If you can remember back to last week, The New York Times ran a story that Secretary Clinton had stated that the Russians were grooming one of the female Democratic primary candidates for a third party run as a spoiler to ensure the President’s reelection. She also took a justified and accurate swipe at Jill Stein. It turns out that The New York Times made an error in their reporting. And they’ve corrected it. But, as appears to be standard operating procedure for The New York Times, they didn’t announce the correction. The now corrected article doesn’t actually make logical sense anymore as it includes Congresswoman Gabbard’s initial response to the assumption that Secretary Clinton was referring to her. Congresswoman Gabbard’s initial response was based on the misquote/misreporting that Secretary Clinton stated that the Russians were grooming this unnamed female Democratic candidate.
On Friday, the NYT did a piece about a podcast Secretary Clinton did with David Plouffe. They incorrectly quoted her saying that the “Russians” were “grooming” a candidate running in the Democratic primary. They rightfully fixed it to reflect that she was taking about the GOP. pic.twitter.com/iFCphQhZcU
— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) October 22, 2019
This really significant error set off days of commentary slamming Secretary Clinton, which included the President weighing in both on Twitter and in remarks to one of the press gaggles he has every day. It also allowed Congresswoman Gabbard who was not named by Secretary Clinton to use this for fundraising. And Congresswoman Gabbard did so using terminology and verbal imagery that is usually only directed at Secretary Clinton by Republicans, conservatives, and Russian bots and trolls! Secretary Clinton is, of course, correct in her analysis, especially as now properly and correctly reported. Some of Congresswoman Gabbard’s biggest promoters, especially on and through social media, are the various neo-nationalists, neo-fasicsts, neo-NAZIs , and white supremacists that are collectively labeled the alt-right and conservative media figures, as well as a host of Russian backed and funded bots and trolls.
And yes, she said that certain fringe members of the Democratic and Green parties are assets to the Russians. Well guess what folks? That’s true. She didn’t call anyone a spy, as some are wrongly asserting for their own political gain.
— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) October 22, 2019
This also led to a number of people, including several other Democratic primary candidates, coming to Congresswoman Gabbard’s defense because she’s a veteran. As if current or former US military personnel haven’t unintentionally aided foreign actors from allies to peer competitors to hostile foreign actors, as well as deliberately selling out the US. And the same goes for civilian, non-uniform US personnel. Names like Arnold, Pollard, Manning, Snowden, Hansen, and Ames come right to mind. Just because one has served the US, in uniform or out, in a war zone or in much more permissive environments, doesn’t automatically confer some sort of special protection from doing the wrong thing, intentionally or unintentionally, at a later date.
While Congresswoman Gabbard pledged several months ago that she wouldn’t run as a third party so as not to spoil the election for the Democratic nominee and throw it to the President by allowing him to once again lose the popular vote while eking out a narrow Electoral College victory, this has been a concern for almost 10 months. I delineated this concern last January in a discussion of whether Senator Sanders might be pushed to run third party by his key advisors, supporters, and surrogates if he didn’t get the nomination (emphasis mine)!
Sanders, no matter what he does, has the potential to function as a super spoiler for the Democrats in 2020. Think Jill Stein’s effect on the electoral college on steroids. And if he decides he’s going to be a team player and not do so, his trusted agents won’t play ball and you’ll have the same problem regardless. And we can now add Congresswoman Gabbard to the potential spoilers category emanating from Sanders orbit.
Regardless of what Congresswoman Gabbard may or may not do next year, The New York Times made a huge error here. They misreported what Secretary Clinton said, which sparked several days of controversy and negative reporting, and then, when they realized they’d inaccurately transcribed the quote, they corrected it without announcing they’d made the mistake and the correction. This isn’t responsible. We are currently living in the fifth or sixth year, depending on when you want to date its start, of an unconventional Russian war against the US that uses information warfare to influence Americans to destroy ourselves. The US is not doing a particularly good job of fighting Russia as the US government and most Americans don’t seem to have figured out that we are at war. One of the major effects the Russians are trying to achieve is to influence Americans through the weaponization of information, misinformation, disinformation, and information for provocation in order to enflame American political; ethnic, racial, and religious; rural, urban, and suburban; sexuality/gender; and economic differences so that Americans destroy ourselves. In order to do this they have to use weaponized information for effect. And the effect they are trying to achieve is to make it impossible for Americans to both agree on what is true, factual, and accurate and, in many cases, even know what is true, factual, and accurate. The objective is to make it so that for Americans nothing is true and, therefore, anything and everything is possible. The New York Times needs to stop doing this. Not least of which because they do it over and over and over again and that pattern leads to an ugly conclusion: that as an organization they’re doing it on purpose. But even if they aren’t doing it on purpose, what they’re doing only assists the Russian’s information war against the US.
Open thread!
BruceFromOhio
You can just stop there. No, really.
chopper
republicans, russia, russia, republicans, what’s the difference?
honest.
Jersey Tomato
It’s amazing that all of these little “mistakes” seem to work to the benefit of the GOP. What are the odds?
hells littlest angel
I can’t remember the last time I used up my five free articles a month in the NYT. It’s just a click-bait site with pretensions to seriousness.
BruceFromOhio
@chopper: republicans are tools. I think you can figure out the other words from there.
Marcopolo
Of course they did. I call this my not surprised face.
A little OT but if you have an R congresscritter please please please call them tomorrow & let them know after seeing Amb. Taylor’s statement you believe it is clear that Trump needs to be impeached: 202-224-3121
Adam L Silverman
@chopper: I’ve never seen Senator Graham eat borscht.
chris
Seems germane.
Adam L Silverman
@chris: Yep. From my paid column last week:
arkvalleyvoice.com/thinking-security-political-warfare-and-the-2020-us-elections-what-can-be-done/
Mary G
For a long time I thought the Times just had a culture of snobby East Coasters who think their shit don’t stink and everyone from New Jersey to my house is an ignorant rube, However, both this incident and the fact that it took them days to report that the State Department probe/witch hunt had found no crimes in Hillary’s emails on page A16, and as far as I know, have made no response to criticisms of these later screwups is sketchy as fuck. Oh well, just another item for President Harris to investigate in 2021. We’re going to need a biggest FBI/DOJ.
p.a.
“All the news that fits our aims”
smintheus
General Michael Flynn was a Russian asset. Fetishizing military service is nuts; all kinds of people end up serving, including cranks, crooks, and cretins.
Oh, and even if Clinton didn’t say it, I will: Putin is grooming Gabbard as a potential spoiler just as the Republicans and a host of other repulsive actors are.
Mary G
For light relief, here is a cat bigger than Steve:
laura
@Adam L Silverman: why, it seems like just yesterday, newsrooms accross America started mass firings of actual, trained, professional reporters because faceberg insisted that all the kool kids were wanting digital platforms of brief infotainment, and only squares cared about reading a newspaper. And so here we are, and the mightiest of national newspapers are either overly concerned about their libertarian owner’s fear of paying his fair share of taxes on wealth beyond measure and purpose, or so consumed with legitimizing and propping up a political party so foul and base.
@chris: Runa Sandvik is just the latest canary in the coal mine, pointing out the peril of an uninformed or misinformed citizenry. Here’s hoping Bedbug Stephens puts her in her place in this Sunday’s editorial.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: Another reason not to use a bidet.
?BillinGlendaleCA
The New York Times is garbage.
Immanentize
@Adam L Silverman:
You have no idea what you are missing
Adam L Silverman
@laura: Unfortunately.
Immanentize
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
But BAUD is sublime.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
Has the US been recently (as in before Trump) been going on the offensive to target the citizens of these regimes to influence their political cultures in a positive direction? If not, we should be, if we want to prevent the world from sliding into authoritarianism. I realize the PRC and North Korea might be harder to influence, but the others are more open for the most part
John Revolta
I don’t get it. If the Times misquoted Clinton so badly, making it seem like she was accusing Russia of grooming a candidate (which is a BFD after all) then why hasn’t she said anything?
Adam L Silverman
@Immanentize: I’ve lived in Europe. I know exactly what I’m missing.
chris
@Adam L Silverman: That whole piece is excellent, Adam. Everyone should read it.
(Aside: Canada would be delighted to show y’all how to run an election. Every time I go to vote I try to imagine a way to cheat but can’t come up with a way to beat a thick paper ballot and a pencil>)
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: We tried to engage with them through a variety of means. From Voice of America and Radio Free Europe and equivalents to USAID funded civil society development and promotion programs. The President and his appointees have rolled a lot of that back.
Uncle Cosmo
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I have it on good authority that birds are refusing to shit on it as a cage-liner and fresh fish wrapped in it are wriggling free.
Eric NNY
A-F’N-MEN Adam.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
Were these programs effective? As a hypothetical, how effective would a “fighting fire with fire” approach be with respect to Russian disinformation campaigns in your opinion? Of course, the real aim of programs such as Radio Free Europe should be constructive rather than destructive, encouraging peaceful organic regime change
ETA: also congrats on your piece
Adam L Silverman
@John Revolta: She did, through Merrill, who is her spokesman. Which is how The NY Times knew they had to correct their story. But it was the weekend, so everyone else just ran with the narrative they had been served up.
Matt McIrvin
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: The US often tried, but was, with some justification, frequently accused of hypocrisy.
Adam L Silverman
@chris: Thanks for the kind words.
different-church-lady
Methinks the Gabbard doth protest too much!
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Effective enough that Putin, Orban, and others have gone after them, run them out of their countries, harassed the host country nationals and the host country NGOs we or our NGOs partner with, block the transmissions, block the websites, etc.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Ever hear of Radio Free Europe? Voice of America? Radio Martí?
Mike in NC
How the hell did this idiot ever get elected to US Congress?
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Or my personal favorite:
FlyingToaster
@chris:
Massachusetts uses those too.
We hold hand recounts on the floor of the HS gymnasium, using the basketball cam and broadcasting it on local cable access.
SiubhanDuinne
@Immanentize:
I wish he’d be sublime on Balloon Juice again.
PeakVT
I’m pretty sure Warren and Harris aren’t being groomed by anyone.
I’m also pretty sure Sanders needs to working on his grooming.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Gracias pero no gracias.
;)
ThresherK
I can lose an acquaintance or two over even mentioning this to them, after said acquaintances chose Tulsi as the One True Heir of Bernie to die for.
I can live without these acquaintances.
Kay
When I first saw it I thought “oh, maybe Hillary Clinton can weigh in on politics now like every other former pol in the universe” – but no. She’s not allowed. They simply won’t permit it.
kindness
I knew the NY Times was bad. I didn’t think they were treason bad but it makes sense once you consider it.
Adam L Silverman
@kindness: I had to really resist the urge to finish by stating that by continuing to do things like this they were providing aid and comfort to Russia’s information war against the US.
Kay
For me, I’d just like to say I loathed Gabbard from the first debate and it has nothing to do with Russia or Hillary Clinton.
I think she’s creepy and malicious and she’s on some quasi-religious mission. I’m right, too. Steer clear.
Kay
Guffaw. You have to admire Philadelphia. They don’t fool around :)
John Revolta
@Adam L Silverman: All righty then. Thanks.
NotMax
@Kay
Good a place as any to take a minute and peek back at 2016.
Adam L Silverman
@John Revolta: It was a good question.
James E Powell
Wonder why there wasn’t any of that automatic protection for John Kerry.
Mike in NC
@Adam L Silverman: We once made a port call to Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico where street vendors sold BBQ iguana. Did not sample.
Duane
Not only have other countries found an effective way to undermine our democracy, they found the perfect front group in republicans. With their failed ideology and win no matter what politics they are the perfect stooges.
SiubhanDuinne
Since this is an open thread:
Just saw that the USPS will be honouring the late Gwen Ifill on a postage stamp. Nice tribute to her.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: I didn’t remember that she met with Trump, what a loon. Has the Hawaii Democratic Party gotten rid of that loony chair?
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Postmaster General recently announced plans to step down in January. Dolt 45’s replacement will find a way to scotch that. “Nothing says we have to print more than a half dozen of them.”
James E Powell
The official policy of the New York Times is to hate on Hillary Clinton. It’s like one of their top five secret corporate missions. No one has ever explained it. Everyone who works or has worked there takes great umbrage when it’s pointed out, but it’s a fact. They just hate her and they are never going to stop smearing her.
oldgold
The man is shameless.
Millard Filmore
@NotMax:
Look for Trump’s friends to scarf them all up. What a treasure for stamp collectors.
Mary G
@SiubhanDuinne: It is. I remember when she started on one of the shows, maybe Washington Week in Review, and she’d speak up, all the white men would jump in their chairs and look at her like “you’re not allowed to speak.” After a while they were scared of her demolishing their bullshit arguments.
SFAW
@oldgold:
Will it be in English, or in Russian? Or maybe there’s a language known as “asswipe”?
Procopius
@Adam L Silverman: It would appear from the widespread public condemnation of abandoning the Kurds that Erdogan’s disinformation/provocation/propaganda campaign was not very successful. Do not hire those people as campaign consultants. On the other hand, the Russian IRA, according to the DNC, DCCC, Hillary, and the MSM, were incredibly successful. They got Trump elected by spending only $130,000 on facebook ads, while he was only able to raise half as much as Hillary. Help them get H1B visas and hire them.
rikyrah
Where is Kay????
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Saves time having to wrap anything up to throw in the trash. The garbage is printed right on the paper.
Procopius
@Adam L Silverman:
Anybody who works in what is euphemistically called “communications” knows perfectly well that any statement issued on the weekend goes straight to /dev/null. This is done when “communicator” is perfectly happy with the misquote, but is covering their gluteal muscles.
prostratedragon
Inspired by the experiences of a State Department tour of Asia in 1963:
Ruckus
@John Revolta:
And be misquoted – again?
It’s seemingly so normal for the FTFNYT to be just flat wrong that most of the paper would have to be all corrections one day a week.
Martin
Can we pass a law that says that the NYT aren’t allowed to say or even refer generally to the Clintons? I know that freedom of speech stuff is important, but I’m only talking about one outlet and one topic. And it’s less because we don’t want to hear news about them, it’s because the NYT keeps doing stupid shit and we’re all tired of stupid shit.
NotMax
@oldgold
Hope the Dems are up to snuff on the procedure for calling to order via Rule XIX.
Partial excerpt:
Ruckus
@James E Powell:
Bill and Hillary are considered carpetbaggers by the FTFNYT. Always have been, always will be.
And yes I know the origin of carpetbaggers in the US. Still applies in this case.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Asswipe is a dialect, mostly used by the republican party, as it perfectly distills who they are and how they speak.
NotMax
@Millard Filmore
The then Acting Postmaster General: “Win-win!”
//
?BillinGlendaleCA
@oldgold: Who? Former House Impeachment manager Lindsay Graham? That guy?
Aleta
Another piece of this story is in Tim Wu’s opinion piece yesterday at the Times, which he begins by repeating that error from last week’s Times piece (He writes: “On Friday, Hillary Clinton suggested on a podcast that the Russian government might be “grooming”… “). (See the rest of Nick Merrill’s thread at his quote that’s linked above.) Afaik he hasn’t corrected his error since I last looked.
In other words, Wu didn’t fact check Clinton’s original quote by listening to the podcast. (Or else he doesn’t accept Merrill’s (speaking for Clinton) correction. ) It seems as possible that Wu just went with what he first read—and now his unintentional error also lives on and reinforces the misinformation. Ironic since Wu (swayed by his bias I believe) was writing about Clinton and misinformation.
It’s why fact-based corrections are important even on a blog or twitter, especially since no editor is enforcing conventions for distinguishing between evidence and hypotheses. I think it’s why we care about questioning the validity of each others’ claims here.
NotMax
@Ruckus
Low Buttenese and High Buttenese. The most spoken vulgate is, I believe, Pileish.
:)
Aleta
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Reminiscent of the way Mnuchin scrubbed plans to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
Ruckus
@Aleta:
Silly, you get a new owner.
Aleta
Soon after the 2016 election some writers (the ones I remember were women) pointed out that misogyny—not just bias against HRC, but prejudice against a female voice, a woman’s appropriateness, behavior, fitness to speak with authority—had lost the election for us.
Sister Golden Bear
@Adam L Silverman: Bidets are much better without the dangly bits.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@oldgold: Great! Force Collins, McSally, the pig woman in Iowa, the weasels in Colorado and North Carolina all on the record.
Barb 2
@different-church-lady:
Thank you! That was my reaction as well.
She is a special friend of Assad. Nasty woman. Assad took Gabbard on a tour of Syria and she has been very positive in favor of the mass murderer Assad. See
washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-tulsi-gabbard-became-assads-mouthpiece-in-washington…
Or Google Assad and Gabbard – for more news items.
Her attack on Clinton had Russian talking points. Also in the last debates she also repeated Russian talking points – Joy Reid pointed this out in her remarks following the debate.
JWR
Has this latest conspiracy theory about a sex scandal, (currently being spread by Redstate, natch) involving Katie Hill having had an illicit relationship been discussed yet? It’s been covered on local TV news as “explosive”, and “Congresswoman rocked by scandal”. At first, I listened intently, until they mentioned Redstate, after which I yawned.
(And if I screw up this post, as I have done 2 nights running, I’ll go sit in the corner.)
hervevillechaizelounge
@Barb 2:
I knew Tulsa Gabokloma was evil when she called gay marriage a tool of the “extremist homosexual” agenda.
Any Dem who regularly appears on FauxNews is dead to me, honestly.
What the fuck were Hawaii Democrats thinking when they voted for her? Google was available when she was campaigning; her father hosted an anti-gay radio show, for fuck’s sake. I am eternally amazed at how many ratfuckers we have in our party:(
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JWR: I just saw that on the local news here as well, don’t think they mentioned the RedState connection.
lgerard
Praise Jesus
Let’s see trump veto that
smike
@lgerard:
Oh, I don’t think he would have any problem vetoing that – “certain corporations and limited liability companies” are people, donchano. I think that means they can do whatever they want to.
JWR
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Actually, I’m pretty sure one of them, (KCAL9 @ 9PM), did mention RS, and as soon as they did, I said to myself, ‘look at the source!’. Google says the story was birthed by a site called LegiStorm, (LegiStormfront? I dunno), and then spread to RS, which site I actually looked at for the first time in years a few days ago, and wow. The posts were more of a Free Republic free for all than a “Conservative” version of DailyKos.
The other local station, KTLA, is quite bad, at least during the day.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JWR: I saw the story on the 11pm KNBC newscast.
WereBear
When you look too deep into access journalism, the access stares back at you blankly.
lgerard
@smike:
Quite a few of them seem to be Russian people
Hob
@Procopius: If what you’re trying to say is that Clinton had her spokesperson call out the misquote at the end of the week specifically so it wouldn’t be widely reported (because she was secretly happy to be misquoted)… your idea would make more sense if the misquote hadn’t happened on Friday. Her only two choices were 1. call it out on the weekend or 2. say nothing till Monday, leaving you and other Clinton-mind-readers to speculate in pretty much the same way about why didn’t she say anything.
Kathleen
@p.a.: All the Fascists Fit to Fluff.
Bruce K
@John Revolta: My guess is that to paraphrase Mr. Pierce, Hillary has discovered that her bag of hoots to give is now empty.
I can’t say that I blame her, either. She’ll probably be remembered by history as America’s Cassandra, who got more votes for President than anyone save Barack Obama, yet was defeated on a technicality by what has since proven to be the worst President in American history; who warned America what was about to happen, and was demonized and ignored.
And maybe there’s a sense of “yeah, they misquoted me, but now that I think about it, was what they actually printed factually wrong?”
Amir Khalid
So it was a reporting error by The NYT, not an actual statement from Hillary, that led Gabbard to admit she was more or less a Russian stooge? Hmm.
Patricia Kayden
@John Revolta: Perhaps she’s okay with the way NYT reporter what she said. Tulsi has promised not to run a third party campaign because of what Clinton was reported to have said about her. That’s perfect, imho.
hugely
@Adam L Silverman: Adam im not a professional in this realm but it seems to me that a good explanation is that Russia has assets (knowing/unknowing) and/or agents within the New York Times. I dont think they do this shit coincidentally, I would be interested in knowing how we as a society clean this up while keeping a first amendment. And yes im sure theres plenty of worse “media” outlets that are pure propaganda and are part of Russias information warfare that should be easier to disinfect but the TFNYFT seems trickier…
Gvg
You know, to me the misquote made more sense than the correction, and at first I assumed the correction was the misquote. I still think it makes more sense. Tulsi’s Known background links to Russia and other dictators more than the GOP. In fact, I still don’t see the GOP.
hugely
@Duane: fucking a, this is exactly how i feel
Just One More Canuck
@chris: there were 9 polling stations in the school gym I worked in for the election- each party had scrutineers watching us unfold the ballots and count them – the whole counting process took maybe 45 minutes for all 9 stations- the polls closed at 930 and we were out of there by 11 after cleaning everything up
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Gvg: Gabbard’s tweets make her sound like a lunatic. I saw one this morning where she says HRC should “step down from her throne.” By “throne,” I assume she means former Secretary of State and most recent D presidential nominee who won more votes than the guy in the WH.
polyorchnid octopunch
Hey Adam, you might find this article interesting; it’s from Wired UK: wired.co.uk/article/tech-reform-regulation
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Thanks for the language edumacation.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mike in NC: Chicken! (as in, Tastes like – or so I hear) Alligator is a delicacy in Texas. I was at a street festival in Austin some years ago & saw a mural of a very large alligator about to chow down on a very tiny human-on-a-stick…
Uncle Cosmo
@Procopius: And anyone with an IQ over 80 knows that if HRC’s staff had taken longer than 90 seconds to point out the story was incorrect, the fucking MSM would all be screaming Why did it take her so long to deny it? What’s she trying to hide?
Fuck the MSM. And fuck useful imbeciles like you too. With a rusty chainsaw.
Captain C
I gotta say, the Times seems to be coasting on their past reputation these days. We’re talking basic Journalistic Integrity 101 here. They’re acting more like a company with its top management caught with hands in the cookie jar, and half of the public service employees making such a habit of lying and distorting to customers that it’s not news anymore. The good journalists and few good op-ed columnists left must be tearing their hair out.
Procopius
@Hob: I have no idea and didn’t say anything about Clinton. I guess I should have been clearer about that. I don’t know if Clinton directed her spokesperson to issue the correction or the spokesperson decided to do it on her own. I presumed the latter, but should have said so. Did Clinton’s spokesperson reissue the correction on a later day when it might have gotten more attention? Your assumption that I don’t trust Clinton, even though I reluctantly voted for her, is correct.