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The press v. the President

Mike Shellenberger dropped a long thread based on Jeff Gerth’s The Press v. the President, about who orchestrated the Russiagate scam.

Published

1 year ago

February 2, 2023

Terry A. Hurlbut

Michael Shellenberger, of Twitter Files fame, has been busy lately, and not merely with the disgusting spectacle of pre-Musk Twitter. His latest thread, begun on January 31, 2023, extolled and excerpted a damning series in the Columbia Journalism Review. That series, The Press v. the President, discussed the love-hate relationship between the legacy press and President Donald J. Trump. It comes from a veteran journalist, and expresses his disgust at what the legacy media has made of itself. But that expression of disgust comes late – because the legacy press has done this sort of thing before. Perhaps not to the extent this series reveals, but bad enough – and indeed that’s why such a thing as Conservative News and Views came to exist.

The Press v. the President – the series

Jeff Gerth, Pulitzer prize winner and former reporter for The New York Times (1976-2005), wrote the series. It appears in CJR in four parts (one, two, three, four) with editor’s notes by Kyle Pope, editor-in-chief and publisher.

Mr. Shellenberger quotes Mr. Gerth extensively. CNAV would like to quote Mr. Pope:

No narrative did more to shape Trump’s relations with the press than Russiagate. The story, which included the Steele dossier and the Mueller report among other totemic moments, resulted in Pulitzer Prizes as well as embarrassing retractions and damaged careers. For Trump, the press’s pursuit of the Russia story convinced him that any sort of normal relationship with the press was impossible.

And it ought to convince anyone who values his liberty that the legacy press is worse than unreliable. CNAV has known this for years. To see a hint of insight from people who worked with and in that press is nothing short of remarkable. (Insight, in psychiatric parlance, is that inkling that a mentally disturbed person has that he is disturbed.)

Shellenberger’s colleague Matt Taibbi has covered Twitter’s role in the Russiagate affair already. Now Jeff Gerth has covered the role of the legacy press.

The thread

Herewith the thread from Mike Shellenberger, based on The Press v. the President by Jeff Gerth. This thread has 51 tweets; therefore CNAV presents the odd numbers, each (after the first) including the tweet before it.

“Before the 2016 election, most Americans trusted the traditional media and the trend was positive…Today, the US media has the lowest credibility—26 percent—among forty-six nations”

Russia collusion hoax had a lot to do with ithttps://t.co/zv29iFHdbL— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“It was Hillary, not Trump, who began her campaign facing scrutiny over Russia ties….including a lucrative speech in Moscow by Bill Clinton, Russia-related donations to the Clinton family foundation, and Russia-friendly initiatives by the Obama administration”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“Paul Krugman, in his Times column, called Trump the “Siberian candidate,” citing the “watering down” of the platform. Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, labeled Trump a “de facto agent” of Putin.“— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“Clinton was said to have approved a “proposal from one of her foreign-policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” according to notes, declassified in 2020, of a briefing CIA director John Brennan gave”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“The Clinton campaign put out a statement on Twitter, linking to what it called the “bombshell report” on Yahoo, but did not disclose that the campaign secretly paid the researchers who pitched it to Isikoff.”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

Jonathan Karl, the ABC White House correspondent, … said the media coverage of Trump was “relentlessly and exhaustively negative,” rather than “striving for fairness and objectivity,” and did “as much to undermine the credibility of the free press as the president’s taunts.”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

The day before inauguration, the Times featured a story: “Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry into Trump.” The piece evoked a strong reaction from Strzok, who was leading FBI inquiry: “no substance and largely wrong…the press is going to undermine its credibility”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

On March 1, 2017, the Times stood by the accuracy of its explosive story.. but … muddied the question of whether Trump associates had contacted “senior Russian intelligence officials” by noting that “the label ‘intelligence official’ is not always cleanly applied in Russia.”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

And yet Strzok said “‘there’s no big there, there.’ Other FBI documents, released in 2020, reflect the same assessment: the inquiry into possible ties between the campaign and Russia, according to one of the agents involved in the case, ‘seemed to be winding down’ then.”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

The New Yorker’s “Jane Mayer, wrote a lengthy piece about Steele and his work. Then she went on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC to note how the dossier “was looking better and better every day, more and more credible.”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

The Russia collusion hoax worked

“A Yougov/Economist poll found that two-thirds of Democrats were definitely or somewhat sure that ‘Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected.’”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“The first sentence described an obscure banner of Putin unfurled on his birthday, a few weeks before the election, on a Manhattan bridge. The report quickly noted that the banner was promoted by a fake Twitter account of… a privately owned troll operation in Russia.”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“As 2019 arrived, BuzzFeed.. dropped a seeming bombshell: Trump had directed Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow Project….The special counsel’s office issued a rare denunciation of the BuzzFeed story the next day, calling it ‘not accurate.’”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“Isikoff had previously begun having doubts about the credibility of the dossier, but Barr’s letter pushed him further down that road. He went on MSNBC soon after the letter’s release and criticized the network for its coverage of the dossier”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“Democratic members of the panel, in an addendum, wrote that Manafort’s sharing of campaign data “is what collusion looks like.”
But the evidence of Kilimnik’s Kremlin ties is far from certain, and the question of whether Manafort’s dealings with him are even murkier.”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“Chapter 5: The scandal that never ends

“The Times, for many years, has cited the Kilimnik-Manafort relationship to defend its controversial story of February 2017 about Trump-Russia ties, noting that the Senate and Treasury statements ‘confirm the article’s findings.’”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“Mueller’s report cites a review by Twitter of tweets from accounts ‘associated with the IRA,’ in the ten weeks before the 2016 election, which found that ‘approximately 8.4%’ were ‘election related.’ Only the St. Louis Post Dispatch covered that part of the report…”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“Barr, in an interview, said that “a lot of witnesses tried to convey that no one took a lot of Trump’s bloviating seriously. They thought that he was letting off steam.” McGahn himself told Mueller’s investigators ‘he believed the president never obstructed Justice’”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

Durham’s filings last February described monitoring done at Trump Tower,… by private researchers.. “to mine internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying Trump to Russia. The businessman lawyer, Sussmann, billed both DNC and the Clinton campaign in 2016”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“The Times has offered no such retraction, though the paper and other news organizations were quick to highlight the lack of firsthand evidence …But they rarely, if ever, pointed out that the origin of the FBI inquiry was itself third hand information, at best.”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

“In an interview, Wemple said he was “horrified” over media’s “devastating” portrayal of the dossier. ‘What most dismayed me was the failure of MSNBC and CNN to counter and properly address the questions I was asking them.” CNN, in November 2021, did a “reckoning”—of the dossier”— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) January 31, 2023

THIS IS AMAZING

THE ARTICLE IS OVER BUT THE REPORTER ADDS THIS

“I’ve avoided opining in my more than 50 years as a reporter. This time, however, I felt obligated to weigh in. Why? Because I am worried about journalism’s declining credibility & society’s increasing polarization.— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) February 1, 2023

“One traditional journalistic standard that wasn’t always followed in the Trump-Russia coverage is the need to report facts that run counter to the prevailing narrative.— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) February 1, 2023

“I interviewed a former top CIA expert on behavior and propaganda, Jerrold Post, who told me that leaving important information out of a broadcast or story lowers public trust in the messenger because consumers inevitably find the missing information somewhere else.— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) February 1, 2023

“I reached out to more than sixty journalists; only about half responded. Of those who did, more than a dozen agreed to be interviewed on the record. However, not a single major news organization made available a newsroom leader to talk about their coverage.— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) February 1, 2023

The author of the above is 78-year-old Jeff Gerth who won the Pulitzer and worked at the New York Times between 1976 and 2005.

Every sentence is well-sourced

It is a damning indictment of the U.S. news media

All four parts are grippinghttps://t.co/E7bTosCjpT— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) February 1, 2023

Reaction

Judge Alex Ferrer, host of a show called Whistleblower, had this to say yesterday about The Press v. the President:

Reading this entire thread, you can understand why Trump called the media the Enemy of the People. It wasn’t isolated journalists; it was entire organizations. What I wish someone would do is put out a comprehensive list of all of the journalists so we can avoid their reporting.— Judge Alex Ferrer (@judgealexferrer) February 1, 2023

But someone left a very bitter reply citing four news organs he said were “in the tank” for Trump.

If only Trump had an entire media apparatus that was fully in the tank for *him* boy, that sure would be swell.
I guess this will just have to remain a fantasy. pic.twitter.com/3s2h6VcdvK— FourWideOnes (@FourWideOnes) February 1, 2023

Those four have relatively low market share, and censorship against them gets worse every day.

Another user cited a term the press used to describe themselves, that CNAV heard often:

The Russia hoax was but a part. Many declared themselves part of the "resistance" and abandoned any pretense of objectivity, and did so proudly. Convinced that Trump was Hitler reincarnated, any action was justifiable. The deep state jumped on board, and the rest is history.— Jacques Alejandro (@jockohomo_lives) February 1, 2023

But shortly after Mr. Shellenberger finished his thread, one user pointed this out:

They believed it was their mission to push their worldview and as a result truth and facts were secondary to pushing their agenda.— La Vallete (@vallete_la) February 1, 2023

CNAV has known this for a very long time.

Sadly, this thread shows that some people will always believe what they want to believe.

With all of the Russia ties that Trump himself had, as well as his appointees & staff + campaign staff had, it would have been MALPRACTICE for the LE/IC to NOT have investigated him.
& Iit would have been journalistic malpractice to not report on it.— Kevin, the only confirmed Kevin on this platform (@Chug_A_Lugg) February 1, 2023

That tweet reinforces the point. There was very good reason to investigate Trump, and it emerged from Trump’s own people doing very suspicious stuff.— DJ (@ScruggsDJ) February 1, 2023

The Press v. the President – and the people

Your editor lost his trust in the legacy press (and radio and television) while watching two seminal events. First came the Watergate Affair, in which the press implied that all who had any property to guard from the sticky fingers of government, were just as guilty as were Richard M. Nixon and his team. Then came American defeat in Vietnam. We now know positively that Walter Cronkite, anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News, literally mischaracterized American victory in the Tet Offensive as an American defeat.

Your editor then watched the legacy media prop up President James Earl Carter, Jr. for four long years. This applied to The New York Times nine months out of the year, and Walter Cronkite in the summertime.

The election of Ronald Reagan turned into The Press v. the President for eight years. To paraphrase the CEO of Google,

Many people apparently don’t share the values that we have.

Accordingly your editor coined the term Fishwrap Axis for the legacy media. The American Spectator used that metaphor themselves.

All that to say that the legacy media destroyed their credibility decades ago. If Jeff Gerth didn’t see it before, that made him a frog in a stewpot. If he climbed out in 2005 and looked at the boiling water eighteen years later, that explains his shock. He’s correct – but he should have noticed it much earlier. It now remains for us to find, and build, alternative media.

Terry A. Hurlbut

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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.