September 12, 2018 at 5:38 p.m.
The court jester and his treasonous friend
The court jester and his treasonous friend
Ir wasn't what the writer wrote that was so bad, though it was plenty bad enough; it was that The New York Times decided to publish an anonymous opinion piece at all. That's inexcusable, and it underscores just why the American news media has no credibility left.
The op-ed's appearance was surreal and it would have been surreal for any age and for any historically respected news media, like Walter Cronkite delivering the evening news wearing an Anonymous mask, or Walter Lippman penning his columns using a pseudonym.
Even the notorious establishment shill Bob Woodward said he wouldn't have run the piece, and this is the guy who as an assistant editor at The Washington Post helped oversee the publication of Janet Cooke's entirely fabricated and anonymously sourced story about a child heroin addict.
Let's be clear: The use of anonymous sources and anonymous authors is poison to the journalistic body. How can the reader trust or judge the information? Is it a whistleblower talking, or a disgruntled employee with an axe to grind, sometimes over personal issues?
It's impossible to tell. With anonymous sources, an industry that depends on government transparency to survive sacrifices its own transparency, and in so doing descends into the depths of hypocrisy and dishonesty.
The more anonymous sources used, the more dishonesty and hypocrisy embraced, which is a sad affair, for dishonesty and hypocrisy are the confetti of con artists and court jesters, while transparency and honesty are the cornerstones of credibility.
Over the years, the use in journalism of anonymous sources has become pervasive, so much so that the profession has sunk quickly in a quicksand of its own making. These days, only the industry's court jesters, who perform daily at papers like The New York Times, take themselves seriously; everyone else is laughing.
That's not to say an anonymous source should never be used. We have done so here at The Lakeland Times, but such anonymity must be accorded to whistleblowers, and only to whistleblowers who meet strict criteria.
That is to say, anonymity can only be granted when an employee or insider brings forth documents or other proof positive that an official has engaged in public corruption or has broken the law, and the newspaper cannot obtain the story from any other source.
What's more, the whistleblower's identity should only be protected if there is a legitimate fear of retaliation with serious financial or physical or personal consequences. Embarrassment is not good enough.
All things considered, it's a pretty tough standard to meet, though you would never know it these days because reporters hand out confidentiality like candy.
All of which brings us to The New York Times's anonymously written op-ed piece. The important thing about that is that an op-ed piece should never, ever - under any circumstances - be anonymous.
That's because an op-ed writer, by definition, cannot be a whistleblower. Here's why.
While it may contain facts, an op-ed piece is an opinion piece - it is speculation or the author's belief derived not only from the facts before the author but interpreted through that author's biases.
That's the way it should be on the opinion pages, but, for op-eds to have any worth as reasoned public arguments, the reader needs to know the context of the assertions, and an essential part of that is the identity of the writer, his or her place in the issue or story at hand.
From where the writer writes makes all the difference in the legitimacy of the viewpoint. With respect to The Times's op-ed, was the writer a senior level Trump official with vast authority, privileged access, and knowledge of sensitive information, or was he or she or they merely lower level bureaucrats who have labored in the trenches for decades and are fearful of any challenge to the status quo?
The answer makes all the difference in the world.
Without identity, the op-ed piece is little more than a screed of propaganda, borne from the scriptures of agitprop.
More important, the writer of an op-ed piece can never reach whistleblower status because such a piece will never contain the factual exposure of crime or corruption necessary to qualify for whistleblower status. The second any such explosive and factual information arrives at a newspaper, it will be a front page news story, not an op-ed piece.
Op-ed pieces will most surely opine about such disclosures and exposures; but they will never be the pieces making those disclosures and exposures. Publishing facts are what news stories are for.
That the op-ed piece did not rise to the level of serious news is obvious by its placement, and should have disqualified the writer from identity protection.
Indeed, The New York Times's op-ed was a vague missive talking about how this member of the "steady state" was doing his or her best to "frustrate" and "thwart" the "impulsive" and "reckless" president, though we are never told exactly what these "reckless" decisions are.
It was an empty vessel of vague accusations, with juicy hints about what the unsung heroes of the steady state are actually doing to save America.
To be sure, it seems the writer tiptoes to, if not over, the edge of treasonous conduct by proudly but anonymously proclaiming that he or she is working to undermine the elected government of the United States - a steady state coup d'etat, by any other name - and promising to keep up his or her work as a mole.
And The New York Times endorsed this conduct by giving the traitorous coward cover.
A week ago, we criticized the coordinated campaign by 300 newspapers, most of them subsidiaries of hedge funds and corporate conglomerates working in the service of the globalist establishment, to dishonestly attack President Trump using a fake defense of a free and independent press as its excuse.
The New York Times's op-ed piece was nothing less than the same collusion, this time between a corporate media giant that is a leading member of the government-media-corporate complex and a member or members of the deep or steady state, otherwise known as the federal bureaucracy.
As such, the op-ed piece wasn't really anonymous; it carried the emboldened signature of the globalist establishment, which is working in all venues - public and secret, Republican and Democratic - to bring down the Trump administration and its vision of national self-determination for all people.
The problem is, The New York Times is a trendsetter and so now we are likely to see other newspapers engage in anonymous character assassination via their opinion pages. It was more poison injected into the body of respectable journalism.
The other day an op-ed writer called The New York Times "all the anonymous BS that's fit to print," mocking its iconic slogan.
That is truly what The New York Times and its mainstream ilk have become - purveyors of BS, not publishers of news, and it is tainting all of us.
The American people see this. A new Knight Foundation and Gallup study shows that 69 percent of adults say they have lost trust in the media over the past decade. That's not only 94 percent of Republicans, but 75 percent of independents and even 42 percent of Democrats.
Important, though, as Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute points out, trust in national media outlets like The New York Times is significantly lower than trust in local media, and she believes this op-ed will likely exacerbate that gulf.
We are grateful for that trust, but we are also aware that the dishonesty and lack of standards of newspapers like The New York Times threaten to turn the public against us, too, unless we continue to resist the tide of reckless journalism.
Independent journalism is the true resistance. Adhering to traditional standards of journalism is part of that resistance. So is calling out the media when it engages in deception and bias.
The thing about con artists and court jesters is, their confetti blows easily away in the wind. The cornerstones of good journalism, transparency and honesty, serve as rock-solid foundations for the future.
They have served America and democracy well in the past; we are confident they will do so again.
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