America This Week, September 15, 2023: "State Media's Coming-Out Party"

Biden censorship case We either will or will not get to that. Then there was a sort of cascade of other stories that came after, some involving Ukraine, some involving the DNC and RFK and the Democratic Party election. And then probably more recently. The one that I think you and I both found really interesting was this sudden White House diktat to the media? Maybe diktat is a strong word.

They're allowed to do this, but there was a kind of a remarkable episode, just in terms of media. The White House put out a 14-page appendix and a two-page letter and sent it to basically all the major news organizations in the country. Instructing them basically to ignore any upcoming impeachment story. Walter, Do you have any reactions, just at first blush, to the whole idea of a White House official sending a letter to the press? Is that OK?

Is it not ok?

Or we got a long memo absolutely demonizing and damaging, attempting to damage the reputation of Monica Lewinsky. It was scurrilous as hell. It went so far as to call her a sort of promiscuous liar and so on.

And it didn't sit well with me, however, I remember getting it and going, Wow, this is how they operate.

It was, however, behind the scenes and nothing that got reported on in itself. And I didn't see its phrasings and its wordings appear immediately in print. But this is a little different. This thing came out and I don't know how private it was, or if it doesn't seem, anybody in the press felt the need to not report on it.

They reported on it immediately, and what was strange is-.

When the lines between politicians and the media get blurred, it's unsettling. I think it has a.

Yeah, so the effect of when the audience doesn't know whether they're dealing with the voice of the newspaper. Or whether it's a quote from a politician, or whether it's a mixture of both. It's confusing. And it's kind of in keeping with the kind of general theme of the blurring of lines between institutions that used to check each other. Now they're kind of morphing into one big bureaucratic entity. And yeah, I think that was confusing. And I mean, you've seen sort of op-o books for it, like during campaigns.

This is a standard thing that happens in campaigns, like campaigns will hire a private company like Fusion. GPS is a classic example. They will basically do research that's designed to be planted directly in news stories, and typically the journalist doesn't actually see the book.

It just gets pieces of it get sent to the journalist. Periodically, you learn this or that fact, you get sent to this or that address, or this or old story. But it's all in the book, if you've ever actually seen it. Some of them can get as long as 40 or 50 pages, but this 14 page thing read exactly like that. And it gets sent out. And then they report it, and then, as you say they do, they not only report it. But then they go on to ape all the themes in the op-o book, which was really weird.

They're not only repeating the themes, they're not only taking whole word clusters out of quotes and then voicing them in their own voice. But they're showing us that they're doing it this, they're not hiding it, in fact, they're kind of boasting of it. They're saying, you know, we got this letter telling us what to say, and now we're going to say it because it's true.

And it was a kind of coming out party for state media, as far as I'm concerned. Listen, we're not going to hide this anymore. We get instructions and the instructions are true and correct, and we're good soldiers and now we will repeat them. And there it is. You needn't have any conspiracy theories about our collusion with spokespeople from the top anymore.

And the CNN piece was amazing because one of the lines in the letter was to the effect of. And I think these are the actual words we depend on, quote the independent media.

To tell the truth.

So it's a quote.

Um, covering impeachment as a process story. Republicans say X, but the White House says Y is a disservice to the American public, who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable. Sam wrote, Sam's wrote, He's actually telling us a line in this.

Everyone must laugh.

You know, the cups and balls trick?

But let's do it with clear cups so the audience can't even see when. When we do the, you know, the when we put it into the into the wrong cup, and it's it's like, incredible. I saw that live when I was like 16, gave me so much respect for them as magicians.

But this, this is just like that. It's clear cups and balls. They're not hiding the fact that they're doing pulling a trick on you. So just to give an example of the kind of thing that went on this week. So Sam sends sends this letter, one of the top lines in the appendix. It was a two part thing.

There was a two part sort of introductory letter, and then there was a seven part. A two page introductory letter and a seven part appendix that went on for 14 pages. In the appendix, one of the top line says The Facts Show. And here he's talking about a form that the FBI uses to memorialize tips.

F.BI FD 103 forms are simply the memorialization of tips to the F.BI. They are not documented. proof and allegations do not need to be corroborated to be included on the form. They are simply unverified claims. And they're talking about a tip they got from a source that Joe Biden was maybe taking money from. I believe it was Burisma in that case.

Right, so they are simply unverified claims. Instantaneously we get, we get headlines that say the following. Here's an example from the AP this actually preceded. But. But it gets the point.

Grassley releases full FBI memo with unverified claims about Hunter Biden's work in Ukraine. Then there's the Hill. Republicans release FBI form with unverified Biden burisma allegations. ABC In rare move, Grassley releases unverified FBI source report alleging Biden involvement in bribe.

So there's two things that I have a problem here. One is using the exact same words that you're handed by the White House. The other thing is, isn't unverified allegations redundant?

You know, no investigation should be launched unless all of its conclusions are already proved, but we can't prove them until we investigate them. So you just can't do it. I guess, Uh, I don't know.

In fact, it's to be expected that there's going to be a majority of the other party very often when the president's in office in the House.

But essentially, the House investigation acts sort of like a grand jury investigation, and they sort of return an indictment and then the Senate acts as like the real jury in the case. So the the initial impeachment, uh, as you say, it's supposed to be an investigation. Among other things, there should not be a prohibitive barrier to starting it. That's so ridiculously high.

Now I don't know how you feel about it. Like, I think impeachment should be like a really high barrier. From what I've seen so far, I probably, like, wouldn't vote to convict yet. I don't know on any of this stuff.

I didn't think so in the first Trump indictment either. Um, the second one, you know, maybe, I think, might have been convictable. It's it's, uh, depending on how you look at things, but you can't say there's no evidence in this case.

Can you, Walter? I mean, I think that's whether or not you think it's so convincing that it that is decisive and calls for somebody to remove from office. That's one thing, but we're not talking about that, are we?

Uh, he. Both of which succeeded, but did not succeed at trial, and, uh, uh, the evidence in them. I don't know, man. It was pretty slight, it wasn't. And in the second one, it wasn't gathered over any period at all in any kind of, uh, truly arduous investigatory process. It was a quick impeachment.

Um, in the first one, the evidence seemed to be some phone call he made or transcripts of a phone call. Um, you know, we've got at least that in this case. So there, I mean, it's ridiculously disingenuous for the Democrats, who probably lowered the bar on impeachment more than it ever has been. To now be all shocked, shocked about, uh, turnabout.

Uh, repeated, it's, it's, it's clint. Not only it's claims, but it's verbiage. And I go now, why would they do this? Were they literally competing with each other? I said, literally, I've got to stamp that out, but, uh, so put a dollar into the literally exactly but but. But were they competing? were they competing? To show compliance? Prompt and total and full?

I mean, I can imagine the sort of story editor or whatever at one of these places, one of these papers, or one of these cable channels. Going like, Hey, wait, it's been an hour since we got this letter. Have we repeated its charges? Yet? Yes, we have. Um, did we rephrase some of the? uh, did we rephrase some of the requests? I know we're going to do them.

Literally, good, um, get it out before the other guy does. Um, it's an. It's the opposite of a scoop, okay?

Yeah, we, we, we. Yeah. What would the term be is that? Is that a win?

What you going to do about it, you know? Uh, state media, you bet.

Is that right? Is it Wednesday morning, Tuesday night, something like that?

Uh, but but for sure, it was this week, one of the letter, the lines in the letter says For years, Republicans have tried to muddy the waters by attracting media coverage of their allegations. Uh, and then he goes on, blah, blah, blah, and he talks about what's wrong with the investigation that same night.

Cause I think it did came out, uh. Wednesday, 7 24 p.m. On Wednesday night. Headline in the Washington Post to column by Paul Cain. McCarthy struggling to govern frozen impeachment. Chum into the waters, So it's the same, I mean, muddy waters, chum waters, right? Okay, so step three. Almost immediately after that, Sam's retweets the article and says, McCarthy struggling to government throws impeachment chum into the waters.

Uh, he can quote, he quote can never quite, uh, sufficiently appease his far right flank. So this is Ian Sam's planting. A quote in the media, which dutifully repeats it in a headline in the Washington Post, which he then retweets as if it's news. It's, and the whole thing's out in the open. That's the thing that's so amazing about it. Like the In the Cheney episode, they didn't public publicize it.

Right, the first part here we have the whole thing, we get to see the whole deal. I mean, it seems it's crazy, isn't it?

It's like those beams that show, you know, arrows going around in a circle. You know, I tell you what to say, you say it, I quote you saying it, but then there's Matt, another step which you picked out, which is then journalism, Professor praises.

And this was picked up by a surprisingly large number of mainstream news organizations, including a wire service. The AP actually put without evidence in the headline, which you can be dismissive of the evidence, but you can't say there's no evidence in this case, right? You could be unconvinced by it. This is the same error that Philip Bump made in his conversation with Noam Dorman. Like, eventually, he concedes, Okay, that is evident.

It's evidence right after saying, I'll show that there was none.

So this ends up in headlines Vanity Fair immediately that same day, Uh, puts out a headline Kevin McCarthy This is a tweet headline, actually. But Kevin McCarthy is ordering House committees to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, despite Republicans having uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing by the president. Jay Rosen, NYU journalism professor, who, I'm embarrassed to say, I used to think was a sharp guy. But he he puts in, he grabs this tweet and writes, See, it's not that hard.

You don't have to wait until the 14th paragraph to introduce the information that there's no evidence to support an impeachment inquiry. You can even be begin there. After all, it's newsworthy that the Republicans would attempt, would attempt it on such grounds. So he's saying that not only should you say there's no evidence, but you should cover the story as if the story was the the bogus, the bogosity of the Republican uh attempts. This is mind blowing.

Let's just make the point.

The thing that could end your career was getting a big fact wrong, or repeatedly doing it, or whatever it was. So if we didn't know for sure, we'd say allegedly reportedly right, it was always we don't know. There's this thing out there. Here's what we do know.

We'll tell you. And then we did that because we were trying to stay in the area of what we knew for sure. And then let put it on the reader. Make it their responsibility to decide what to make of all this, right? And that that was, it was a relationship that was defined.

We're telling you we're doing the best we can. Um, that's our job. Your job is to evaluate this. And if we, you know, we start stepping into your world, let us know. And you know, if you, and if you misinterpret us, we'll let you know.

But, uh, it seemed to him.

And in this one, so don't even bother citing the other one, that was the X and Y business. Also, if you have a conclusion, put it up at the top rather than down after you've shown it to be valid or, uh, you know, credible. And uh. So, let's be one sided, let's be lopsided, and let's do it very quickly, so that people don't have to read first to get to it.

Not, not be fair. They're asked being asked to be absolutely monolithic. And. And and it's not an anti Biden story to report on an impeachment proceeding, it's simply the fact it's what's going on in Washington. But here they're being commanded. Every time you mention impeachment, make sure to say it's an unjust and unwarranted impeach. Um, and so where are you to even go to find out the bare, objective facts of what's going on?

They're, they're, they're being asked in, uh, attached to every such account, an op-ed.

Um, I think this is new. And and it's funny you talk about the the phrase, how this phrase came into being with Trump. I just found this. NPR even did a salutary story about its own use of the phrase without evidence. Um, years ago, uh, so they did a story here. It's by Kelly McBride. Without evidence is a new catchphrase at NPR.

Um, when a reporter asked Donald Trump for his thoughts on the teenager who killed two protesters and injured a third person in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Trump said. It looked like self-defense. Deleted the NPR story later that day, reads the Trump claimed quote, without evidence that it appeared the gunman was acting in self-defense. Uh, then it's over. The last week. NPR listeners and readers noted the shorthand use of evidence a number of times, as well as several of the stories where a fact check lack force.

It was all altogether missing. I've previously pointed out that it's insufficient when reporting on the administration's claims that quote mail in, that mail in ballots are vulnerable to counterfeiting.

Um, to, uh, well, anyway. She goes on to say that, basically that it's insufficient just to say that it's wrong, right? Like you have to, you have to flag the false statement as quickly as possible. It's interesting that that they pick that story, that's the um, that's the Kenosha shooter story. I'm blanking on his name already.

That's embarrassing. Kyle Rittenhouse. And who ended up being? It turned out it was self-defense, he ended up being acquitted. Um, but they're not only doing it, they're telling us they're doing it.

They're bragging about it. This is the same phenomenon when they started using the word lie. Look at us, we we're, we're so we're so bold and aggressive.

And you know, we're we're basically Chuck D doing Fight the power. We're going to say, call lies out when they're lies, uh, but they're basically doing it in sync with. It's a messaging apparatus.

At the end of the at the end of a story in the Washington poster on CNN, there will be applause. Uh, there'll be an expert weighs in, and they'll give themselves, you know, four Oscars or whatever, like we used to do in Spy magazine, you know, um?

And then there'll be a little box at the bottom. Jay Rosen says. Never have you told the truth more fully and directly. I like how you put the without evidence in the first sentence. Usually you wait till the second paragraph. Good going, guys, and then the Washington Post responds.

Thanks, Jay. We're just trying to do our jobs as independent journalists as soon as we, as soon as we got this letter from the White House.

And then, and then, and then, and then at the end, and then at the end of Fact Checker. We'll come and say, Uh, you know, Jay boss, I love how you guys interact. I think that we should do this every week, um?

I know, I know, I know and love Peter Travers, I think he's a great institution. But. But um, for Pulitzer's Pulitzer.

It's, listen, dude, it's network in print, it's, uh, the movie network, uh, these people, really, they. They want applause tracks, they want official accreditation. You know, fact-checking departments used to be buried in magazines and newspapers.