Bogus Times scoops on Trump, Russia are recycled propaganda
Take a deep breath and realize how precious little substance there is in all the breathless reporting about supposed skulduggery by President Trump, his team and the Russian government. If the nation’s lucky, the coming congressional probes — and whatever surfaces from the apparent ongoing FBI investigation — may one day provide some clarity.
Hostile, hysterical reporting based on anonymous leaks provides no hard facts — just “narratives” that could come out of a creative writing class.
Take Wednesday’s breathless New York Times story, “Trump Aides Had Contact With Russian Intelligence” — which was remarkable for containing the same facts the Times reported back in October as “Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link to Russia.”
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Both reports say various Trumpites talked to figures in Russia’s government — but that US investigators found nothing to show they’d discussed the US election, or that anyone on Team Trump was even aware of any effort by Moscow to influence it.
Oh, and the Times also reported Jan. 19, “Intercepted Russian Communiques Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates.”
How many times can the Times recycle the same stuff and still call it news?
The source for all of it, time and again, is “current and former” officials — with no sense of how many are actually current, or how former officials know anything about an ongoing investigation.
Note, too, that one of the reporters on all these stories is our old pal Matt Apuzzo — who is presumably working the same highly dubious FBI sources he used back in 2011 when he was with the Associated Press, in his error-riddled series of smears of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division.
Apuzzo’s sources back then plainly resented the first-rate work of Commissioner Ray Kelly’s crew — and that the NYPD had hired ex-CIA experts to build the division. What agenda are they working now?
Yes, Apuzzo won a Pulitzer for that series, and parlayed it into a Times job. But all that really tells you is that propaganda can prosper under the guise of journalism.
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