Wednesday, 11. January 2017

Watch How Casually False Claims are Published: New York Times and Nicholas Lemann Edition


Like most people, I’ve long known that factual falsehoods are routinely published in major media outlets. But as I’ve pointed out before, nothing makes you internalize just how often it really happens, how completely their editorial standards so often fail, like being personally involved in a story that receives substantial media coverage. I cannot count how many times I’ve read or heard claims from major media outlets about the Snowden story that I knew, from first-hand knowledge, were a total fabrication. We have a perfect example of how this happens from the New York Times today, in a book review by Nicholas Lemann, the Pulitzer-Moore professor of journalism at Columbia University as well as a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker. Lemann is reviewing a new book by Edward J. Epstein – the long-time neocon, right-wing Cold Warrior, WSJ op-ed page writer and Breitbart contributor – which basically claims Snowden is a Russian spy.

theintercept.com

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