Dylan Byers

Conundrum: Is CNN’s Dylan Byers An Ethics Dunce, Or An Ethics Hero?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHYeGDHe0lY

Midnight  Friday morning,  CNN was analyzing the GOP’s perplexing win in Montana’s special election for the House of Representatives—perplexing to Ethics Alarms because the winner, Gianforte, is a dishonest thug, but perplexing to CNN because their reporters were desperately hoping for a sign that voters were turning on President Trump, something their network has been working on for many months.  CNN’s Media reporter Dylan Byers then blurted out this remarkable statement:

“There’s this conversation that’s happening among people following the news industry, which is how can we bridge the sort of gap between all of those conservatives who don’t trust the media, and get them to start knowing that, you know, we’re acting in good faith, with good intentions? Maybe you can’t, because they’re not even listening. From the second, it’s not as though they’re reading the article and considering it, or listening the audio and considering it. They’re just not paying attention to it, because  they don’t trust us.

And this, by the way, you look at the tapes of Trump there. Two things have happened. One, over the course of several decades, the conservatives have done a masterful job at capitalizing the waning trust in media and using it to their advantage. But a second thing has happened, too, which is, on occasion, more than the media would like to admit, we have not told the story of conservative Americans, disenfranchised Americans, who believe that they are losing their country. The story we have largely been telling is a story that is more or less in step with the arc of history as defined by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It does not mean we favor them to win. It just means that sort of vision of a progressive future, a global future, and that is not one that resonates with so many conservative American voters.”

“The story we have largely been telling is a story that is more or less in step with the arc of history as defined by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”

It is notable that none of the three journalists on the panel with Byers challenged this damning characterization. Continue reading →

More Signature Significance: The New York Times’ Deceit At Hillary’s Command

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
Hillary is not pleased. Get with the program, NYT!

Hillary is not pleased. Get with the program, NYT!

From Dylan Byers at Politico:

The New York Times made small but significant changes to an exclusive report about a potential criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s State Department email account late Thursday night, but provided no notification of or explanation for of the changes.

The paper initially reported that two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation “into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state.”

That clause, which cast Clinton as the target of the potential criminal probe, was later changed: the inspectors general now were asking for an inquiry “into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state.”

The Times also changed the headline of the story, from “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email” to “Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account,” reflecting a similar recasting of Clinton’s possible role. The article’s URL was also changed to reflect the new headline. As of early Friday morning, the Times article contained no update, notification, clarification or correction regarding the changes made to the article.

One of the reporters of the story, Michael Schmidt, explained early Friday that the Clinton campaign had complained about the story to the Times.“It was a response to complaints we received from the Clinton camp that we thought were reasonable, and we made them,” Schmidt said…

This is, quite simply, the New York Times spinning for Hillary Clinton. The switch to the passive voice deceitfully implies that only the e-mail account, not the individual who created and used it, is being investigated for criminal misconduct. An account is inanimate: it can’t break the law. Only a human can do that. If the account is illegal or is used illegally, then the user, not the account, has broken the law. The original version of the story was fair and accurate, but because it properly called attention to Mrs. Clinton’s habitual dishonesty as well as her deceptive defense that her conduct in this matter was beyond reproach, the Clinton machine demanded that the supposed exemplar of American journalistic integrity further the campaign’s strategy of misdirection. The New York Times meekly complied, in the dead of night, like the lapdog it has become. Continue reading →