April 16, 2018: The Day Journalism Died

Nine journalists, two newspapers, the Pulitzer prize, and a hoax.

On October 14, 2020, everyone, in The New York Post’s newsroom, was feverishly waiting for the powerful explosion that, it was thought, would be heard in all spheres of U.S. society. That day, the Post kicked off its series of articles on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, based on information contained in emails collected from a laptop that he had left behind in a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware, without ever reclaiming it.

In this laptop were compromising revelations not only about Hunter Biden but also his father. Those revelations were so compromising that they could have ruined the Democrat’s chances of winning the 2020 election, which is why the left-wing media saw fit to form a front line to defend the presidential candidate by calling the whole affair a “hoax” pulled off by the Russians. Big Techs joined the dance, with Twitter even blocking The New York Post’s account for days. Three weeks later, the group of conspirators won their bet when Joe Biden was elected the 46th President of the United States.

On October 14, 2020, the media acted as cheerleaders for the Democrats, giving up all objectivity to protect their favorite. And they did so because two years earlier, one of the most prestigious journalistic institutions had relieved them of their duty of neutrality.

A Pulitzer Prize for a Hoax

On April 18, 2018, nine journalists from The Washington Post and The New York Times won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for their “scoops” on links between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government. These journalists were offered the prize because of “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration”, Pulitzer said.

A year later, the Special Counsel of the United States Department of Justice, Robert Mueller, admitted that the “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage” that had “dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign” was not based on any noteworthy information.

In fact, the Russiagate was, from then on, seen as a real hoax straight out of Hillary Clinton’s election team. A hoax that was set up even before the start of the electoral campaign for the November 2016 election.

Blocking Trump at All Cost

In April 2016, Marc Elias, a partner at the political law firm Perkins Coie LLP, retained the services of Fusion GPS, a research firm, on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team and the Democratic National Committee. The ultimate goal: “dig up dirt” on presidential candidate Donald Trump. Then Fusion GPS turned the job over to Christopher Steele, a former British spy, who was paid $168,000 to find incriminating information on Trump. Steele ended up putting together a 35-page dossier on the Republican candidate.

On October 31, Mother Jones first mentioned the Steele dossier. The same day, the FBI opened its investigation called Crossfire Hurricane, which would lead to the publication of a report by the Special Counsel of the United States Department of Justice, Robert Mueller, in March 2019. The Democrats had their October Surprise.

One of the Steele dossier’s key revelations was that a Trump adviser, Carter Page, had expressed interest in accepting a bribe from the president of the Russian energy firm Rosneft. In exchange, the future Trump administration would lift U.S. economic sanctions against the company. This revelation was false, as was the one involving the Russian Internal Security Service, the FSB, which was said to have obtained compromising material on Donald Trump by exploiting what was alleged to be his “sexual perversion”.

It was, however, the allegations about a Russian institution, the Alfa Bank, that had sent shockwaves in the media. On October 31, 2016, left-leaning online outlet Slate published an article about the case, pointing out that, according to its source, “evidence” showed that a secret communication link had been established between the Trump organization and Alfa Bank. Yet, a New York Times (NYT) article posted that same October 31 questioned the allegations against Alfa Bank. According to the NYT, the FBI, after spending weeks reviewing computer data regarding the Russian institution, was unable to confirm any links between the latter and the Trump organization.

A Media Debacle

In December 2019, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Justice (DOJ) released its report on the FBI’s conduct during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The report in question concluded that one of the Steele dossier’s main sources, the Russian Igor Danchenko, relied exclusively on a network of friends in Russia and on other secondary sources to obtain scattered information.

In the fall of 2022, Justice Department Special Counsel John Durham surprised everyone when he filed a motion stating that Danchenko had been hired by the FBI as a paid confidential informant in March 2017. The Russian was eventually arrested in November 2021 following an indictment by a federal grand jury for lying to the FBI.

All this time that Trump was accused of conspiring with the Russians to take power, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC alone published about 8,500 articles on the subject. For these Democratic Party allies, it was paramount to push the envelope further, no matter what tactics they used.

During the Russiagate, CNN had to retract three times, and MSNBC twice, for fake stories. Another network, ABC, even went so far as to apologize and fire one of its reporters, Brian Ross. But despite these repeated failures by the U.S. media, Pulitzer refused to rescind its prize awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post for the biggest hoax in the history of journalism.

This decision proves that subjectivity, through which lies and propaganda are disseminated, has now taken over objectivity, at a time when mainstream media are actively committed to advocating social causes instead of informing the public.

Sources

Anguilles sous roche #1, #2, Glenn Greenwald, Influence Watch, Newsbusters, Politico, Pulitzer, The Daily Mail, U.S. Senate