The New York Times recently reported — wrongly, as it turns out — that Hillary Clinton was the subject of a “criminal” investigation for conducting official State Department business on her private email system. Many of the Times‘s liberal readers were upset about the paper’s handling of the Democratic frontrunner, and so, over the weekend, Times public editor Margaret Sullivan dragged out the sackcloth and ashes to explain the paper’s coverage. Sullivan’s column on the matter, however, contains a pretty remarkable characterization of the Times’s Benghazi coverage:
Last Thursday, I handed Mr. Baquet a printed copy of Mr. Hannay’s email and asked him to address it.
To that end, he told me that he has urged reporters and editors to focus anew on issues stories. And he pledged fairness. “I’m happy to make a promise that she’ll be treated fairly,” he said, though he added, “If you look at our body of work, I don’t believe we have been unfair.” One testament to that, he said, was an investigative piece written by David Kirkpatrick shortly after the 2012 Benghazi attacks, with conclusions seen as favorable for Mrs. Clinton, who was then secretary of state. It came under heavy attack from the right.
The “investigative piece” linked by the Times didn’t just come “under heavy attack from the right” because its conclusions were “favorable for Mrs. Clinton.” It came under attack because it was decisively wrong. Here’s the key sentence from Kirkpatrick’s piece, which by the way, was not written “shortly after” the 2012 Benghazi attacks, but rather, more than a full year later:
The Times‘s incorrect pronouncement aside, this publication — along with others — published several pieces pointing out the obvious connections between Al Qaeda and the Benghazi attacks. Despite overwhelming eveidence of al Qaeda’s role in the attacks, the media used the claim that there was no connection to shut down Benghazi debate. In fact, the Times editorial board, citing Kirkpatrick’s erroneous report, wrote the following in an attempt to discourage further Benghazi investigations and accused Republicans of attempting to derail Hillary’s presidential ambitions:
The media were so far around the bend on this, that when the House Intelligence Committee’s report dropped last fall confirming al Qaeda’s involvement, they used the same report to bludgeon Republicans because the report also cleared the military and intelligence services of wrongdoing in the attacks. There was, unsurprisingly, little attempt to acknowledge that the report demolished a central media narrative used to defend Hillary Clinton. As for the Times, Kirkpatrick did eventually write a story headlined “Militants in Benghazi Attack Tied to a Qaeda Affiliate” — but he did not acknowledge how this directly undercut his own heavily touted report from the previous year.
Of course, it was the House Benghazi Committee earlier this year that unearthed the evidence that Hillary Clinton and key aides handling classified information and all of her official business on a private email account, which she has selectively culled. No one now disputes that this questionable conduct is very likely illegal and relevant to her performance as secretary of state during the Benghazi attacks, as well as a legitimate source of criticism as she runs for president. Of course, if the New York Times had its way, none of this would have been known. The GOP’s Benghazi invesigations are not above criticism, but there is a widespread and completely unjustifiable sentiment on the left that Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration have been the target of a witch hunt. And even now, the Times’s refusal to acknowledge their major errors is perpetuating this myth and has long made it difficult to soberly investigate the attack that killed three Americans, including a U.S. ambassador.
It’s true that the Times has run some tough coverage of Hillary Clinton in recent months. But before people worry that the Times is treating the former secretary of state unfairly, consider this: The moment the Times makes a mistake in their coverage that makes Hillary Clinton look bad, they rush to very publicly correct it and offer up apologies from the paper’s top editor Dean Baquet. At the same time, they still haven’t properly owned up to their egregious Benghazi errors to the point they are still quick to perpetuate those mistakes as both a defense of their journalistic standards and an example of how they’ve published “favorable” coverage of Hillary Clinton. It’s awfully revealing, the way the venerable newspaper’s institutional motives and Hillary Clinton’s press strategy seem to align.
