Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Louis Goldstock, namesake of David Louis Pomerantz

http://observer.com/2017/01/nicholas-kristof-new-york-times-response/

AGENDAS • OPINION

Nicholas Kristof Should Have Retired 20 Years Ago

Faux ‘Apology’ Further Slimes Trump Voters and conveniently rewrites media campaign history

By  • 01/11/17 9:00am

My grandfather once put down a relative he despised with this line: “My wife said you’re not fit to eat with pigs. But I stuck up for you. I said you are.”
My grandfather didn’t think the relative would be dumb enough to take him at face value. Unlike New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who last week blithely slimed Trump voters in the course of purporting to “stick up for them” amid unfair treatment by the media.
Just who does Kristof think he is fooling with this kind of duplicity?
The veteran Timesman purports to stick up for Trump voters because, according to his argument, they’re not really venal; just ignorant and misunderstood. They got duped into supporting Trump because the media did insufficient vetting; journos didn’t work hard enough to explain his truly insidious nature and track record to less sophisticated folks. After all, he explains, this charlatan real estate magnate “was masterly at diverting us from substance.”
Now, look at the harrowing results!
“We will soon have as commander in chief the most evasive, ignorant and puerile national politician I’ve ever met, and while there are many factors behind his election, I think we in the media contributed by skimping on due diligence.”
Hello? Does anybody read Kristof’s column before he files?
Anybody vetting Kristof’s column—well, anybody not addled by ideological orthodoxies and hatreds—would have asked Kristof, “WTF? How can you say Trump is profoundly ‘evasive?’ Isn’t the whole criticism of him that he is unhinged and just blurts everything out irrespective of obvious consequences? Just which specific question from the press or anybody has he ever not answered?”
But, hey, it seems like very few people these days bother to ask anybody to read their stuff before filing. Even more damning is that Kristof’s supposedly forthright confession of media failings actually obscures and omits just how much rank bias, deceit, grotesque double standards, journalistic malpractice, and outright collusion with the Clinton campaign and DNC, his fellow fancy pants journos shamelessly employed during the campaign to defeat Trump.
For starters, it could be more accurately said that the media skimped on “due diligence” of many of Trump’s accusers—like Kristof’s paper not even telling readers where Jessica Leeds was employed when he supposedly sexually mauled her on an airplane business trip. Although the article—co-written by Michael Barbaro, who hung up when asked why that crucial detail for independent corroboration was omitted, as did political editor Carolyn Ryan—did include an old picture of Leeds, like the front-page story was her personal Facebook page.
And just what about Trump was not exhaustively scrutinized? In a major scoop, his private tax returns were printed in the New York Times itself. And how did all the scrutiny he received compare to the due diligence accorded his opponent, who, incidentally, along with her “national politician” husband, are actually far more renowned for being evasive than Trump, having even spawned an adjective that means “evasive”: Clintonesque.
Kristof didn’t raise that obvious question. But let’s look at some of the innumerable examples of grotesque double standards with how the media covered Trump versus the charmless shifty woman they assured everybody would win. Why don’t we start with David Duke compared to one little-noticed key alt-left leader in Hillary Clinton’s camp. Trump’s so-called relationship with David Duke was covered exhaustively by the media and even outright lied about by Washington Post reporter Janell Ross to depict him as a crypto-racist. But the usual suspects all ignored Hillary’s endorsement by the Communist Party USA chairman, even when video emerged of John Podesta running away from a reporter who asked, per Duke, if she wanted to renounce him.
Mistreatment of subordinates? Trump deriding his beauty contestant for porking out was covered extensively. “Miss Piggy” appeared all over the media.
But did a single reporter try to interview the bodyguards Hillary is notorious for mistreating? She is alleged even to have told one to “fuck off” when he said “Good Morning,” according to veteran investigative reporter Ron Kessler. That lovely exchange with a Secret Service agent dated to her First Lady days but a colorful New York Post story on Hillary treating her State Department security retinue so atrociously that they “privately snickered” when she broke her elbow also got no further mainstream press coverage, according to Google.
Spurious charges of anti-Semitism against Trump abounded. The “evidence,” offered by TalkingPointsMemo.com founder Josh Marhsall included an advertisement criticizing the Fed Reserve chair Janet Yelllin, who he noted is Jewish. Does that make anybody who ever criticized Republican Fed chair Alan Greenspan an anti-Semite?
Trump’s tweets were feverishly de-constructed by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank for Jew baiting. But Milbank’s compatriot, Ben Terrris, shortly after commiserating about the insidious tweets, literally ran away from me and hopped into a cab when I tried to give him a 2000 article from the left-leaning Guardianabout Hillary Clinton calling an underling “a fucking Jew bastard,” according to three eyewitnesses. (He later promised to call the guy but didn’t—more on that revealing encounter another time.)
Finances and financial entanglements? Everything about Trump’s businesses dating back to the early 1970s race discrimination lawsuit against him and his father when he was not even 30 was covered exhaustively. His penchant for getting good real estate tax breaks—something every similarly situated businessman in America aggressively seeks—was exhaustively reported by CNN like some kind of sinister and illegal plot. By way of many contrasts, Bill and Hillary’s Whitewater land deal was treated like an afterthought. Her shady dealings as a partner at Arkansas’ premiere corporate law firm also got short shrift.
Kristof’s column was basically an attempt to re-write history and avoid confronting true media failings, distortions and palpable deceit. He didn’t even quote actual voters; just various journalists.
This was the money shot for his pals.
“It didn’t help that the national media isn’t very diverse—not just in racial or ethnic terms, but also socioeconomically and geographically. We don’t have many national journalists with working-class or evangelical roots, so our coverage of Trump voters was often shallow or condescending, and we largely missed the fury and despair that Trump rode to victory.”
Is that supposed to be conciliatory and generous? Just like telling somebody, contrary to the misunderstandings, she is most certainly fit to eat with pigs? He’s basically apologizing for his media pals not grasping just how ignorant Trump voters really were. Suggesting that Trump voters were uniformly angry and desperate is actually incredibly shallow and condescending and contradicts some of the rare honest reporting like exhaustive stories by Washington Post reporter Jenna Johnson.
Some were angry and desperate. Some weren’t. Lots, of course, found Hillary unpalatable and would have voted for Bernie if he were the nominee. Trump’s message “Make America Great Again” could reasonably be construed by many as uplifting and optimistic and hopeful. Aspiring to greatness doesn’t mean you’re a desperate loser seeking grandeur—as the New York Times lead election story asserted, absent substantiation, about Trump voters when he captured the White House. Co-author Michael Barbaro immediately hung up when asked how he knew that’s why so many voted for Trump. Maybe Kristof can try to get an answer from him if he is serious about media accountability?
Kristof did not respond to a tweeted request for comment. I have a direct number for the suddenly publicity-shy journo so stay tuned.


- The Daily Caller - http://dailycaller.com -
Giving Thanks That WaPo Media Blogger’s Wife Is Alleged Human Pooper Scooper
Posted By Evan Gahr On 2:43 PM 11/26/2015 In | No Comments
Nobody asked me but these are the people and things I am thankful for:
–Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple and his lovely wife Stephanie Mencimer, an  alleged human pooper.  The story in Wemple’s own paper (which he refuses to dispute) that she got arrested for picking up dog doo from the ground and hurling it at a neighborhood shop keeper makes is a source of endless mirth.
It has also resulted in my daily Wemple fecal quota, at least one reference per day inserted into otherwise unrelated stories on everything from the free speech rights of government contractors to a military activist who fights Christian proselytization by armed forces brass. Journalism professors should make students do the same thing to sharpen their writing skills.
–The aforementioned activist, Mikey Weinstein, who unlike Wemple, BuzzFeed editor and diversity fetishist Ben Smith, WaPo executive editor Marty Baron and countless others, was man enough to stay on the phone with me when I asked rude and potentially embarrassing questions about his own organization.
–Fox News Wannabee Ed Schultz, who instead of just settling an obviously embarrassing breach of partnership lawsuit for a lousy $80,000, was bright enough to spend maybe close to $800,00 taking it to trial.  That made for nearly one week of hilarious Daily Caller stories on all the shenanigans that unfolded in Washington federal district court this May.
–The dozens of reporters who covered the Schultz lawsuit when it was filed in 2011, and subsequent judicial rulings in 2012 and 2014 but were too lazy to check the actual court file.  Consequently, I got all the hilarious stuff for exclusive DC stories, most notably Schultz begging Roger Ailes for a job and saying Chris Matthews spits when he talks when I looked into it early this year.
–Schultz, again, for letting me know that if I am on “Hardball,” it is a good idea to sit a safe distance from Chris Matthews.
–The Daily Caller because no other conservative publication in the country would let a writer accuse all of the Donald Trump’s critics of engaging in a circle jerk.  All the others likely consider themselves too high class to publish something like that .
–NBC producer and sound engineer Michael Queen for having the courage to wage a four years and counting legal fight against Ed Schultz, defender of the little guy, for not paying him for arranging the now defunct “Ed Show.”
–MSNBC president Phil Griffin for bringing to my attention the really fascinating question that Ed Schultz asked Barack Obama at his first presidential press conference. But for  some strange reason,  nobody else in America heard the question.
–Dave De Jesus, who had the courage and tenacity, to sue the great white liberals at the Washington Post for race discrimination after his Caucasian boss fired him abruptly without cause or warning after nearly 20 years of impeccable work as a WaPo ad salesman. He should be an inspiration to everyone about how to weather indignities and injustices without wallowing in self-pity or succumbing to debilitating hatred.
–A certain scary little Jewish girl who shared her column with me for eight months, spending countless hours editing my stories.  Very few people in Washington would do something like that.
–The Media Research Center board members who apparently contacted MRC president Brent Bozell after I told them he and Newsbusters.com editor Tim Graham were ignoring the Ed Schultz scandal.  Graham, who probably deep-sixed the story because he resents Betsy Rothstein mocking him unmercifully, published an item on the lawsuit the next day.
–The tanning salon that gave me a discounted one year membership so I could finally qualify for Ben Smith’s fellowship program for “journalists of color.”
–Daily Beast writer and former New York Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove. In his  Daily News item on my story that Ralph Nader called himself a “nigger” in a speech (yes, you read that correctly) Grove dubbed me the Washington Gadfly.
–My good friend from summer camp with whom I just re-united (through a postal mail letter with my Daily Caller articles, not Facebook!)
He taught me the glories of inciting racial tensions by asking our Latino counselor if he belonged to the notorious Puerto Rican terrorist group FALN.   (Name withheld so he is not forced to attend workplace racial sensitivity seminars.)
–My grandmother Ruth Goldstock, who introduced me to the wider world and the battle between good and evil, when I was only in elementary school.  She told me stories about the founding of Israel, the rise of Hitler, the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor and the New Deal.  They were so vivid somebody listening might have thought she had lived through these events.
But she experienced them all from afar in the New York City area. Bobbum, as I called her, had never even been to Israel, Washington or anywhere outside the United States, except Italy in 1969.
–My grandfather  Louis Goldstock, who taught me the importance of self-sacrifice and fealty. On a less lofty note, he told great jokes.
I just used money she left me to buy the video camera that I have used for ambush interviews of Marty Baron and Al Sharpton, with plenty more on the way.
–The liberal-leaning Washington lawyer who spends lots of time talking to me off the record for legal stories, which is crucial to me getting the facts and analysis correct.
Most people in DC don’t help reporters without some kind of personal gain.  Plus, he, she or it (that is my attempt at trans sensitivity) is all the more cool because h/s/i does not mind that many of these articles are liberal hit pieces.
–My mother and father, who are the best parents anybody could possibly have.
I got my creativity and curiosity from my mother.  My father, basically an old-style Democratic from the days before weirdos took over the party, is responsible for my indifference to liberal pieties.
Plus, they are very cute.
Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com
URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/26/giving-thanks-that-wapo-media-bloggers-wife-is-alleged-human-pooper-scooper/
Copyright © 2017 The Daily Caller. All rights reserved.

posted by Washington Gadfly Evan Gahr at 12:33 PM 0 Comments

Ruth Goldstock, namesake of Rebecca Pomerantz




AGENDAS • OPINION

No Consequences From Media Peers for Reporters Caught Colluding With Hillary

Colleagues yawn while star reporters like Thrush and Leibovich cooperate with Clinton campaign

By  • 10/24/16 9:45am

CLEVELAND, OH - JULY 20: Politico reporter Glenn Thrush talks with Julie Mason while recording an episode of "The Press Pool" at Quicken Loans Arena on July 20, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Politico reporter Glenn Thrush. Kirk Irwin/Getty Images for SiriusXM
Decades before social media and email, a remarkable but unsung Bronx housewife named Ruth Goldstock told her grandson, “Never put anything in writing that you wouldn’t want on the front page of The New York Times.”
These days, that wise advice applies to private communications by everybody in the entire country except elite journalists and news executives.
Elsewhere in America, when emails that the author assumed would never see the light of day became public he suffers some form of consequences—you know, stuff like plummeting poll numbers, possible jail time or forced resignation. This goes for everybody from Hillary Clinton and the former head of Sony Pictures on down.
But if you’re a Politico or New York Times scribe or CNBC anchor John Harwood and hacked emails emerge that reveal you outright colluding with Hillary Clinton campaign—by giving advice or providing the communications director “veto” power over what to include from your interview with the candidate or allowing campaign chair John Podesta veto power over your stories—that is another matter.
Your media friends will not censure you or even scold you—in fact, they don’t bother to contact you directly. Instead, you can hide between a crafty spokesman who won’t even answer specific questions but acts like he’s the publicist for some elusive Hollywood star and that a journalist determined to ask standard pointed questions is actually pining to profile him for Vanity Fair.
That was essentially the response from Politico spokesman Brad Dayspring when this columnist asked to interview reporter Glenn Thrush about his newly revealed emails. Dream on, he replied, emailing me: “I want to play third base for the Yankees.”
Hacked emails reveal that Thrush has apologized to campaign chairman John Podesta for writing a “shitty” story that embarrassed the operation. In another email, Thrush called himself a “hack” and promised to let Podesta approve parts of his story on the campaign’s fundraising efforts.
“No worries Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u,” he wrote. “Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this Tell me if I fucked up anything.”
In multiple email exchanges, Politico spokesman Brad Dayspring, who would not even give out his own phone, did not answer a single factual question about Thrush. But did call him one of the “top political reporters in the country.”
Really? Top reporters theoretically treat both sides equally. Has he ever given Republicans advance copies of stories? If so, who?
When Daily Caller reporter Alex Pfeiffer made similar inquiries to Dayspring about Thrush he was also stonewalled. The flack proceeded to question Pfeiffer’s objectivity because he had called Thrush a “fucking joke” on Twitter. But again ignored specific questions.
Ironically, Pfeiffer’s bon mot was in response to Thrush tweeting something that illustrated his own rank bias. Thrush said that he would not have written one of his stories if he could have known it would end up helping the Trump campaign.
Dayspring followed the same game plan when it emerged in another hacked email that Politico investigative reporter Ken Vogel sent an entire draft of his story to the DNC communications director for approval.
Dayspring is good at his job. But Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple is an even better Politico flak catcher.
Having attacked his D.C. rival for years, Wemple actually defended Vogel in a lengthy post, headlined, “Leave Politico’s Ken Vogel Alone.”
The self-appointed media ethics policeman certainly left Vogel alone.
Nothing in the article indicates Wemple tried to contact him directly. Instead, he just quoted Politico’s official statement verbatim.
“Politico’s policy is to not share editorial content pre-publication except as approved by editors. In this case the reporter was attempting to check some very technical language and figures involving the DNC’s joint fundraising agreement with the Clinton campaign. Checking the relevant passages for accuracy was responsible and consistent with our standards; Sharing the full piece was a mistake and not consistent with our policies. There were no substantive changes to the piece and in fact the final story was blasted out by the both RNC and the Sanders campaign, and actually prompted Politifact to revise its rating on the issue in question.”
Wemple called the response “excellent.”
Well, by the standard of skillful sophistry, it was “excellent.”
Notice that Politico did not even apologize. It just called Vogel’s action “a mistake.”
Reporters are supposed to accord that kind of eliding of responsibility by public officials considerable skepticism. Vogel did not make a “mistake.” And, if his action was “not consistent” with POLITICO policies, why was he not disciplined or reprimanded? Ditto for Thrush.
But the most curious thing was Politico’s insistence that even though policies were violated in reporting, the final product was excellent—objective and hard-hitting. Imagine how well a parallel rationale would fly from anybody else.
Suppose a boxing promoter busted for fixing the fight said, “Well, this guy would have won anyway, he threw better punches than Joe Frazier. It was a great fight.” Or if somebody indicted for insider trading said he would have bought the same stock anyway.
The New York Times displays similarly situational ethics.
Hot shot New York Times magazine writer Mark Leibovich, himself embarrassed by a leaked email in which he told Hillary Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri she “could veto what you didn’t want” from his interview with the candidate and omitted at her request dicey comments about Sarah Palin, recently defended his actions. But from the safe confines of his computer.
Leibovich claimed he recently did the same kind of thing with Trump—unlike just about every politician or organizational official in Washington does—refuses to answer questions about his self-serving spin. The voice-activated phone system won’t connect callers to Leibovich—even though just about everybody else, including the bureau chief, can be reached the same way.
An actual person who subsequently answered the main phone line started interrogating a caller—where do you work? what is this about?—who asked to be connected to the great man himself.
Alas, saying more or less the following did not do the trick. “What difference does it make who I am? Maybe I work at the ape house at the National Zoo. At the very least I’m a reader, right? Isn’t the Times supposed to be accountable to readers?”
Of course, consequence free journalism extends way beyond newly-revealed emails.  In August, Washington Post scribe Janell Ross outright lied about Donald Trump—not shaded things or omitted things but outright lied—in order to depict him as some kind of crypto-racist. On the same day that Trump disavowed Duke on “Good Morning America” Ross wrote he had not done so in 48 hours, contradicting the paper’s own fact checker.
Asked to justify herself by this columnist, Ross said the claim was was merely her perspective and quickly hung up. Moral of the story: hot shot journalists don’t need to worry about anything they put in writing—privately or publicly—even when they outright lie about Donald Trump.
Ruth Goldstock was a remarkable woman. Born the same year as Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Rosa Parks, she had the kind of qualities—beauty, charm, intelligence—that if my grandmother’s life had taken a different course she might have ended up a significant public figure herself. But even she could not have anticipated how far down the toilet journalistic standards would eventually go.
Thrush, Vogel and Leibovich ignored multiple inquiries. But maybe their journalism peers ought to start making them.
Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/25/its-a-wonderful-life-the-christmas-q/

This year I  decided to torture my sources, coworkers and other journalists with a Christmas question [inspired by Evan Gahr
Q: “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  If someone in your life had never been born how would your world have turned out significantly different? Excluding parents, spouses and kids.
Evan Gahr, freelance D.C. journo, D.C. Gadfly, resident phone enthusiast: “My grandmother Ruth. Except from her, I grew up in an apolitical family. When I was in fifth grade and at her house, my grandmother told me panoramic stories about the founding of Israel, the rise of Hitler, the Holocaust and FDR, the depression and the New Deal. Anyone who heard these stories, so vivid and passionate, would have thought she was a Holocaust survivor or grew up on a Kibbutz before the founding of Israel or been one of the young lawyers who came to Washington in the early 1930s to help Roosevelt set up the New Deal. The moment I heard these stories I became entranced with current events and wanted to be part of them and have my opinion matter. I fell naturally into opinion journalism. I also got from these stories my Manichean view of the world. There were clear heroes and villains. Yeah, yeah. Not everything is black and white and people are complicated. But liberal journalists who think they are being really nuanced and sophisticated by pretending everything is a shade of gray are the real simpletons. Anyway this world view of stark absolutes made me determined to expose political and intellectual wrongdoing and dishonesty, best accomplished these days by getting people on the phone who normally hide behind secretaries because they know what I busted them for is indefensible. (The articles are also a manifestation of my desire to have fun and be noticed.) I also got my fierce sense of Jewishness from my grandmother. We never talked about race issues — an abiding journalistic passion of mine these days. But one thing my grandmother said stood with me and has much to do with my current sensibility (an abhorrence of diversity fetishists). She said there are good and bad of every race. Diversity fetishists assume all blacks are good and therefore hiring more at newspapers would automatically be a boon for journalism. And they assume all white males are bad. My grandmother was beautiful and charming and smart and diplomatic. If she had been born in another era, when there more opportunities for woman and Jews, she could easily have ended up a senator, governor or high-level diplomatic. She also loved and adored me so much and made me feel so special that years later all that gave me the fortitude to overcome big difficulties. The year before she passed away and was very feeble, I had my first op-ed published in the New York Post. My grandfather bought the paper and showed it to her. I said what did Bobbum think? He said, ‘She didn’t know what the hell it was. She kissed it.'”



posted by Washington Gadfly Evan Gahr at 12:24 PM 0 Comments