Okay, I didn’t “predict” this, or anything else. Or invent it. However, a few months back, I wrote a piece, Ben Smith’s latest post for the New York Times is not a column about “misinformation”. It is a column OF “misinformation”, making fun of former NYT media obeserver Ben Smith’s post, Inside the ‘Misinformation’ Wars, suggesting rather explicitly that Ben was, you know, not helping.
Specifically, I went after Ben for describing the Hunter Biden laptop story, first published in the New York Post, thusly: “[A]s it now appears, the story about the laptop was an old-fashioned, politically motivated dirty tricks campaign.” But, as it turned out, “old-fashioned, politically motivated dirty tricks campaign” was not precisely le mot juste. The Times itself recently had this to say in a recent article Hunter Biden Paid Tax Bill, but Broad Federal Investigation Continues about this particular “dirty trick” (though you’ll definitely have to dig for it):
People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer [a former business partner] and others about Burisma (the Ukrainian energy company paying Hunter a ridiculous fee for his “advice”) and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.
Oh, so the emails whose release by the New York Post before the election were an “old-fashioned political dirty trick” have been “authenticated” by the Times eighteen months after the election? Interesting! Very interesting!
It’s not surprising that NYT skeptical folks like Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown and the National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy have jumped on this deeply camouflaged mea culpa from the Times, which naturally scorned the Post’s story in real time, with all four feet. If Liz n’ Andy’s sneers aren’t enough for you, you can go back to my story for a discussion of the ”real” disinformation campaign conducted with regard to Hunter’s missing laptop, one waged by the mainstream media to trash the Post’s story, which was far more accurate than anyone—anyone “respectable”—wanted to let on.
Afterwords
Ben himself has left the Times to work his brand in conjunction with former Bloomberg gal Gina Chua at a yet to be named site. Here’s what they have to say about the venture:
There are 200 million people who are college educated, who read in English, but who no one is really treating like an audience, but who talk to each other and talk to us.
So, I’m guessing, no ego shortage on this one, right?
