https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/us/politics/project-veritas-ashley-biden-diary.htmlThe New York Times publishes its big followup on their "involved with the story they are reporting on" Project Veritas - Ashley Biden diary angle.
Naturally its only a handful of new details spliced within dozens of pages of insinuation, bias, misrepresentation, etc. In the end, their main damning new complaint against Project Veritas is that they
verified the diary, before they chose not to publish it. Imagine that, journalists reporting on an inflammatory story first take measures to see if its legitimate, then decide whether its in the public interest to publish it at all. As opposed to the NYT model, where you find an inflammatory rumor, report it, find out it was false, don't retract it, spend the new few years insisting the lie is true. The whole article is a case study on yellow journalism and propaganda tactics, refusing to ever acknowledge PV as "journalists" and take every opportunity to call them "operatives", introducing random private citizens to the story by listing some random unrelated conviction from the 1990s on a misdemeanor charge next to their name, writing the actual facts of the case in confusing sentences bracketed between unsupported insinuations, putting basic journalistic terms like 'sources' into spooky double quotations, only quoting the prosecution and never the defense, etc etc. Its a true shitbag article, but thats the NYT for you
Anyway their new details are;
- Project Veritas journalists called Ashley Biden and told her they had recovered her diary and offered to return it, and she confirmed it was hers- but they didn't identify themselves as Project Veritas while on the call.
- The original source of the diary is confirmed as some random woman who was staying at a home that Ashley Biden had previously stayed at and left several bags of her stuff, neither supporting accusations of theft nor of PV's involvement.
- That woman attended a fundraiser and tried to tell Donald Trump Jr. about it, and he told them he wasn't interested in it and they should turn it into the FBI
- Someone from PV flew to the home and saw the bags of her stuff to confirm it was real
- O'Keefe emailed the entire PV team and told them that they had confirmed it was real, but chose not to publish because it would be seen as a 'cheap shot', formally buying the rights to the story and burying it
And all this leads to Merrick Garland sending storm troopers to raid the homes of PV journalists in the middle of the night with battering rams and automatic weapons, steal all their personal documents and private sources, and then that same night leaked everything directly to the NYT including privileged attorney-client communications about their lawsuit against the NYT. Which the NYT then published, without any ethical qualms, before a judge ordered an injunction against them, and of course, without actually verifying those documents by contacting PV.
Its amazing what a juxtaposition of ethical journalism against unethical journalism is in this story, all against the backdrop of the single most flagrant infringement on the first amendment in living memory
I feel bad for people that want to stand up for truth. They are up against Bolsheviks.