After the Depp/Heard verdict, let's talk about the role played by the ACLU.

There's this column, from Erik Wemple — "Depp-Heard case hinged on the world’s worst #MeToo op-ed." Wemple's column, like the "world's worst #MeToo op-ed," was published in the Washington Post:

The first draft came off the keyboards of the ACLU, via consultation with Heard. Four lawyers at the ACLU reviewed it to ensure that it aligned with the organization’s policy positions. Heard’s lawyers separately scrubbed it for compliance with a nondisclosure provision of her divorce settlement, according to an ACLU spokesperson. 

"Asked about his high points as [NYT] executive editor, Baquet cited the [Harvey] Weinstein investigation and the Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project."

"Both efforts, said Baquet in an interview, became 'bigger than newspaper stories. They changed the whole conversation'.... Another high point for Baquet was the [Bill] O’Reilly exposé.... O’Reilly was dethroned as king of cable news.... Routine political coverage in Baquet’s Times occasionally showered undue respectability upon false and authoritarian pro-Trump talking points.... A Harvard study found that coverage in the final months of the 2016 campaign was a feast of false equivalency in which Trump’s controversies received slightly less attention than Hillary Clinton’s controversies...."

Writes Erik Wemple in "Dean Baquet’s hands-on Times run is coming to a close" (WaPo).

"On the flip side, CNN engages in this partisan coverage filtering as well."

 

ADDED: Here's the WaPo opinion piece on that segment: "CNN’s Brian Stelter blindsided by co-author of Fox News study" by Erik Wemple. CNN's Brian Stelter was "blindsided" because the researchers who were expected to criticize Fox News proceeded to say CNN does it too.

"Good luck, Fox News, trying to find someone to replace [Chris] Wallace. The Sunday political shows are places where the networks have traditionally slotted broadcasters with established credentials."

"It’s not a tryout sort of gig. That means the network must attempt to find a heavy hitter who has compiled years of experience in Washington — meaning, someone who’s fully aware of Fox News’s descent into anti-democratic Carlsonian madness. Perhaps a nine-figure contract will help that someone look the other way. Or it could turn to Baier, the veteran host of the nightly 'Special Report.' Beyond that, the Fox News payroll is thin on potential successors — which is what happens when you fork over your corporate identity to a flamboyant conspiracy theorist."

Writes Erik Wemple in "Chris Wallace bolts Tucker Carlson’s Fox News" (WaPo).

"Counterintelligence investigations can take years, but if the Russian government had influence over the Trump campaign, the F.B.I. wanted to know quickly."

"One option was the most direct: interview the campaign officials about their Russian contacts. That was discussed but not acted on, two former officials said, because interviewing witnesses or subpoenaing documents might thrust the investigation into public view, exactly what F.B.I. officials were trying to avoid during the heat of the presidential race. 'You do not take actions that will unnecessarily impact an election,' Sally Q. Yates, the former deputy attorney general, said in an interview. She would not discuss details, but added, 'Folks were very careful to make sure that actions that were being taken in connection with that investigation did not become public.'"

From "Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation" (NYT). There's much more to this article, which I'm still trying to digest. My confidence in the NYT is undermined by this correction: "An earlier version of this article misstated that news organizations did not report on the findings of the retired British spy Christopher Steele about links between Trump campaign officials and Russia. While most news organizations whose reporters met with Mr. Steele did not publish such reports before the 2016 election, Mother Jones magazine did." You got an easily checkable, important fact plainly wrong. How can we trust your reporting?

ADDED: At WaPo, Erik Wemple has "New York Times acknowledges it buried the lead in pre-election Russia-Trump story":

In a massive article Wednesday on the FBI’s 2016 snooping into the possible nexus between Russians and the Trump presidential campaign, reporters Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos include these two paragraphs:

In late October, in response to questions from The Times, law enforcement officials acknowledged the investigation but urged restraint. They said they had scrutinized some of Mr. Trump’s advisers but had found no proof of any involvement with Russian hacking. The resulting article, on Oct. 31, reflected that caution and said that agents had uncovered no “conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government.”

The key fact of the article — that the F.B.I. had opened a broad investigation into possible links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign — was published in the 10th paragraph.

That’s one heck of a concession: We buried the lead! In their book “Russian Roulette,” authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn report that editors at the New York Times “cast the absence of a conclusion as the article’s central theme rather than the fact of the investigation itself,” contrary to the wishes of the reporters....

AND: "10 Key Takeaways From The New York Times’ Error-Ridden Defense Of FBI Spying On Trump Campaign" by Mollie Hemingway (The Federalist).
ALSO: From the Hemingway article:

[T]he admissions in this New York Times story are coming out now, years after selective leaks to compliant reporters, just before an inspector general report detailing some of these actions is slated to be released this month. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported that people mentioned in the report are beginning to get previews of what it alleges. It’s reasonable to assume that much of the new information in the New York Times report relates to information that will be coming out in the inspector general report.

By working with friendly reporters, these leaking FBI officials can ensure the first story about their unprecedented spying on political opponents will downplay that spying and even attempt to justify it. Of note is the story’s claim that very few people even knew about the spying on the Trump campaign in 2016, which means the leakers for this story come from a relatively small pool of people.

"New York Times publishes eye-popping correction on campus-sexual-assault book review."

Erik Wemple (at WaPo) writes about a book review by Michelle Goldberg that led to a correction that reads:

A review on Page 11 this weekend about “Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus,” by Vanessa Grigoriadis, refers incorrectly to her reporting on the issues. She does in fact write about Department of Justice statistics that say college-age women are less likely than nonstudent women of the same age to be victims of sexual assault; it is not the case that Grigoriadis was unaware of the department’s findings. In addition, the review describes incorrectly Grigoriadis’s presentation of statistics from the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. She showed that there is disagreement over whether the data are sound; it is not the case that she gave the reader “no reason to believe” the statistics are wrong.

Just above that correction are the last 2 sentences of Goldberg's review:

But if you’re going to challenge people’s preconceptions, you have to have your facts straight. “Blurred Lines” gives readers too many reasons not to trust it, even when perhaps they should.

Does that mean that if you are confirming people's preconceptions, you don't have to get your facts straight?

ADDED: That question of mine is, I think, key to understanding the prevalence of "fake news."

Fake news about fake news.

Rush Limbaugh, today:

Three CNN members of the new investigative unit have resigned, i.e., been fired. One of them is a guy named Thomas Frank...  the name might ring a bell. This guy wrote a book way back when called What’s the Matter With Kansas or What’s Wrong With Kansas? He is an active, uber-leftist. He despises conservatism, and his book about What’s the Matter with Kansas, What’s Wrong With Kansas, was his befuddlement over how middle class Americans in Kansas would vote Republican and thereby vote against their own self-interest....

That caught my attention. What?! Thomas Frank — What's the Matter With Kansas Thomas Frank — was one of the 3 guys fired for the fake news on CNN?! That didn't seem right.

Later in the show, Rush was all...

You know, I was afraid of this. I know that there are two Thomas Franks, and I asked somebody to find out for me today, I was in a time crunch, and I said, “Find out for me if the Thomas Frank at CNN is the same Thomas Frank who wrote the book on Kansas,” and they came back, “Yes, same guy.” But I know there’s a second one out there. So now Snerdley is getting Drive-By calls saying it’s a different Thomas Frank. The author who wrote the book on Kansas is not the Thomas Frank who was on the CNN investigative unit and got blown out, fired, canned, resigned, what have you. So my bad. I thought I had nailed that down. There are two of ’em. One of them may be Franks, the last name may be Franks, Thomas Franks and Thomas A. Frank, I’m not sure which, but I know there are two of them. And I thought they were the same.

Well, how exactly are you better than CNN if you run with something without checking it out competently? I don't see how "I was in a time crunch" is an acceptable excuse.

By the way, Thomas Frank's newest book — "Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" — is excellent.

And as long as I'm talking about the 3 fired CNN guys, let me show you the ludicrous final paragraph of the Washington Post column by Eric Wemple, "Three CNN employees resign over retracted story on Russia ties":

Critics will long cite this episode as evidence that CNN is precisely what Trump has called it — “fake news.” Yet the departure of three journalists immediately following a mangled story provides a counterpoint to this particular slander. Purveyors of fake news, after all, don’t take drastic personnel moves following a bogus story. They rejoice in it.

They got caught! Publicly. They had to put on a show that they don't tolerate fake news. That's exactly what a purveyor of fake news would do.

"Politico implodes" — what happened?!

WaPo's Erik Wemple tries to figure it out:

The reported departures follow whispers among Washington media circles that [CEO Jim] VandeHei was clashing with Politico ownership... From his early days at Politico, VandeHei has driven Politico’s workaholic competitive edge... Whether Politico was “better” than the Washington Post or the New York Times, one thing is clear: It forced those newspapers, and many other outlets, to expedite their work to keep pace with Politico.....

VandeHei stumbled, however, when it came to replacing himself. After ascending to the CEO position, he and Harris hired Rick Berke, a former New York Times editor, to serve as executive editor..... Succeeding Berke was Susan Glasser.... A former colleague and friend of VandeHei’s, Glasser secured the sort of authority and control that Berke had craved... She promised to carry forward Politico’s fast-twitch heritage while at the same time producing in-depth journalism.... What she got was a period of turmoil. Valuable staffers headed to other pastures....

So... too much hard work?

Hillary paraphrases the Methodist pastor as saying — "basically" — "if you’re going to read and listen to Romans: 12, you gotta to be nicer to the press."

Reports Eric Wemple, in a column in The Washington Post — "In church address, Hillary Clinton pledges to be nicer to the media."

Romans: 12 was the text at the Foundry United Methodist Church yesterday, and Hillary was speaking from the pulpit. It was the celebration of the bicentennial of the church — where Bill & Hillary worshiped in the days of the Bill Clinton presidency.

Wemple spoke to the pastor, Dr. J. Philip Wogaman:

The advice about taking a new approach to the media, he said, was “half in jest,” and rooted in the passage of Romans mentioning the “gifts that we have,” says Wogaman. The relevant passage reads, in part, “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” Pursuant to those teachings, says Wogaman, the media has an “important” role in “advising” those in power.

In Wogaman's telling, the point wasn't that she should be "nicer," but that she should value and respect the role the press plays. Being "nice" is almost the opposite. You need to think about being nice when you're going into an interaction with people you don't value and respect.

"George Stephanopoulos Gave to the Clinton Foundation. So What?"

Yeah, that's what I've been thinking, and I tend to not agree with Jonathan Chait. He says:

Rand Paul... accuses Stephanopoulos of harboring a “conflict of interest.” But donating money to a charitable foundation is not an interest. His money is gone regardless of what happens to Clinton’s presidential campaign.... In the absence of a material conflict, is there some symbolic conflict? It is hard to imagine what.... Stephanopoulos’s defense — that he just wanted to donate to the Foundation’s work on AIDS prevention and deforestation — seems 100 percent persuasive....

The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple does make an argument, but not much of one. “The problem with Stephanopoulos’s donations to the Clinton Foundation is that it gives him a stake — even if it’s a small one — in the operations and success of the charity,” he writes, “Like any donor, Stephanopoulos wants his money put to good use and, all else being equal, wants the foundation to prosper as it invests his money in good works.” But how does this bias Stephanopoulos’s campaign coverage?...

I've always assumed Stephanopoulos is biased toward the Clintons. Why should I care about his charitable contributions? Failed disclosure? Bleh. The Foundation is in all sorts of trouble? George isn't linked to that. The Republicans shouldn't accept him as a debate moderator. That was already true. This new thing? I don't see what it adds to the already-existing disqualification.

"George Will's Rape Column Was Edited By A Bunch Of Men."

Headline at Talking Points Memo for an article that is written by a man. I don't know who edited it, but this man, is named Dylan Scott. I know... "Dylan" could be a woman's name, but here's his picture...



I don't want to be too gender-normative, but — and I stress that I am speaking as a woman with long experience, 60+ years, as a female in the highly gendered social stratifications of America — I say he's a man. And who are the editors at TPM? It's not easy to get to a page of faces of TPM editors, maybe because it would be a bunch of men.

But Scott is only linking to a piece in The Washington Post itself: "George Will sexual-assault column: Editors were all male," written (ironically) by another man — jeez, these guys are everywhere — Erik Wemple.



But, anyway, that terrible George Will...



... whose picture, uploaded here, displayed super-large in compose mode and, in html, had the word "bigwill" in the code — can I get a trigger warning? — that terrible George "Bigwill" Will, according to Erik "Bigchin" Wemple, apparently, "knew what he wanted to say," which I translate to mean: It's not that the editors were all male; nobody can stop Bigwill.

Bigwill wanted to speak up for due process:

Education Department lawyers disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process. Threatening to withdraw federal funding, the department mandates adoption of a minimal “preponderance of the evidence” standard when adjudicating sexual assault charges between males and the female “survivors” — note the language of prejudgment. Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape. Then comes costly litigation against institutions that have denied due process to males they accuse of what society considers serious felonies.

Due process was the fixation of that bunch of men who adopted the Bill of Rights. Who was speaking for the women?



Out with that phallocratic due process bullshit! "Sentence first — verdict afterwards"!



And if our commitment to the vindication of rape victims inflames us and the niceties of procedure get less than their due, and if young male lives are crushed for years...



... what's that supposed to be a picture of? Looks like a bunch of men. Let's not dwell on that. $40 million dollars will be paid. Justice now... settlement afterwards. These are the ways of the bunch of men that have been running this country all too long.

Solution: Female Power. Hillary Clinton stands ready to restructure the old stratifications. This woman has amazing experience, including that time she sent a rape victim "through hell."

My sources say no to Ezra Klein's Vox.

Columbia Journalism Review has this:

It looks like a core editorial mission of Vox.com is going to be delivering those “really good, really clear, really comprehensive online summaries” of issues in the news. And its core innovation, at least for now, is “card stacks”—essentially, standing explainers that break a topic down question by question, chunk by chunk. In an oddly analog analogy, they’re modeled after the index cards you might have used to organize your school notes—click on a yellow-shaded phrase in a card, or in a main story, and it’ll take you right to the corresponding card.

What's odd about the "analog analogy"? It's a computer convention, going back to the desktops and trashcans of the 80s. Macintosh came out on January 24, 1984, the winter before Ezra Klein was born. Index cards and highlighters are doubly dorky, both because the real-life tools are associated with college nerds of a distant era and because of the old computer cliché of making things on screen seem like something in the real world.

Why fiddle with Vox's card stacks when there's Wikipedia? It's easier than Googling for background and clicking on the Wikipedia article (which is what nearly always comes up first), but you have to want to stay intra-Vox, and how good are those cards?

Seth Mandel at Commentary tested out the card on Ukraine:

What's happening these days at Grey Gardens?

For many of us, Grey Gardens means Big Edie and Little Edie in a movie engraved on our hearts. Rufus Wainwright sang about that.

But here it is mentioned by Howie Kurtz, who's at Fox News these days, taking a shot at Pari Bradlee, the daughter-in-law of Ben Bradlee, who once ran WaPo, the newspaper Kurtz abandoned:

Her new [Facebook[ profile picture, in a Swiss-cheese bra that leaves little to the imagination and long black leather sleeves and briefs, is so revealing that it drew a torrent of breathless comments....

"I have worked so hard all my life and always wanted to feel and be beautiful inside and out," Bradlee writes on Facebook. "I own my sensuality and teach others not to repress it. Femininity for me is a very powerful and beautiful force."...

The photo shoot took place at Grey Gardens, the fabled, 14-room East Hampton mansion, once featured in a movie, that the former Washington Post editor bought with his wife a quarter-century ago.

A movie. A Swiss-cheese bra.

I got to Kurtz's place via WaPo, where Erik Wemple is casting aspersions on Kurtz, calling his reporting a "nothing-sandwich posting." Is that a nothing sandwich with Swiss cheese?

Everyone knows at Grey Gardens, you eat liver paté.

WaPo's Eric Wemple credits Andrea Mitchell with airing the full context of Romney's "Wawa" remark...

... and seems to accept MSNBC's refusal to give Mitchell's critics a real apology:

In the unedited version, Mitt Romney comes off as highly impressed with Wawa’s sando-kiosks. And in MSNBC’s edited version, Mitt Romney comes off as highly impressed with Wawa’s sando-kiosks.

In a statement sent to me this afternoon, MSNBC stands behind the editing: “MSNBC did not edit anything out of order or out of sequence and at no time did we intend to deceive our viewers.”

But the video at the link, which bills itself as the "full Romney video" is still clipped out of context. It's not "unedited" as Wemple asserts! It lacks the anecdote about the optometrist dealing with government bureaucracy, which is why Romney told the Wawa story: for contrast. The point wasn't: gee whiz, technology is amazing. The point was: Government, unlike private business, lacks the incentives to make things easy and efficient. Yes, the new clip contains a summary to that effect, but the rest of the context is missing. The effort is to make Romney sound as silly and scattered as possible. Under criticism, some of the context was put back. But it was only enough to try to palm it off as context, and the Washington Post is promoting the palm-off.

Look at the full text compared to the MSNBC clip (and compare it to what Wemple displays as the "unedited" clip). It's actually a coherent, incisive speech and there's nice rapport with the audience!

Anyone not blinded by a wishful desire for Obama to win knows that Obama would never have been edited like that. And if somehow a short clip (like MSNBC's original Wawa clip) had gone out and gotten mocked, the mainstream media would have fallen over itself getting out the longest, most favorable form of the context, used the occasion to promote whatever point Obama was making and to praise him for his brilliance and eloquence in making that point, and denounced right-wing media for its nefarious out-of-context attack.

Wemple does go on to say that Wawa really is in the forefront of technology here, and it actually wasn't dumb to get gaga for Wawa. Fine. That too. But the key point — maybe the central theme of Romney's campaign — is that competition, free markets, and capitalism work and he's the guy who really knows about it. He's a pretty exciting candidate when you think about the expertise he's offering to bring to running the federal bureaucracy. That's what the mainstream media doesn't want people to see. Only Obama is exciting. Only Obama is brilliant. But no! Both candidates are brilliant and exciting. The question is which way do you want to go?