The New York Times talks a big game about holding the powerful to account, but it doesn’t always seem to make good on that boast.
In fact, if you’re on the left side of the aisle, there’s a decent chance someone at the Times will make an effort to downplay your scandal.
There have been two clear examples of just that in the past five days. The first of such instances occurred on Saturday in a report titled, “Inquiry Into Bernie Sanders’s Wife May Tarnish His Liberal Luster.”
The article, which details the federal investigation into the Vermont senator and his wife’s financial dealings, begins with this seemingly reasonable opening paragraph (emphasis mine):
A federal investigation into a long-ago land deal by Senator Bernie Sanders‘s wife is threatening to take some of the luster off the senator’s populist appeal, attaching the phrase “bank fraud” to the biography of a politician practically sainted on the left for his stands against “millionaires and billionaires.”
The problem here is that by “long ago,” the Times means 2010. That’s not really so long ago.
The second example of someone at the Times dressing up a Democrat’s alleged dirty laundry can be found in Wednesday’s partial transcript of an NYT magazine interview of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
Waters, you may recall, ran afoul of the House Committee on Ethics a few years ago after it was revealed her office was involved in steering federal funds to a bank in which she and her husband held a sizable financial stake. The bank, OneUnited, received $12 million in TARP funds in 2008. Waters, who sat on the House committee tasked specifically with directing the relief funds, never disclosed that she had ties to OneUnited.
The Ethics Committee launched an investigation in the summer of 2010 and charged her later with several violations. She was cleared of all charges a few years later.
Remember, the Ethics Committee, which, like all committees, is made up of both Democrats and Republicans, first started talking about bringing charges against Waters in July 2010, a few months before the GOP retook the House.
Yet, look at how the NYT magazine words the following question to the California congresswoman: “In 2010, the Republican-dominated House ethics committee investigated you for allegations that you tried to intervene on behalf of a bank that your husband had a financial stake in, but you were cleared in 2012.”
At the time of the charges, the Ethics Committee included exactly five Democrats and five Republicans.
It’s a good attempt to delegitimize the now-defunct investigation by making it sound like a politically motivated witch-hunt, but it’s simply not grounded in reality.
Shine a light on the powerful, indeed.
(h/t Lachlan Markay)
