Remember when journalists were supposed to speak truth to power, no matter the cost?
Those were the days, huh?
In 1971, The New York Times printed an internal study the United States conducted about our failures in the Vietnam War.
These Pentagon Papers were leaked by a RAND analyst who had access to the classified documents, Daniel Ellsberg.
This was incredibly controversial.
The Times was sued by the Nixon administration and accused of treason. But the paper held its ground.
Steven Spielberg even mythologized the episode in “The Post,” which weirdly was about the second newspaper to publish the Pentagon Papers — the Washington Post — because he needed a part for Meryl Streep.
For decades, the media held to this “Pentagon Papers standard” — that it didn’t matter HOW information was acquired, as long as it was true.
Whatever Edward Snowden’s motives, for instance, it was more important to know about the NSA’s spy program.
That is, until Democrats looked bad.
In 2016, internal emails from the Democratic National Committee were leaked by Russian hackers, and widely reported.
The emails were legitimate.
But after Donald Trump was elected, the media panicked.
It’s one thing to expose the US government; how dare you do it to Hillary Clinton!
In 2020, a “working group” at the Aspen Institute, which included representatives of the Times, the Washington Post, the Daily Beast and content moderators from Facebook and Twitter, proposed a new standard.
They roleplayed how social media and reporters should react to leaked information about Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
As revealed by reporter Matt Taibbi, they concluded that the Pentagon Papers standard should be scrapped: The press SHOULD consider where information came from and decide not to publish, even if it was true.
And lo and behold.
A month before the election, The New York Post published information from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The Aspen strategy session came true.
And what did the media do?
They ignored the revelations.
It was a ploy to help Joe Biden that was pre-planned.
And hypocritical because:
- To start, we explained exactly how we got the laptop. Hunter abandoned it at a repair shop. It wasn’t hacked. The repair shop owner independently confirmed this.
- The letter from “51 former intelligence officers” that said it “could be” Russian disinformation was a lie cooked up by the Biden campaign. Antony Blinken from Biden’s team called Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, and “prompted” him to write the letter. Newly unearthed emails from Morell to the other signees show he wanted a “talking point” for Biden to counter the laptop in a debate with Trump. Not a denial, because there wasn’t one. A “talking point.”
- It’s one thing to take the time to fact-check, but that’s not what the media did. Joe and Hunter Biden never even denied the laptop was true, they just hand-waved at the Russians. But the Times, the Washington Post and others didn’t even report out the Hunter emails to see if they were true — at least not until more than a year after Joe was safely elected.
- This new “standard” apparently only applies to the Bidens. The Times, for instance, printed Donald Trump’s tax documents, leaked to them by his niece Mary Trump. Mary loathes Trump and wanted to destroy his campaign. But her motives for leaking private documents were not questioned.
The media figures who are shocked that any negative information should leak about Democrats betray their profession and their history.
They act like the world has changed when it’s exactly the same.
The only difference is that instead of wanting to become Woodward and Bernstein, they decided to run interference for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
It’s not about truth to power anymore, it’s making sure Republicans lose.
We’re waiting for Spielberg’s call.
Meryl Streep can play Miranda Devine.
