidency might bring about a backlash that will inaugurate a progressive majority.
Cesca points out Gleen Greenwald’s Incercept piece The Unrelenting Pundit-Led Effort to Delegitimize All Negative Reporting About Hillary Clinton, in which Greenwald essentially calls Krugman a “Hillary shill” for the Hillary campaign and demeans Krugman integrity with the claim that “There is probably no more die-hard Clinton loyalist in the U.S. media than Paul Krugman.”
What brought on this harsh assessment? This segment in Paul Krugman’s article Hillary Clinton Gets Gored is objectively true:
If he manages to read from a TelePrompter without going off script, he’s being presidential. If he seems to suggest that he wouldn’t round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants right away, he’s moving into the mainstream. And many of his multiple scandals, like what appear to be clear payoffs to state attorneys general to back off investigating Trump University, get remarkably little attention.
Greenwald claims that the media has it in for Trump, which is patently untrue. It is true that there was a time frame when the media went after Trump in an effort to finally vet him, right around the time of the Democratic convention and a few weeks thereafter, but that ignores the larger truth that the media spent almost an entire year building Trump up with unabashed adoration and critic less fluff reporting, culminating in Trump winning the GOP nomination, and they are at it again, trying to prop up Trump while trying to tear Hillary down. So we had a few weeks of the press focusing on Trump, and an entire year’s worth of fawning and scandal ignoring and Trump elevating.
The mainstream press almost completely ignores the Trump foundations “play for play” bribery issue which led Pam Bondi to drop any investigation into Trump university with a proven quid pro quo as Trump paid the IRS fine for rule violations:
Trump pays IRS a penalty for his foundation violating rules with gift to aid Florida attorney general
Donald Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty this year, an official at Trump's company said, after it was revealed that Trump's charitable foundation had violated tax laws by giving a political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida's attorney general.
The improper donation, a $25,000 gift from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, was made in 2013. At the time, Attorney General Pam Bondi was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. She decided not to pursue the case.
Where is the daily breathless reporting on the obvious quid pro quo that occurred with Trump’s foundation, the obvious bribery, the obvious “pay for play”, which the IRS found as illegal and therefore subject to fine? The press instead focuses on the Clinton foundation?
Where is the press on White Nationalists and White Supremacists taking on a large role in Trump’s campaign? Instead the press is “mainstreaming” White Nationalism.
ThinkProgress’ John Legum makes the same point in his artcle:
A Tale Of Two Foundations - One of these things is not like the other.
Meanwhile, on September 1, news broke that the Trump Foundation “violated tax laws by giving a political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida’s attorney general.” It was required to pay a $2,500 fine to the IRS.
The details of the case are even more unseemly. Florida’s Attorney General was considering opening an investigation into Trump University, which is accused of defrauding students. Bondi herself contacted Trump and asked for a political contribution. After a political committee associated with her campaign received the illegal $25,000 contribution, she decided not to pursue it.
The story has something that none of the Clinton Foundation stories have: Actual evidence of illegal conduct. In this case, not only is there concrete evidence that the Trump Foundation broke the law, but a formal finding of wrongdoing by the IRS.
John Legum goes on to point out that a search for coverage in the Nexis database, which contains almost all English language print and broadcast sources, found just 23 mentions of the “Trump Foundation” since September 1. Meanwhile, continuing coverage of the “Clinton Foundation” has been rampant since September 1, many fold more times than the Trump foundation, and since the infamous debunked AP tweet hit it has been in the many hundreds. Yet, people like Glenn Greenwald pretend there is no obvious anti-Hillary bias in the media?
Crazy.
About the author:
Bob Cesca (born July 12, 1971) is an American director, producer, writer, actor, blogger and political commentator.[1]He is the Managing Editor of The Daily Banter, a news and opinion site founded by Ben Cohen, where he also writes a daily political column. He's also a regular contributor for Salon.com.
(attribution: WikiPedia)