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Which wasn’t even the point.
Look, I came here for an argument—
This is an argument.
In a time frame where you have Democratic candidates versus Democratic candidates during primary season, you’re more likely to see those candidates get more of a going over in the media, because while most might be liberals, how far left they are and who they might prefer if they’re engaged in advocacy journalism can differ, just as there were media people for Hillary and media people for Bernie during the 2016 primary season.
The New Yorker hitting the Bidens is in the same vein as The New Yorker hitting Harvey Weinstein with a story by Ronan Farrow, coming off his MSNBC gig, and which because Weinstein was both a progressive and in deals with NBC, Farrow couldn’t get his network to do anything with. So even though Trump’s pasty actions may have been the trigger there, the clash was between liberals and liberals (and where Farrow had his own axe to grind with Weinsten for bailing out Woody Allen’s career 25 years earlier). Same type of split here — in 2019, if you’re a liberal who thinks Bernie, Liz, Kamala or someone else is a better option than Biden and can beat Trump, you’re not going to have qualms about doing a story that might hurt Biden.
I’d tend to agree with this except for the fact that the NYer story was published in early July and must have been commissioned and reported starting at least 5 or 6 months prior to the pub date. Perhaps much longer (it’s a very detailed report). So when the story began gestating, no one had any idea what the Democratic field was going to be, much less look like. Biden didn’t even formally announce his candidacy until late April of this year, two months before the pub date.
To that end, Ronan Farrow worked on his Weinstein story for over a year (both at NBC and the NYer) before it dropped.
Interesting theory about Ronan’s motivation to go after Harvey. Could be part of it, but I doubt it was the primary reason. Lots and lots of journalists had chased the Weinstein story for years and were either scared off of it by Weinstein or could not get sources to talk on the record. And Ronan didn’t publish the story first. The NYT did by 4 days. Good background on all of that here.
An argument isn’t just contradiction. … An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
(from Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic”)
Amazing how many otherwise erudite individuals don’t get that simple proposition. Notoriety moves the news cycle – not decorum.
My guess is that Biden is not progressive enough for the folks at the NY’er, hence the smear piece. Has nothing to do with protecting him — quite the opposite.
Read it. It’s not a smear piece at all, it’s a well reported and written piece of journalism. And as stated above, the timing for the conspiracy theory that the NYer was trying to take out Biden does not line up.
Could be. But I think even in 2017, we sort of had a general idea who the major non-Biden candidates were, and knew most would be running to the left of Joe.
Farrow had a ton of tenacity in getting the Weinstein story out. Allen as motivation might mean nothing, but Mirimax did rescue Woody after the scandal with Mia.
This assumes the story was going to be published, and was going to be published WHEN it was published, as if carved in stone or something. But the simple fact that the New Yorker story was published AFTER Biden’s candidacy officially began, allows for the possibility of not publishing it at all if it served interests.
I don’t think anyone here believes that all stories researched are written, and that all stories written are published. Or are published as soon as they are thought to have been “finished” in the writing, etc.
No, it’s not.
Some classic examples:
[Michael] Isikoff had been prepared to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but several hours before going to print, the article was killed by top Newsweek executives. As a result, the story broke first on Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report the following morning.—Wikipedia
Later in the scandal, Juanita Broaddrick was interviewed for an hour by NBC, describing her forcible rape by then Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton. NBC delayed broadcasting the interview for several weeks, until Clinton had been safely acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial.
By contrast, 17 years later, NBC took care to leak the hot mike conversation between Donald Trump and Billy Bush at the moment when it would do maximum damage to the Republican Party.
Again, the Hunter Biden/Ukraine story was not a secret. Many people were working on versions of it at the same time. And tons of stories had already been published about Hunter Biden’s icky affair with the wife of his dead brother, which led into Hunter’s financial dealings.
One more time: a primary goal of media companies is to break a big story first. If they NYer had not published in early July, someone else would have soon after, including one of several Conservative publications. I am aware of at least two that were prepping their own versions.
Well, usually. In the case of the Weinstein story, Sharon Waxman claimed the Times had the story 13 years before it published, and some others said two years ago that the story finally saw the light of day at the Paper of Record because they knew the Farrow story was going to drop in The New Yorker. So the Times got the story in print first, but they managed to do it in the slowest manner possible.
Which could only mean that we’ll never really know if the Conservative publications might have been first, if it hadn’t been in someone else’s political interest – not just journalistic interest – to beat them.
I know the history of this story very well. Lots of people knew about Weinstein’s behavior for a long time. Several reporters including Waxman herself tried reporting it and writing it multiple times. But getting the story properly sourced was always an issue because the sources were afraid of Weinstein or he paid them off and made them sign NDA’s. It took years for find people willing to come forward. That happens sometimes.