Unfreedom of the Press

by Mark R. Levin

  The Times’ longtime Russia correspondent was unquestionably a longtime favorite mouthpiece for the brutal Soviet regime, about which he wrote in the pages of the Times for a dozen years, and for which he was rewarded by Stalin. McCollam notes that “[i]n Moscow, Duranty was known as ‘the dean of foreign correspondents,’ and was renowned for his lavish hospitality. In an austere city, he enjoyed generous living quarters and food rations, as well as the use of assistants, a chauffeur, and a cook/secretary/mistress named Katya, who bore him a son named Michael. Duranty, who had a wooden left leg caused by a train accident, was driven through the streets in a giant Buick outfitted with the Klaxon horn used by the Soviet secret police. His competitors gossiped that these perks were allowed because of his cozy relationship with the Soviet government. Eugene Lyons, a United Press correspondent, even suspected that Duranty might be on the Soviet payroll, but no evidence of that seems to exist. Still, many then and later wondered if the status Duranty enjoyed in Moscow led him to curtail his coverage of the Soviets. Malcolm Muggeridge . . . would later call Duranty ‘the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of journalism.’ Joseph Alsop would tab him a ‘fashionable prostitute,’ in the service of Communists. . . .”56

  More than a decade ago there came a growing movement to strip the deceased Duranty of his Pulitzer Prize. On October 23, 2003, the Times, writing about itself, reported that “[a] Columbia University history professor [was] hired by The New York Times to make an independent assessment of the coverage of one of its correspondents in the Soviet Union during the 1930’s . . .” And what were the findings? “In his report to The Times, Professor Mark von Hagen described the coverage for which Mr. Duranty won the Pulitzer—his writing in 1931, a year before the onset of the famine—as a ‘dull and largely uncritical recitation of Soviet sources.’ That lack of balance and uncritical acceptance of the Soviet self-justification for its cruel and wasteful regime was a disservice to the American readers of The New York Times and the liberal values they subscribe to and to the historical experience of the peoples of the Russian and Soviet empires and their struggle for a better life.”57

  In a subsequent interview, von Hagen said, “[The Pulitzer Board] should take [the award] away for the greater honor and glory of The New York Times,” he said. “He really was kind of a disgrace in the history of The New York Times.”

  Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the Times, was opposed to having the Pulitzer withdrawn. “First, he wrote, such an action might evoke the ‘Stalinist practice to airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories.’ He also wrote of his fear that ‘the board would be setting a precedent for revisiting its judgments over many decades.’ ”58

  Despite such preposterous objections, Duranty’s Pulitzer was not withdrawn.

  * * *

  But what of the rest of the press? How did they report about Stalin’s purposeful famine and the resulting genocide? In his book Angels in Stalin’s Paradise, James William Crowl writes that “[t]he information about the famine seems to have been commonplace within the Moscow press corps. Western travelers returned to Moscow with reports of what they had found, and correspondents discovered that they could verify such accounts by checking the suburbs and railroad stations of the major cities. Peasants seemed to flock to such locations despite the efforts of the authorities. Still more important, several reporters learned that they could slip onto trains and spend days or weeks in stricken areas despite the travel ban. During the early months of 1933, Ralph Barned of the New York Herald Tribune made such a trip, as . . . Jones and . . . Muggeridge of the Manchester Guardian. This information about the famine seems to have been plentiful among the correspondents in Moscow, and it seems unlikely that any reporter could have been unaware of its existence. According to Eugene Lyons [the Moscow correspondent for United Press from 1928 to 1934], ‘the famine was accepted as a matter of course in our casual conversation at the hotels and in our homes.’ William Henry Chamberlin [the Moscow correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor] has gone even further stating ‘to anyone who lived in Russia in 1933 and who kept his eyes and ears open the historicity of the famine is simply not open to question.’ . . . Most of the reporters took shelter behind the [Soviet regime’s] censorship and kept quiet about the famine. . . .”59

  Yale professor Timothy Snyder also notes in his book Bloodlands—Europe Between Hitler and Stalin that most of the journalists in Moscow knew of the mass starvation that was taking place. “The basic facts of mass hunger and death, although sometimes reported in the European and American press, never took on the clarity of an undisputed event. Almost no one claimed that Stalin meant to starve Ukrainians to death. . . . Though the journalists knew less than the diplomats, most of them understood that millions were dying from hunger.”60

  How is it possible that such colossal media failures of integrity, morality, and professional canons in the face of the mass extermination of Jews and Ukrainians do not permanently cripple the reputation and standing of the New York Times and the other press organizations, or at least force serious circumspection within and reformation of the media industry? And what of the weak excuses and feeble explanations offered decades later, as if they are atonement enough for the abhorrent consequences of the media’s role in the cover-up of the genocidal murder of millions?

  Is there another industry of any sort that can so blithely if not arrogantly and self-righteously carry on as if none of this happened? Surely, if the dead could speak, they would declare the Times and the other press outlets “the enemy of the people” for their wanton inhumanity in the face of genocide.

  SEVEN

  * * *

  THE TRUTH ABOUT COLLUSION, ABUSE OF POWER, AND CHARACTER

  SO MANY OF THE media allegations against President Trump and his administration are overwrought and, in many respects, utterly dishonest. To read their daily blitzkrieg of outrages against Trump and his administration, you would think that the president has corruptly used the instrumentalities of his office and executive authority in ways unimagined by past presidents and administrations.

  In truth, he has done no such thing.

  You would believe that he is some kind of flack or even mole for Vladimir Putin and the Russians. And you would conclude that he has damaged the office of the presidency with prurient personal behavior.

  But this Democratic party-press narrative began even before Trump entered the presidency, starting with his candidacy. And given its constant drumbeat in the press, it requires a brief unraveling, the purpose of which is to further demonstrate the overall unobjective and propagandistic nature of today’s newsrooms and journalists.

  Let us look at the three areas of accusations against the president.

  COLLUSION

  For all the years Donald Trump has been president, the mass media have been fixated on a story line that had no basis in fact—that Donald Trump colluded with “the Russians” during the 2016 presidential race to defeat Hillary Clinton. To this day, and after all this time—despite congressional, criminal, and media investigations—there is nothing but Democratic party-press innuendo, supposition, and dissembling.

  In addition to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s declaration of no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, on February 7, 2019, Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News that “[i]f we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia.”1 A few days later, Burr reiterated his conclusion to NBC News: “There is no factual evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”2

  It merits emphasizing that the supposed plot was in fact launched by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, with assistance from the Obama FBI and Department of Justice. In short, as The Federalist explained: “Perkins Coie, an international law firm, was directed by both the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clin
ton’s campaign to retain Fusion GPS in April of 2016 to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS then hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to compile a dossier of allegations that Trump and his campaign actively colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election. Though many of the claims in the dossier have been directly refuted, none of the dossier’s allegations of collusion have been independently verified. Lawyers for Steele admitted in court filings last April that his work was not verified and was never meant to be made public.”3

  The Hill’s John Solomon discovered that the dossier was provided to the FBI by at least six different people with connections to the Hillary Clinton campaign.4 And information from the dossier, along with a news story planted by Steele with Yahoo reporter Michael Isikoff, was used by the FBI and the Department of Justice to expand a counterintelligence investigation aimed at the Trump campaign and businesses and to secure successive surveillance warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. The FISA court was never appropriately alerted to the funding source or purpose of the dossier; however, several senior FBI officials involved in using the dossier were warned about its political nature.5 Ultimately, this and other events led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the initiation of a criminal investigation (despite the fact that there was no criminal basis justifying his appointment), which found no collusion after nearly two years of investigation.

  Incredibly, in a December 2018 podcast interview, Isikoff, the Yahoo reporter who “broke” the September 23, 2016, Steele dossier story (with left-wing coauthor David Corn of Mother Jones, who fed a copy of the dossier to the FBI), said when “you actually get into the details of the Steele dossier, the specific allegations, we have not seen the evidence to support them, and, in fact, there’s good grounds to think that some of the more sensational allegations will never be proven and are likely false.” “It’s a mixed record at best,” he said. “Things could change. Mueller may yet produce evidence that changes this calculation but based on the public record at this point, I’d have to say that most of the specific allegations have not been borne out.”6

  However, so committed to this plot have been the media that they actually played an active role in the investigations and were relied on by unethical FBI officials and others to do their bidding. On September 5, 2018, Solomon detailed a number of examples of media-government collusion. “From the beginning of this investigation, key figures involved in it have had extensive contacts with or connections to media.”7

  Among them, writes Solomon:

  • Fired FBI official Peter Strzok and his alleged paramour, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, texted frequently about leaks in the media affecting their cases, and even suggested the FBI was behind some of those.8

  • FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired for lying about one media leak he authorized.9

  • The FBI secured a FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in part by citing a Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff that, it turns out, was based on a leak from the FBI’s own informant in the case, former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, whose dirt on Trump was bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.10

  • The court that approved the surveillance warrant apparently was never told that the article was not independent corroboration but, rather, circular intelligence from the poisoned Steele tree.11

  • DOJ notes recently provided to Congress show one of the media leaks with which Steele was involved was considered by his boss, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, to be a “hail Mary attempt” to swing the election, rather than to inform the FBI and courts. That’s the sort of biased evidence the FBI should eschew, not embrace, of course.12

  • And Strzok’s own FBI communications show the FBI—after firing Steele—continued to receive versions of his now-infamous but still-unverified dossier on alleged Trump collusion with Russia. One of those was delivered to the bureau by Mother Jones magazine writer David Corn, who openly has opposed Trump’s presidency.13

  Moreover, former FBI general counsel James Baker is under a criminal leak investigation.14

  The media have crossed the line between reporting and activism, where they have, in fact, participated in the promotion of events about which they then report. This is precisely the concern raised by those who questioned the wisdom of “public” journalism or social-activism journalism, described in chapter 1. Moreover, their progressive ideology and Democratic Party bias are in full bloom, as evidenced by their frenzied obsession with “getting” President Trump and, conversely, their disinterest and laxity respecting the roles of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, as well as the part played by the Obama FBI, Department of Justice, and intelligence agencies to thwart the Trump campaign and presidency.

  This has also led to newsrooms and journalists repeatedly spoon-feeding stories to the public that are erroneous or outright fabrications. Virtually every major news outlet is guilty, including the Associated Press,15 CNN,16 New York Times,17 Washington Post,18 McClatchy,19 NPR,20 etc.

  Moreover, the media are left with desperate efforts to invent even tenuous links to third parties as supposed evidence of Trump-Russia collusion and the latest “shoe to drop,” or they hype as evidence of Trump-related criminality or corruption guilty pleas and convictions having nothing to do with collusion and President Trump.

  Indeed, faced with actual firsthand evidence, even a confession, of what is arguably the greatest act of political subversion perhaps in American history, by a cabal of federal bureaucrats seeking the removal of a recently elected sitting president whose campaign they sought to earlier sabotage, the media mostly celebrated the event and one of its primary architects rather than deplore the conspiracy—as the target was President Trump. Here is a brief exchange between CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley and disgraced former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe on February 17, 2019:

  Referring to the firing of former FBI deputy director, James Comey, Pelley asked McCabe: “How long was it after that, that you decided to start the obstruction of justice and counterintelligence investigations involving the president?”

  MCCABE: “I think the next day I met with the team investigating the Russia cases, and I asked the team to go back and conduct an assessment to determine where are we with these efforts and what steps do we need to take going forward. I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground in an indelible fashion that were I removed quickly or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace. I wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground and if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they would not be able to do that without creating a record of why they’d made that decision.

  PELLEY: You wanted a documentary record—that those investigations had begun, because you feared that they would be made to go away?

  MCCABE: That’s exactly right.21

  Later McCabe explained: “I can’t describe to you accurately enough the pressure and the chaos that [Deputy Attorney General] Rod [Rosenstein] and I were trying to operate under at that time. It was incredibly turbulent, incredibly stressful. And it was clear to me that that stress was . . . was impacting the deputy attorney general. We talked about why the president had insisted on firing the director and whether or not he was thinking about the Russia investigation, and did that impact his decision. And in the context of that conversation, the deputy attorney general offered to wear a wire into the White House. He said, ‘I never get searched when I go into the White House. I could easily wear a recording device. They wouldn’t know it was there.’ Now, he was not joking. He was absolutely serious. And, in fact, he brought it up in the next meeting we had. I never actually considered taking him up on the offer. I did discuss it with my general counsel and my leadership team back at the F.B.I. after he brought it up the first time.”22

  PELLEY: Rosenst
ein was actually openly talking about whether there was a majority of the cabinet who would vote to remove the president.

  MCCABE: That’s correct. Counting votes or possible votes.23

  Much of the rest of the media’s response was consistent with the next-day comments by CNN’s legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, who reacted to President Trump’s tweet accusing McCabe of treason thus:

  I think the correct term is not treasonous, but patriotic. I mean, they are thinking about the national security of the United States. These are all career officials. These are not Democratic political appointees. These are people whose job it is to care about the national security of the United States. And remember, all this evidence has only gotten stronger over the past two years. You know, [Congressman] Adam Schiff is now conducting an investigation to determine, in effect, if the President is a Russian asset. This remains a serious concern and there is much more evidence to support this idea. They didn’t even know at the time about all the business deals that were going on between Russia and Trump during 2016, all those discussions about Trump Tower in Moscow. I mean, the idea that they were treasonous is 180 degrees wrong.24