theintercept--2020-05-14--Biden Taps AOC and Jayapal to Help Shape Party Policy. Isn't This a Win for Progressives?

If you were to draw up a list of the most plain-spoken , passionate , and progressive women in American public life , you would have to include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , Rep. Pramila Jayapal , and Sara Nelson somewhere near the top .
All of them , of course , were loud and ardent advocates for Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primaries .
Imagine my surprise then — or was it disbelief ?
— to discover on Wednesday morning that they had been appointed as co-chairs of three of the six “ joint task forces ” that are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy in the run-up to November .
Jayapal , sponsor of the Medicare for All bill in the House , is co-chair of the health care task force .
Ocasio-Cortez , sponsor of the Green New Deal bill in the House , is co-chair of the climate change task force .
Nelson , president of the Association of Flight Attendants and a champion of organized labor , is co-chair of the economy task force .
To be clear : These three co-chairs will be representing Sanders and his vision for the party .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ them for these positions , and pushed to have them included .
Remarkably , though , it was Joe Biden , Mr .
Status Quo himself , who signed off on them .
“ We ’ ve set up joint committees together to deal with how we would deal with everything from the virus all the way down to education , the criminal justice system , the new green deal , etc.
, ” the former vice-president told a Las Vegas TV news outlet .
“ I ’ m working with Bernie and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve made some changes and listened to Bernie supporters .
And for example , we have , you know , Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez .
She is on one of the panels as well.
” This is all , to borrow an old line of Biden ’ s , “ a big fucking deal.
” It isn ’ t only the impressive trio of AOC , Jayapal , and Nelson who feature on these panels .
Also on the health care task force is Abdul El-Sayed , who ran an insurgent campaign for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the co-author of a book on Medicare for All .
Also on the economy task force is Stephanie Kelton , a pioneer of Modern Monetary Theory and author of a forthcoming book on deficit hysteria .
Also on the climate change task force is Varshini Prakash , executive director and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement — the progressive group behind the Green New Deal that gave Biden ’ s presidential climate plan an “ F ” rating in 2019 .
Meanwhile , Heather Gautney , an activist-scholar and top Sanders adviser , is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kudos to Sanders for suggesting such outside-the-Beltway names but — and some on the left might not want to hear me say this — kudos also to Biden and his team for accepting them .
Above all else , kudos to grassroots organizations and activists on the left who demanded the presumptive Democratic nominee reach out to them .
“ Biden ’ s announcement demonstrates the progressive movement ’ s growing power as a key constituency within the party , ” Waleed Shahid , of Justice Democrats , told me .
“ As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gore , Kerry , Obama , and Hillary Clinton did not make a major effort to appoint progressives.
” Yet Biden has .
And his own appointments to the six committees aren ’ t all bad , either .
Rep. Karen Bass , who has one of the most liberal voting records in the House , is his choice for co-chair of the economy task force , while neoliberal ideologues like Larry Summers and Erskine Bowles are , thankfully , nowhere to be seen .
AOC ’ s fellow co-chair is former Secretary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Paris climate accords on behalf of the United States .
If personnel is policy , as the old saying goes , then this should be seen as a clear victory for progressives .
These six committees , according to the Biden campaign , “ will meet in advance of the Democratic National Convention to make recommendations to the DNC Platform Committee ” and to Biden directly .
The task forces , the former vice president has said , “ will be essential to identifying ways to build on our progress and not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time before Donald Trump , but transform our country.
” This , incidentally , is a welcome change in tone and rhetoric from the Biden of 2019 , who pledged to a group of wealthy donors that “ nothing would fundamentally change.
” A source close to Sanders tells me the current pandemic has had a major impact on Team Biden : “ They realized they messed it up last time , when it came to the Great Recession .
This is the time when ideas matter most.
” The former vice president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few weeks ago : “ The blinders have been taken off because of this Covid crisis.
” Cynics on the left might see this new language , and these new appointments , as merely progressive window-dressing what will be a business-as-usual presidency .
I can ’ t honestly blame them .
Biden is an untrustworthy figure .
He is obsessed with cutting deals with Republicans .
And he has a long history of doing the bidding of corporate interests — from Big Finance to Big Pharma to Big Oil .
But he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , an “ empty vessel.
” “ With a Biden presidency , the activism of a popular movement will make a big difference , ” Chomsky told me last month .
“ Trump ’ s probably immune , but Biden will be open to it.
” So far , he seems to be .
Those progressives who agreed to join these joint task forces may have made a similar calculation .
In a Twitter thread , Sunrise Movement ’ s Prakash said “ the decision wasn ’ t easy to make .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t the favorite candidate of our movement or of young ppl broadly.
” Nevertheless , she wrote , “ I feel a responsibility to win whatever we can from this platform.
” El-Sayed borrowed an analogy from football to explain his own reasoning : “ Drive for the touchdown–but a field goal is still 3 pts on the board.
” Still , the cynics may be proven right .
Perhaps Biden will ignore the recommendations from these task forces .
Or perhaps he ’ ll embrace them — and then ignore them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But I ’ m not so sure .
Why would he appoint former presidential candidate John Kerry — doyen of the Democratic Party establishment and a close personal friend of his — as a task force co-chair , only to ignore Kerry ’ s recommendations ?
And why would he take the risk of including progressive firebrands such as Ocasio-Cortez and Nelson , who could quit and denounce him at any time ?
“ He ’ d be playing with fire ” if he ignores them , a top ally of Bernie Sanders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s not gon na burn you ?
” Still , there is no room for complacency .
The grassroots left must keep up the pressure on the Biden campaign — and keep up its demands .
Membership on these joint task forces is nowhere near enough .
How about — as even former Obama staffers Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer have suggested — calling for a prominent Sanders-aligned progressive ( Rep. Ro Khanna ? )
to be made a co-chair of the Biden campaign ?
Why not also insist on the appointment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ camp to any presidential transition team ?
And , above all else : Why not push for Sen. Elizabeth Warren as VP ?
Remember : Personnel is policy .
Those who have agreed to work with Biden and company are not stooges or sellouts .
The outsiders haven ’ t morphed into insiders .
Believe it or not , there is an actual strategy here .
Ocasio-Cortez summed it up in a tweet defending her decision to co-chair the climate change task force : “ Inside pressure .
Outside organizing .
”

Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images
If you were to draw up a list of the most plain-spoken, passionate, and progressive women in American public life, you would have to include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and Sara Nelson somewhere near the top. All of them, of course, were loud and ardent advocates for Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primaries.
Imagine my surprise then — or was it disbelief? — to discover on Wednesday morning that they had been appointed as co-chairs of three of the six “joint task forces” that are meant to unify the Democratic Party on policy in the run-up to November.
NEW this morning: Biden and Sanders roll out the members of the 6 Unity Task Forces that will offer recommendations to the DNC platform cmte and to Biden. Includes @johnkerry, @EricHolder, @vivek_murthy, @aoc, @RepJayapal, @rweingarten, @econjared, @StephanieKelton. pic.twitter.com/fGHHFJcUVE — Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) May 13, 2020
Jayapal, sponsor of the Medicare for All bill in the House, is co-chair of the health care task force. Ocasio-Cortez, sponsor of the Green New Deal bill in the House, is co-chair of the climate change task force. Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants and a champion of organized labor, is co-chair of the economy task force.
To be clear: These three co-chairs will be representing Sanders and his vision for the party. It was the Vermont senator who recommended them for these positions, and pushed to have them included. Remarkably, though, it was Joe Biden, Mr. Status Quo himself, who signed off on them.
“We’ve set up joint committees together to deal with how we would deal with everything from the virus all the way down to education, the criminal justice system, the new green deal, etc.,” the former vice-president told a Las Vegas TV news outlet. “I’m working with Bernie and his people and, so, we’ve made some changes and listened to Bernie supporters. And for example, we have, you know, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. She is on one of the panels as well.”
This is all, to borrow an old line of Biden’s, “a big fucking deal.” It isn’t only the impressive trio of AOC, Jayapal, and Nelson who feature on these panels. Also on the health care task force is Abdul El-Sayed, who ran an insurgent campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Michigan and is the co-author of a book on Medicare for All. Also on the economy task force is Stephanie Kelton, a pioneer of Modern Monetary Theory and author of a forthcoming book on deficit hysteria. Also on the climate change task force is Varshini Prakash, executive director and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement — the progressive group behind the Green New Deal that gave Biden’s presidential climate plan an “F” rating in 2019. Meanwhile, Heather Gautney, an activist-scholar and top Sanders adviser, is co-chair of the education task force.
Kudos to Sanders for suggesting such outside-the-Beltway names but — and some on the left might not want to hear me say this — kudos also to Biden and his team for accepting them.
Above all else, kudos to grassroots organizations and activists on the left who demanded the presumptive Democratic nominee reach out to them. “Biden’s announcement demonstrates the progressive movement’s growing power as a key constituency within the party,” Waleed Shahid, of Justice Democrats, told me. “As the Democratic nominees, Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, and Hillary Clinton did not make a major effort to appoint progressives.”
Yet Biden has. And his own appointments to the six committees aren’t all bad, either. Rep. Karen Bass, who has one of the most liberal voting records in the House, is his choice for co-chair of the economy task force, while neoliberal ideologues like Larry Summers and Erskine Bowles are, thankfully, nowhere to be seen. AOC’s fellow co-chair is former Secretary of State John Kerry, who signed the Paris climate accords on behalf of the United States.
If personnel is policy, as the old saying goes, then this should be seen as a clear victory for progressives. These six committees, according to the Biden campaign, “will meet in advance of the Democratic National Convention to make recommendations to the DNC Platform Committee” and to Biden directly. The task forces, the former vice president has said, “will be essential to identifying ways to build on our progress and not simply turn the clock back to a time before Donald Trump, but transform our country.”
If personnel is policy, as the old saying goes, then this should be seen as a clear victory for progressives.
This, incidentally, is a welcome change in tone and rhetoric from the Biden of 2019, who pledged to a group of wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change.” A source close to Sanders tells me the current pandemic has had a major impact on Team Biden: “They realized they messed it up last time, when it came to the Great Recession. This is the time when ideas matter most.” The former vice president himself conceded to an audience on Zoom a few weeks ago: “The blinders have been taken off because of this Covid crisis.”
Cynics on the left might see this new language, and these new appointments, as merely progressive window-dressing what will be a business-as-usual presidency. I can’t honestly blame them. Biden is an untrustworthy figure. He is obsessed with cutting deals with Republicans. And he has a long history of doing the bidding of corporate interests — from Big Finance to Big Pharma to Big Oil.
But he is also, to quote Noam Chomsky, an “empty vessel.” “With a Biden presidency, the activism of a popular movement will make a big difference,” Chomsky told me last month. “Trump’s probably immune, but Biden will be open to it.”
So far, he seems to be. Those progressives who agreed to join these joint task forces may have made a similar calculation. In a Twitter thread, Sunrise Movement’s Prakash said “the decision wasn’t easy to make. It’s no secret that Biden wasn’t the favorite candidate of our movement or of young ppl broadly.” Nevertheless, she wrote, “I feel a responsibility to win whatever we can from this platform.” El-Sayed borrowed an analogy from football to explain his own reasoning: “Drive for the touchdown–but a field goal is still 3 pts on the board.”
Still, the cynics may be proven right. Perhaps Biden will ignore the recommendations from these task forces. Or perhaps he’ll embrace them — and then ignore them once he’s sworn in.
But I’m not so sure. Why would he appoint former presidential candidate John Kerry — doyen of the Democratic Party establishment and a close personal friend of his — as a task force co-chair, only to ignore Kerry’s recommendations? And why would he take the risk of including progressive firebrands such as Ocasio-Cortez and Nelson, who could quit and denounce him at any time? “He’d be playing with fire” if he ignores them, a top ally of Bernie Sanders tells me. “You think AOC’s not gonna burn you?”
Still, there is no room for complacency. The grassroots left must keep up the pressure on the Biden campaign — and keep up its demands. Membership on these joint task forces is nowhere near enough. How about — as even former Obama staffers Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer have suggested — calling for a prominent Sanders-aligned progressive (Rep. Ro Khanna?) to be made a co-chair of the Biden campaign? Why not also insist on the appointment of a senior member of the Sanders camp to any presidential transition team? And, above all else: Why not push for Sen. Elizabeth Warren as VP?
Remember: Personnel is policy. Those who have agreed to work with Biden and company are not stooges or sellouts. The outsiders haven’t morphed into insiders. Believe it or not, there is an actual strategy here. Ocasio-Cortez summed it up in a tweet defending her decision to co-chair the climate change task force: “Inside pressure. Outside organizing.”


theintercept--2020-05-16--A Detainee at Rikers Island Was Cleared for Release Because of the Coronavirus. Six Weeks Later, He'

A Detainee at Rikers Island Was Cleared for Release Because of the Coronavirus. Six Weeks Later, He's Still in Jail.

In early April , the Manhattan District Attorney ’ s Office consented to the release of David Campbell from Rikers Island jail on the condition of electronic monitoring .
At the time , Campbell was one of 270 people that the DA ’ s office had deemed eligible for release in light of the perilous spread of the novel coronavirus in New York prisons and jails .
Six weeks have since passed , and Campbell remains incarcerated , sharing a dormitory with over 30 others in the jail complex where they sleep 2 feet apart from each other .
Any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the DA ’ s letter , has all but dissipated for the 32-year-old former funeral director and anti-fascist activist .
Campbell now expects to see out the remaining five months of his one-year jail term .
The DA ’ s consent was never an assurance of release on electronic monitoring ; such authority lies with the New York City Department of Correction Commissioner , with the Mayor ’ s Office of Criminal Justice leading the review of sentences during the pandemic .
Concerns persist around the deadly spread of Covid-19 , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through New York City ’ s incarcerated populations .
And while around 1,400 individuals have been released from city jails since late March , Campbell ’ s situation — a state of limbo , with scant information available about when or if he will be released — remains the reality for many prisoners like him serving short sentences .
“ Most of the people in here have given up hope for release , ” Campbell told me over the phone from Rikers this week .
“ The hope can weigh you down , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to preparing to stay here until our release dates.
” Campbell said that , despite hundreds of releases from Rikers during the pandemic , social distancing remains impossible in a dormitory at two-thirds capacity .
Many guards , he said , do not wear masks in public areas , despite Department of Correction rules .
And while incarcerated people themselves now have better access to masks and hand soap — in part thanks to a recent prisoner strike , and in part thanks to donations from rappers Jay-Z and Meek Mill — Campbell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to spread .
Campbell is not , by any means , among the most vulnerable of the incarcerated on Rikers Island when it comes to risks posed by the coronavirus .
He is young and healthy .
He is white ; over 80 percent of Covid-19 fatalities in New York prisons have been people of color .
Nor is Campbell , perhaps , the most obvious case for early release : Last October he pleaded guilty to two counts of felony assault and an 18-month-sentence , of which he expected to serve 12 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the pandemic were individuals serving sentences of a year or less , parolees who were sent back to jail on technical violations , and those who were held on bail and released by judges .
Yet Campbell ’ s case is illustrative of the apparent chaos and confusion attending New York City ’ s release procedures .
He stands as a reminder , too , as city officials determine who is and is not deserving of release during a health emergency , that we should reject the notion that justice was somehow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
been able to glean any information about the status of his case , or any specifics accounting for the delay in his release , from either the Mayor ’ s Office of Criminal Justice or the Department of Correction .
And neither of the agencies were able to provide me with any answers either .
Campbell told me that other prisoners in his dormitory are in the same uncertain position .
“ A number of the guys still in my dorm were told they were approved for release with ankle bands and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he said .
“ There were a few who were told they would be released and were on the bus to cross the bridge to leave Rikers Island , wearing civilian clothes , and they were tapped on the shoulder by officers and sent back.
” It is not clear whether the problem is in part related to accessing monitoring devices , including ankle monitors in New York City , or an issue of bureaucratic decision-making during a time of crisis .
The Department of Correction has said that it does not issue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Office has not yet responded to requests for information on possible reasons for release delays , either with regards to Campbell ’ s case or more generally .
“ We don ’ t comment on individual cases , ” Colby Hamilton , the Mayor ’ s Office of Criminal Justice chief of public affairs , told me by email last month .
“ We have released more than 300 people who are now serving the remainder of their short-term city sentences outside jails , on furlough but still in Department of Correction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and supporters , however , general statements about releases offer little solace .
“ We don ’ t even know what the delay is .
No one seems to want to take responsibility for making the decision to release him or even to make a statement about it that isn ’ t later contradicted by someone else , ” noted a statement from the Campbell ’ s support committee , which had been advocating for Campbell ’ s freedom ever since he was prosecuted , many months prior to the explosion of Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s charges , including for gang assault , were always excessive .
I had been planning to write about his case for that very reason , long before the pandemic struck and exploded in prison populations .
In January 2018 , two weeks before Campbell was due to move to Paris to study French translation , he was arrested during a brawl outside an alt-right event in Manhattan hosted by the vile alt-right commentator Mike Cernovich .
Campbell and other anti-fascists had rallied in protest .
A fight broke out between far-right revelers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racist , misogynists .
Campbell was the only person arrested from the fray , during which a police officer broke his leg in two places .
He alone was hit with multiple felony charges .
I visited Rikers late last year to interview Campbell .
He spoke with deep regret about kicking a 56-year-old alt-right member who was already on the ground , who sustained head injuries .
“ I feel bad about what happened to the gentleman that was injured the night I was arrested and my part in it , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from jail .
“ I do not feel bad , however , about going out to oppose the far right.
” Had Campbell gone to trial and been found guilty he would have faced a minimum of three and a half years in prison for gang assault alone — a vague charge in which an individual can be held legally responsible for the actions of others involved in a fight with three or more people .
This in addition to an assault charge associated with injuring the man on the ground .
Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and began his time in Rikers .
Now , the same DA ’ s office that so vigorously pursued charges against Campbell in the purported interest of public safety asserts that he is deemed safe to be released with electronic monitoring .
In Campbell ’ s case , as in countless others , it should not have taken a pandemic to expose the myth of carceral justice ’ s claims to uphold public safety .
April , at least 365 people of the 4,000 remaining detainees on Rikers Island had tested positive for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been the epidemic center of the epidemic center , with an estimated infection rate seven times higher than in the rest of New York City last month .
Until about a week ago , Campbell ’ s dormitory was quarantined , with prisoners unable to leave its vicinity .
“ It ’ s opened up a bit .
We can go to the mess hall .
I ’ ve been going to work in the yard , ” he told me .
Campbell said that incarcerated people had , after over a month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and toenails trimmed by a jail ’ s barbershop worker ; prisoners are , of course , not permitted clippers .
Fear of the virus remains a constant .
A few nights ago , Campbell told me that a man in his late sixties with underlying asthma was carried out of the dorm coughing and wheezing ; he was taken to hospital and has not yet returned .
There ’ s no evidence that the man had contracted Covid-19 , but the incident spiked already heightened fears for those waiting anxiously for news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Correction is doing everything we can to safely and humanely house people in our custody amid the broader COVID-19 crisis .
We have made tremendous efforts to increase social distancing throughout our facilities , and escalated our hygiene and sanitation protocols in accordance with guidance from the City ’ s Department of Health , ” said the Department of Correction ’ s Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Peter Thorne , “ We work closely with Correctional Health Services to ensure that those who are symptomatic are promptly quarantined and referred for treatment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the New York Supreme Court agreed that the state and city officials took “ aggressive ” steps to address the Covid-19 pandemic in their jails .
Meanwhile , 4,000 people remain incarcerated on Rikers Island , where two individuals have been confirmed dead from Covid-19-related causes .
Conditions , even if improved through depopulation of the jail , remain at odds with best practices for safety against virus contraction .
“ They say they ’ re sanitizing all common areas three times a day ; that ’ s bullshit , ” Campbell told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also not the point : For those in Campbell ’ s position , approved for release but still held in one of the country ’ s most notorious jails during a pandemic , any more days of continued incarceration is cruelty on top of injustice .

Photo: Jeenah Moon/Reuters
In early April, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office consented to the release of David Campbell from Rikers Island jail on the condition of electronic monitoring. At the time, Campbell was one of 270 people that the DA’s office had deemed eligible for release in light of the perilous spread of the novel coronavirus in New York prisons and jails. Six weeks have since passed, and Campbell remains incarcerated, sharing a dormitory with over 30 others in the jail complex where they sleep 2 feet apart from each other.
Any hope of early release, once sparked by the DA’s letter, has all but dissipated for the 32-year-old former funeral director and anti-fascist activist. Campbell now expects to see out the remaining five months of his one-year jail term.
The DA’s consent was never an assurance of release on electronic monitoring; such authority lies with the New York City Department of Correction Commissioner, with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice leading the review of sentences during the pandemic. Concerns persist around the deadly spread of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, through New York City’s incarcerated populations. And while around 1,400 individuals have been released from city jails since late March, Campbell’s situation — a state of limbo, with scant information available about when or if he will be released — remains the reality for many prisoners like him serving short sentences.
“Most of the people in here have given up hope for release.”
“Most of the people in here have given up hope for release,” Campbell told me over the phone from Rikers this week. “The hope can weigh you down, so most of us have pivoted back to preparing to stay here until our release dates.”
Campbell said that, despite hundreds of releases from Rikers during the pandemic, social distancing remains impossible in a dormitory at two-thirds capacity. Many guards, he said, do not wear masks in public areas, despite Department of Correction rules. And while incarcerated people themselves now have better access to masks and hand soap — in part thanks to a recent prisoner strike, and in part thanks to donations from rappers Jay-Z and Meek Mill — Campbell believes that conditions remain rife for infections to spread.
Campbell is not, by any means, among the most vulnerable of the incarcerated on Rikers Island when it comes to risks posed by the coronavirus. He is young and healthy. He is white; over 80 percent of Covid-19 fatalities in New York prisons have been people of color. Nor is Campbell, perhaps, the most obvious case for early release: Last October he pleaded guilty to two counts of felony assault and an 18-month-sentence, of which he expected to serve 12 months. Those released so far due to the pandemic were individuals serving sentences of a year or less, parolees who were sent back to jail on technical violations, and those who were held on bail and released by judges.
Yet Campbell’s case is illustrative of the apparent chaos and confusion attending New York City’s release procedures. He stands as a reminder, too, as city officials determine who is and is not deserving of release during a health emergency, that we should reject the notion that justice was somehow served at the original point of sentencing.
Campbell has not been able to glean any information about the status of his case, or any specifics accounting for the delay in his release, from either the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice or the Department of Correction. And neither of the agencies were able to provide me with any answers either.
Campbell told me that other prisoners in his dormitory are in the same uncertain position. “A number of the guys still in my dorm were told they were approved for release with ankle bands and haven’t heard more,” he said. “There were a few who were told they would be released and were on the bus to cross the bridge to leave Rikers Island, wearing civilian clothes, and they were tapped on the shoulder by officers and sent back.”
It is not clear whether the problem is in part related to accessing monitoring devices, including ankle monitors in New York City, or an issue of bureaucratic decision-making during a time of crisis. The Department of Correction has said that it does not issue ankle monitors, and the Mayor’s Office has not yet responded to requests for information on possible reasons for release delays, either with regards to Campbell’s case or more generally.
Photo: David Campbell Support Committee
“We don’t comment on individual cases,” Colby Hamilton, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice chief of public affairs, told me by email last month. “We have released more than 300 people who are now serving the remainder of their short-term city sentences outside jails, on furlough but still in Department of Correction custody.”
For Campbell’s friends and supporters, however, general statements about releases offer little solace. “We don’t even know what the delay is. No one seems to want to take responsibility for making the decision to release him or even to make a statement about it that isn’t later contradicted by someone else,” noted a statement from the Campbell’s support committee, which had been advocating for Campbell’s freedom ever since he was prosecuted, many months prior to the explosion of Covid-19 cases on Rikers Island.
“We don’t even know what the delay is. No one seems to want to take responsibility for making the decision to release him.”
Campbell’s charges, including for gang assault, were always excessive. I had been planning to write about his case for that very reason, long before the pandemic struck and exploded in prison populations. In January 2018, two weeks before Campbell was due to move to Paris to study French translation, he was arrested during a brawl outside an alt-right event in Manhattan hosted by the vile alt-right commentator Mike Cernovich.
Campbell and other anti-fascists had rallied in protest. A fight broke out between far-right revelers and the anti-fascists opposing the gathering of racist, misogynists. Campbell was the only person arrested from the fray, during which a police officer broke his leg in two places. He alone was hit with multiple felony charges.
I visited Rikers late last year to interview Campbell. He spoke with deep regret about kicking a 56-year-old alt-right member who was already on the ground, who sustained head injuries. “I feel bad about what happened to the gentleman that was injured the night I was arrested and my part in it,” he later wrote me in a letter from jail. “I do not feel bad, however, about going out to oppose the far right.”
Had Campbell gone to trial and been found guilty he would have faced a minimum of three and a half years in prison for gang assault alone — a vague charge in which an individual can be held legally responsible for the actions of others involved in a fight with three or more people. This in addition to an assault charge associated with injuring the man on the ground. Instead of risking trial, Campbell pleaded out and began his time in Rikers.
Now, the same DA’s office that so vigorously pursued charges against Campbell in the purported interest of public safety asserts that he is deemed safe to be released with electronic monitoring. In Campbell’s case, as in countless others, it should not have taken a pandemic to expose the myth of carceral justice’s claims to uphold public safety.
As of late April, at least 365 people of the 4,000 remaining detainees on Rikers Island had tested positive for the virus. The jail complex has been the epidemic center of the epidemic center, with an estimated infection rate seven times higher than in the rest of New York City last month.
Until about a week ago, Campbell’s dormitory was quarantined, with prisoners unable to leave its vicinity. “It’s opened up a bit. We can go to the mess hall. I’ve been going to work in the yard,” he told me. Campbell said that incarcerated people had, after over a month, been able to have their fingernails and toenails trimmed by a jail’s barbershop worker; prisoners are, of course, not permitted clippers.
Fear of the virus remains a constant. A few nights ago, Campbell told me that a man in his late sixties with underlying asthma was carried out of the dorm coughing and wheezing; he was taken to hospital and has not yet returned. There’s no evidence that the man had contracted Covid-19, but the incident spiked already heightened fears for those waiting anxiously for news of further releases.
“The Department of Correction is doing everything we can to safely and humanely house people in our custody amid the broader COVID-19 crisis. We have made tremendous efforts to increase social distancing throughout our facilities, and escalated our hygiene and sanitation protocols in accordance with guidance from the City’s Department of Health,” said the Department of Correction’s Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Peter Thorne, “We work closely with Correctional Health Services to ensure that those who are symptomatic are promptly quarantined and referred for treatment as necessary.” A recent ruling from the New York Supreme Court agreed that the state and city officials took “aggressive” steps to address the Covid-19 pandemic in their jails.
Meanwhile, 4,000 people remain incarcerated on Rikers Island, where two individuals have been confirmed dead from Covid-19-related causes. Conditions, even if improved through depopulation of the jail, remain at odds with best practices for safety against virus contraction. “They say they’re sanitizing all common areas three times a day; that’s bullshit,” Campbell told me this week. It’s also not the point: For those in Campbell’s position, approved for release but still held in one of the country’s most notorious jails during a pandemic, any more days of continued incarceration is cruelty on top of injustice.


theintercept--2020-05-16--Racism, Rather Than Facts, Drove U.S. Coronavirus Travel Bans

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report that outlined how coronavirus spread in the U.S. via European travel to the New York metropolitan area , despite a popular narrative that China was the main conduit for the disease .
So why was the U.S. quick to halt flights from China , but slow when it came to Europe ?
Experts say that ingrained racism informed policymakers ’ and the media ’ s favorable views toward European countries , and that even when presented with direct evidence to the contrary , those biases impeded important public health measures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Race and racism disallowed the U.S. from recognizing Europe as a threat , ” said Khiara Bridges , an anthropologist and professor of law at University of California , Berkeley .
From the time President Donald Trump ’ s travel ban on China went into effect on February 1 until the ban on travel from Europe in mid-March , more than 10,000 flights from coronavirus hot spots in Europe came into the U.S. , carrying some 2 million passengers , many of whom came through New York .
Genome sequence mapping shows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases came from Europe , and that other areas of the country also got the virus from New York .
The CDC report was published more than two weeks after an Intercept report that analyzed flight data , as well as states ’ coronavirus index cases and drew the same conclusions .
If travel from Europe had been halted three weeks sooner , the CDC report implies , the virus would not have spread so thoroughly in New York , New Jersey , and Connecticut , and potentially tens of thousands of lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for comment about the role race played in the timing of these travel bans , the National Institutes of Health said to contact the CDC , and the CDC said to contact the White House , which did not respond .
Early , frequent , and racist attempts by Trump and administration officials to blame China for the spread of Covid-19 , like calling it the “ Wuhan virus , ” played an important role in establishing a narrative that excluded Europe .
But the bias goes beyond him and is deeply ingrained @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tsai , an emergency medicine physician who has studied the impact of racial bias in American medical education .
“ There ’ s a clear connection between xenophobia and ideas of the source and danger of threats , and how much more easily that maps onto negativity in China and foreignness , and how much less likely it is to map on to ideas of Europe and whiteness , ” Tsai said .
“ It seems to me that it is certainly associated with the outcomes that we ’ re seeing in that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been unfairly targeted as the source of the spread of disease in the past , especially during plague outbreaks at the turn of the 20th century in Hawaii and California .
That racial bias has been on full display during this pandemic , to the point where UC Berkeley listed “ Xenophobia : fears about interacting with those who might be from Asia ” as a “ normal reaction ” to coronavirus .
Articles that dissected how travel from China spread the virus were plentiful from the beginning of the outbreak , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ travel were mostly produced after scientific studies with ample proof of Europe ’ s role were published .
“ It ’ s not uncommon that the places one finds empowering or affirming are also presumed safe , free from existential risk .
Europe in the American imagination is a place upon which these presumptions are projected : a place to visit and explore as a heritage site , to be a part of and claim , ” said Adia Benton , an anthropologist at Northwestern University .
“ A more insidious and implicit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Europe is equated with whiteness and civilization : a safe haven and therefore , not a part of a pandemic origin story , ” she added .
Some politicians have reacted with surprise to the CDC report .
New York Gov .
Andrew Cuomo said in his May 6 press conference that “ nobody said it was coming from Europe .
People who visited from Europe walked right through the airport .
Nobody said to New Yorkers , be careful if you were just with somebody who came from Italy , be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Nobody said that .
So it was totally new.
” ( Cuomo spokesperson Caitlin Girouard told The Intercept that the “ nobody ” in the governor ’ s May 6 statement referred to “ the federal government.
” ) In reality , news that coronavirus was spreading throughout Europe was a top media story worldwide in late February and early March .
Italy had reported its first coronavirus death on February 22 , and by March 1 , it had 1,694 cases and quarantined 100,000 people .
On March 3 , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schools , as well as pillars of tourism like the Louvre and told its citizens not to kiss when greeting each other .
On March 2 , the European Union raised the level of risk of Covid-19 contraction from moderate to high .
Tsai said that the inability to recognize how European travelers could be potential vectors of disease is so deeply held , it can not always be combatted effectively with facts .
“ People are so primed to go down certain mental pathways when they are exposed to things like race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and so embedded , even very frank data and evidence can not pull them out of those modes of thinking or that kind of theorization , ” she said .
Both the travel restrictions to China and to Europe were reactions to events that had already taken place and may have had limited effect overall , said Benton .
China had already shut down flights from the Hubei region , where the outbreak began , on January 23 , meaning that there was already a de facto travel ban in place by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ February 1 .
Travel from Europe had also already significantly dropped off by the time those bans went into place six weeks later .
Because of the disease ’ s incubation period , “ much of these policy decisions are based upon old information .
And that ’ s generally what happens with epidemics , ” Benton explained .
“ The travel restrictions are to some extent part of the security theater , ” she said .
Racism has been evident in the domestic reaction to coronavirus , too , as seen in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ handing out masks to white people sitting in a public park , while violently arresting black and Latinx people in other parts of the city .
“ What types of populations , identities , and phenotypes are deemed safe enough to be entitled to their liberation or not , for the purpose , ostensibly of social safety ?
” asked Tsai .
Racial bias also played a negative role in how basic health measures like wearing a mask were perceived early on .
Americans “ have always viewed the face masks as something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do and nonwhite countries do , ” said Bridges .
The spread of coronavirus in the U.S. has deeply hurt black , Indigenous , and Latinx communities , highlighting endemic racism in health care , the labor market , income , housing , and more .
The danger that the virus itself will be racialized poses a direct threat to those communities and everyone else in the country , Bridges said .
“ My fear is that if people come to associate Covid-19 with nonwhite death , if it comes to be associated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any will that the U.S. had to competently and humanely manage the pandemic will just be lost .
”

On May 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report that outlined how coronavirus spread in the U.S. via European travel to the New York metropolitan area, despite a popular narrative that China was the main conduit for the disease. So why was the U.S. quick to halt flights from China, but slow when it came to Europe?
Experts say that ingrained racism informed policymakers’ and the media’s favorable views toward European countries, and that even when presented with direct evidence to the contrary, those biases impeded important public health measures that would have kept people safe.
“Race and racism disallowed the U.S. from recognizing Europe as a threat,” said Khiara Bridges, an anthropologist and professor of law at University of California, Berkeley.
From the time President Donald Trump’s travel ban on China went into effect on February 1 until the ban on travel from Europe in mid-March, more than 10,000 flights from coronavirus hot spots in Europe came into the U.S., carrying some 2 million passengers, many of whom came through New York. Genome sequence mapping shows that most of New York’s cases came from Europe, and that other areas of the country also got the virus from New York. The CDC report was published more than two weeks after an Intercept report that analyzed flight data, as well as states’ coronavirus index cases and drew the same conclusions.
If travel from Europe had been halted three weeks sooner, the CDC report implies, the virus would not have spread so thoroughly in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and potentially tens of thousands of lives could have been saved. When asked for comment about the role race played in the timing of these travel bans, the National Institutes of Health said to contact the CDC, and the CDC said to contact the White House, which did not respond.
Early, frequent, and racist attempts by Trump and administration officials to blame China for the spread of Covid-19, like calling it the “Wuhan virus,” played an important role in establishing a narrative that excluded Europe. But the bias goes beyond him and is deeply ingrained in American society, explained Dr. Jennifer Tsai, an emergency medicine physician who has studied the impact of racial bias in American medical education.
“There’s a clear connection between xenophobia and ideas of the source and danger of threats, and how much more easily that maps onto negativity in China and foreignness, and how much less likely it is to map on to ideas of Europe and whiteness,” Tsai said. “It seems to me that it is certainly associated with the outcomes that we’re seeing in that regard.”
Chinatowns in the U.S. have been unfairly targeted as the source of the spread of disease in the past, especially during plague outbreaks at the turn of the 20th century in Hawaii and California. That racial bias has been on full display during this pandemic, to the point where UC Berkeley listed “Xenophobia: fears about interacting with those who might be from Asia” as a “normal reaction” to coronavirus. Articles that dissected how travel from China spread the virus were plentiful from the beginning of the outbreak, but the few stories that looked at European travel were mostly produced after scientific studies with ample proof of Europe’s role were published.
“Europe is equated with whiteness and civilization: a safe haven and therefore, not a part of a pandemic origin story.”
“It’s not uncommon that the places one finds empowering or affirming are also presumed safe, free from existential risk. Europe in the American imagination is a place upon which these presumptions are projected: a place to visit and explore as a heritage site, to be a part of and claim,” said Adia Benton, an anthropologist at Northwestern University. “A more insidious and implicit reading of that sense of belonging is that Europe is equated with whiteness and civilization: a safe haven and therefore, not a part of a pandemic origin story,” she added.
Some politicians have reacted with surprise to the CDC report. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in his May 6 press conference that “nobody said it was coming from Europe. People who visited from Europe walked right through the airport. Nobody said to New Yorkers, be careful if you were just with somebody who came from Italy, be careful, they may have the virus. Nobody said that. So it was totally new.” (Cuomo spokesperson Caitlin Girouard told The Intercept that the “nobody” in the governor’s May 6 statement referred to “the federal government.”)
In reality, news that coronavirus was spreading throughout Europe was a top media story worldwide in late February and early March. Italy had reported its first coronavirus death on February 22, and by March 1, it had 1,694 cases and quarantined 100,000 people. On March 3, the French government had closed more than 100 schools, as well as pillars of tourism like the Louvre and told its citizens not to kiss when greeting each other. On March 2, the European Union raised the level of risk of Covid-19 contraction from moderate to high.
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
Tsai said that the inability to recognize how European travelers could be potential vectors of disease is so deeply held, it cannot always be combatted effectively with facts. “People are so primed to go down certain mental pathways when they are exposed to things like race and identity, that are so ingrained and so embedded, even very frank data and evidence cannot pull them out of those modes of thinking or that kind of theorization,” she said.
Both the travel restrictions to China and to Europe were reactions to events that had already taken place and may have had limited effect overall, said Benton. China had already shut down flights from the Hubei region, where the outbreak began, on January 23, meaning that there was already a de facto travel ban in place by the time a formal one took effect on February 1. Travel from Europe had also already significantly dropped off by the time those bans went into place six weeks later.
Because of the disease’s incubation period, “much of these policy decisions are based upon old information. And that’s generally what happens with epidemics,” Benton explained. “The travel restrictions are to some extent part of the security theater,” she said.
“If people come to associate Covid-19 with nonwhite death, if it comes to be associated with black people’s deaths, any will that the U.S. had to competently and humanely manage the pandemic will just be lost.”
Racism has been evident in the domestic reaction to coronavirus, too, as seen in widely shared images juxtaposing police officers calmly handing out masks to white people sitting in a public park, while violently arresting black and Latinx people in other parts of the city. “What types of populations, identities, and phenotypes are deemed safe enough to be entitled to their liberation or not, for the purpose, ostensibly of social safety?” asked Tsai.
Racial bias also played a negative role in how basic health measures like wearing a mask were perceived early on. Americans “have always viewed the face masks as something that others do, that nonwhite people do and nonwhite countries do,” said Bridges.
The spread of coronavirus in the U.S. has deeply hurt black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities, highlighting endemic racism in health care, the labor market, income, housing, and more. The danger that the virus itself will be racialized poses a direct threat to those communities and everyone else in the country, Bridges said. “My fear is that if people come to associate Covid-19 with nonwhite death, if it comes to be associated with black people’s deaths, any will that the U.S. had to competently and humanely manage the pandemic will just be lost.”


theintercept--2020-05-17--Federal Government Buys Riot Gear, Increases Security Funding, Citing Coronavirus Pandemic

The Veterans Affairs department , which manages nearly 1,500 health care care facilities around the country , has also extended special contracts for coronavirus-related security services .
The purchase orders include requests for disposable cuffs , gas masks , ballistic helmets , and riot gloves , along with law enforcement protective equipment for federal police assigned to protect Veterans Affairs facilities .
The orders were expedited under a special authorization “ in response to Covid-19 outbreak.
” The federal government has ramped up security and police-related spending in response to the coronavirus pandemic , including issuing contracts for riot gear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expedited under a special authorization “ in response to Covid-19 outbreak.
” Redcon Solutions Group , a private security company founded by Iraq War veterans , has won over $ 1.6 million in contracts to provide guards for “ Covid-19 screening security guard services.
” Similar contracts have gone out to private security firms to guard VA facilities in San Francisco , Des Moines , and Fayetteville , among others .
The increased security contracts appeared shortly after a recent Inspector General report noted an increase in absenteeism among VA employees and shortages @ @ @ @ @ @ @ noted that there is “ additional strain caused by the need for additional police presence for COVID-19-related screenings ” of veterans at all VA health facilities and recommended the hiring of contract security services .
The VA police , as The Intercept previously reported , was not armed until 2011 , when the Pentagon began providing military equipment to police forces around the country .
“ Between 2005 and 2014 , VA police departments acquired millions of dollars ’ worth of body armor , chemical agents , night vision equipment , and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Intercept reported last year .
But an Inspector General report in December 2018 found there was little oversight .
“ The OIG found that forces at roughly three out of every four facilities were not receiving timely inspections .
Further , the sparse data collected on police activities was not tracked or assessed in any systematic or rigorous way.
” The CARES Act , the $ 2.2 trillion stimulus legislation passed in late March , also authorized $ 850 million for the Coronavirus Emergency Supplemental Funding program , a federal grant program to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and police for the crisis .
The funds have been dispensed to local governments to pay for overtime costs , purchase protective supplies , and defray expenses related to emergency policing .
The CESF funding may be used for a range of coronavirus response efforts by law enforcement , including medical personal protective equipment , overtime for police officers , training , and supplies for detention centers .
The grants may also be used for the purchase of unmanned aerial aircraft and video security cameras for law enforcement .
Motorola Solutions , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encouraged local governments to use the new money to buy a range of command center software and video analytics systems .
While the pandemic has coincided with a historic drop in violent crime across the country , analysts have expressed concern that the rapid spread of the virus will fuel confrontations .
There have been multiple inmate riots in response to Covid-19 outbreaks in prisons and jails , which have become dangerous hotspots for the disease .
The economic upheaval and disagreements over coronavirus-related policy have also fueled demonstrations across the country .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rosy rhetoric from President Donald Trump , who has lavished himself with praise for his response to the crisis and issued optimistic predictions that recovery is around the corner .
Last month , the federal government secured a contract to purchase 100,000 body bags to dispose of deaths related to the Covid-19 outbreak .

The federal government has ramped up security and police-related spending in response to the coronavirus pandemic, including issuing contracts for riot gear, disclosures show.
The purchase orders include requests for disposable cuffs, gas masks, ballistic helmets, and riot gloves, along with law enforcement protective equipment for federal police assigned to protect Veterans Affairs facilities. The orders were expedited under a special authorization “in response to Covid-19 outbreak.”
The Veterans Affairs department, which manages nearly 1,500 health care care facilities around the country, has also extended special contracts for coronavirus-related security services.
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
Redcon Solutions Group, a private security company founded by Iraq War veterans, has won over $1.6 million in contracts to provide guards for “Covid-19 screening security guard services.” Similar contracts have gone out to private security firms to guard VA facilities in San Francisco, Des Moines, and Fayetteville, among others.
The increased security contracts appeared shortly after a recent Inspector General report noted an increase in absenteeism among VA employees and shortages among VA police. The IG report noted that there is “additional strain caused by the need for additional police presence for COVID-19-related screenings” of veterans at all VA health facilities and recommended the hiring of contract security services.
Not all VA police carried firearms until 2000, when the agency began a program to provide military equipment to police forces around the country.
“Between 2005 and 2014, VA police departments acquired millions of dollars’ worth of body armor, chemical agents, night vision equipment, and other weapons and tactical gear,” The Intercept reported last year. But an Inspector General report in December 2018 found there was little oversight. “The OIG found that forces at roughly three out of every four facilities were not receiving timely inspections. Further, the sparse data collected on police activities was not tracked or assessed in any systematic or rigorous way.”
The CARES Act, the $2.2 trillion stimulus legislation passed in late March, also authorized $850 million for the Coronavirus Emergency Supplemental Funding program, a federal grant program to prepare law enforcement, correctional officers, and police for the crisis. The funds have been dispensed to local governments to pay for overtime costs, purchase protective supplies, and defray expenses related to emergency policing.
The CESF funding may be used for a range of coronavirus response efforts by law enforcement, including medical personal protective equipment, overtime for police officers, training, and supplies for detention centers. The grants may also be used for the purchase of unmanned aerial aircraft and video security cameras for law enforcement. Motorola Solutions, a major supplier of police technology, has encouraged local governments to use the new money to buy a range of command center software and video analytics systems.
While the pandemic has coincided with a historic drop in violent crime across the country, analysts have expressed concern that the rapid spread of the virus will fuel confrontations.
There have been multiple inmate riots in response to Covid-19 outbreaks in prisons and jails, which have become dangerous hotspots for the disease. The economic upheaval and disagreements over coronavirus-related policy have also fueled demonstrations across the country.
The federal funding requests contrast sharply with the rosy rhetoric from President Donald Trump, who has lavished himself with praise for his response to the crisis and issued optimistic predictions that recovery is around the corner. Last month, the federal government secured a contract to purchase 100,000 body bags to dispose of deaths related to the Covid-19 outbreak.


theintercept--2020-05-18--Ben Smith's NYT Critique of Ronan Farrow Describes a Toxic, Corrosive, and Still-Vibrant Trump-Era P

Ben Smith's NYT Critique of Ronan Farrow Describes a Toxic, Corrosive, and Still-Vibrant Trump-Era Pathology: "Resistance Journalism"

Farrow ’ s work in exposing Harvey Weinstein as a serial predator earned him celebrity , wealth , adoration in liberal circles , and — along with two New York Times reporters whose work on Weinstein was crucial — a Pulitzer Prize .
His multiple appearances on late-night entertainment talk shows , his family lineage ( he is the son of actors Mia Farrow and Woody Allen or , according to his mother , perhaps Frank Sinatra ) , his bestselling book , his New Yorker perch as star reporter , his marital engagement to former Obama speechwriter and current @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and his telegenic appearance have all cemented Farrow ’ s status as one of the country ’ s most untouchable and lucrative media commodities .
Few journalists have the stature or courage to criticize his work , especially in the pages of the New York Times , but Smith did exactly that in paragraph after paragraph of a long critique that seriously called into question the reliability and even integrity of Farrow ’ s reportorial methods .
Smith ’ s critique of Farrow ’ s journalism raises complex questions that are not easy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already receiving its own criticisms .
Much of that particular debate depends on how one views the unique journalistic challenges of # MeToo reporting ( though one of the most embarrassing mistakes Smith flags was unrelated to sexual assault claims : Farrow ’ s breathless and ultimately misguided allegation that the Trump administration destroyed records involving former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen , a “ blockbuster ” revelation mindlessly and predictably hyped by MSNBC ’ s prime-time on-air personalities ) .
I admire much of what Farrow has done over the last several years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ NBC and MSNBC , to get stories about powerful factions published , but I ’ ll leave the assessments of Smith ’ s specific critique of Farrow ’ s reporting to others more steeped in the specifics of those debates .
What is particularly valuable about Smith ’ s article is its perfect description of a media sickness borne of the Trump era that is rapidly corroding journalistic integrity and justifiably destroying trust in news outlets .
Smith aptly dubs this pathology “ resistance journalism , ” by which he means that journalists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encouraged and incentivized , to say or publish anything they want , no matter how reckless and fact-free , provided their target is someone sufficiently disliked in mainstream liberal media venues and/or on social media : [ Farrow ’ s ] work , though , reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump : That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices , the old rules @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives .
That can be a dangerous approach , particularly in a moment when the idea of truth and a shared set of facts is under assault .
In assailing Farrow for peddling unproven conspiracy theories , Smith argues that such journalistic practices are particularly dangerous in an era where conspiracy theories are increasingly commonplace .
Yet unlike most journalists with a mainstream platform , Smith emphasizes that conspiracy theories are commonly used not only by Trump and his movement ( conspiracy theories which are quickly debunked by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but are also commonly deployed by Trump ’ s enemies , whose reliance on conspiracy theories is virtually never denounced by journalists because mainstream news outlets themselves play a key role in peddling them : We are living in an era of conspiracies and dangerous untruths — many pushed by President Trump , but others hyped by his enemies — that have lured ordinary Americans into passionately believing wild and unfounded theories and fiercely rejecting evidence to the contrary .
The best reporting tries to capture the most attainable version of the truth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we don ’ t know .
Instead , Mr. Farrow told us what we wanted to believe about the way power works , and now , it seems , he and his publicity team are not even pretending to know if it ’ s true .
Ever since Donald Trump was elected , and one could argue even in the months leading up to his election , journalistic standards have been consciously jettisoned when it comes to reporting on public figures who , in Smith ’ s words , are “ most disliked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when such reporting “ swim [ s ] ably along with the tides of social media.
” Put another way : As long the targets of one ’ s conspiracy theories and attacks are regarded as villains by the guardians of mainstream liberal social media circles , journalists reap endless career rewards for publishing unvetted and unproven — even false — attacks on such people , while never suffering any negative consequences when their stories are exposed as shabby frauds .
It is this “ resistance journalism ” sickness that caused U.S. politics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little other than salacious and fact-free conspiracy theories about Trump and his family members and closest associates : Putin had infiltrated and taken over the U.S. government through sexual and financial blackmail leverage over Trump and used it to dictate U.S. policy ; Trump officials conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election ; Russia was attacking the U.S. by hacking its electricity grid , recruiting journalists to serve as clandestine Kremlin messengers , and plotting to cut off heat to Americans in winter .
Mainstream media debacles — all in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conspiracy theories against Trump — are literally too numerous to count , requiring one to select the worst offenses as illustrative .
In March of last year , Rolling Stone ’ s Matt Taibbi — writing under the headline “ It ’ s official : Russiagate is this generation ’ s WMD ” — compared the prevailing media climate since 2016 to that which prevailed in 2002 and 2003 regarding the invasion of Iraq and the so-called war on terror : little to no dissent permitted , skeptics of media-endorsed orthodoxies shunned and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the very journalists who were most wrong in peddling false conspiracy theories were exactly those who ended up most rewarded on the ground that even though they spread falsehoods , they did so for the right cause .
Under that warped rubric — in which spreading falsehoods is commendable as long as it was done to harm the evildoers — the New Yorker ’ s Jeffrey Goldberg , one of the most damaging endorsers of false conspiracy theories about Iraq , rose to become editor-in-chief of The Atlantic , while two of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ David Frum and supreme propagandist Bill Kristol , have reprised their role as leading propagandists and conspiracy theorists — only this time aimed against the GOP president instead of on his behalf — and thus have become beloved liberal media icons .
The communications director for both the Bush/Cheney campaign and its White House , Nicole Wallace , is one of the most popular liberal cable hosts from her MSNBC perch .
Exactly the same journalism-destroying dynamic is driving the post-Russiagate media landscape .
There is literally no accountability for the journalists and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pages , on their airwaves , and through their viral social media postings .
The Washington Post ’ s media columnist Erik Wemple has been one of the very few journalists devoted to holding these myth-peddlers accountable — recounting how one of the most reckless Russigate conspiracy maximialists , Natasha Bertrand , became an overnight social media and journalism star by peddling discredited conspiratorial trash ( she was notably hired by Jeffrey Goldberg to cover Russigate for The Atlantic ) ; MSNBC ’ s Rachel Maddow spent three years hyping conspiratorial junk with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ; and Mother Jones ’ David Corn played a crucial , decisively un-journalistic role in mainstreaming the lies of the Steele dossier all with zero effect on his journalistic status , other than to enrich him through a predictably bestselling book that peddled those unhinged conspiracies further .
Wemple ’ s post-Russiagate series has established him as a commendable , often-lone voice trying — with futility — to bring some accountability to U.S. journalism for the systemic media failures of the past three years .
The reason that ’ s futile is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Farrow : In “ resistance journalism , ” facts and truth are completely dispensable — indeed , dispensing with them is rewarded — provided “ reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices.
” That describes perfectly the journalists who were defined , and enriched , by years of Russiagate deceit masquerading as reporting .
By far the easiest path to career success over the last three years — booming ratings , lucrative book sales , exploding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the most discredited D.C. operatives — was to feed establishment liberals an endless diet of fearmongering and inflammatory conspiracies about Drumpf and his White House .
Whether it was true or supported by basic journalistic standards was completely irrelevant .
Responsible reporting was simply was not a metric used to assess its worth .
It was one thing for activists , charlatans , and con artists to exploit fears of Trump for material gain : that , by definition , is what such people do .
But it was another thing entirely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ low-hanging career rewards available to them by throwing all journalistic standards into the trash bin in exchange for a star turn as a # Resistance icon .
That , as Smith aptly describes , is what “ Resistance Journalism ” is , and it ’ s hard to identify anything more toxic to our public discourse .
Perhaps the single most shameful and journalism-destroying episode in all of this — an obviously difficult title to bestow — was when a national security blogger , Marcy Wheeler , violated long-standing norms and ethical standards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she had voluntarily turned in her own source to the FBI , claiming she did so because her still-unnamed source “ had played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US ” and because her life was endangered by her brave decision to stop being a blogger and become an armchair cop by pleading with the FBI and the Mueller team to let her work with them .
In her blog post announcing what she did , she claimed she was going public with her treachery because her life was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would know the real reason if “ someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow.
” To say that Wheeler ’ s actions are a grotesque violation of journalistic ethics is to radically understate the case .
Journalists are expected to protect their sources ’ identities from the FBI even if they receive a subpoena and a court order compelling its disclosure ; we ’ re expected to go to prison before we comply with FBI attempts to uncover our source ’ s identity .
But here , the FBI @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tell them anything ; they displayed no interest in her as she desperately tried to chase them down .
By all appearances , Wheeler had to beg the FBI to pay attention to her because they treated her like the sort of unstable , unhinged , unwell , delusional obsessive who , believing they have uncovered some intricate conspiracy , relentlessly harass and bombard journalists with their bizarre theories until they finally prattle to themselves for all of eternity in the spam filter of our email inboxes .
The claim that she was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and damning information that would blow the Mueller investigation wide open was laughable .
In her post , she claimed she “ always planned to disclose this when this person ’ s role was publicly revealed , ” but to date — almost two years later — she has never revealed “ this person ’ s ” identity because , from all appearances , the Mueller report never relied on Wheeler ’ s intrepid reporting or her supposedly red-hot secrets .
Like so many other Russiagate obsessives who turned into social media and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ living a wild , self-serving fantasy , a Cold War Tom Clancy suspense film that she invented in her head and then cast herself as the heroine : a crusading investigative dot-connecter uncovering dangerous , hidden conspiracies perpetrated by dangerous , hidden Cold War-style villains ( Putin ) to the point where her own life was endangered by her bravery .
It was a sad joke , a depressing spectacle of psycho-drama , but one that could have had grave consequences for the person she voluntarily ratted out to the FBI .
Whatever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grave damage on American journalism by having mainstream , Russia-obsessed journalists not denounce her for her egregious violation of journalistic ethics but celebrate her for turning journalism on its head .
Why ?
Because , as Smith said in his Farrow article , she was “ swim [ ing ] ably along with the tides of social media and produc [ ing ] damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices ” and thus “ the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness [ were ] more like impediments than essential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former New York Times public editor and now the Washington Post ’ s otherwise reliably commendable media reporter , celebrated Wheeler ’ s bizarre behavior under the headline : “ A journalist ’ s conscience leads her to reveal her source to the FBI.
” Despite acknowledging that “ in their reporting , journalists talk to criminals all the time and don ’ t turn them in ” and that “ it ’ s pretty much an inviolable rule of journalism : Protect your sources , ” Sullivan heralded Wheeler ’ s ethically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It ’ s not hard to see that her decision was a careful and principled one , ” Sullivan proclaimed .
She even endorsed Wheeler ’ s cringe-inducing , self-glorifying claims about her life being endangered by invoking long-standard Cold War clichés about the treachery of the Russkies ( “ Overly dramatic ?
Not really .
The Russians do have a penchant for disposing of people they find threatening.
” ) .
The English language is insufficient to convey the madness required to believe that the Kremlin wanted to kill Marcy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Close to The Truth , but in the fevered swamps of resistance journalism , literally no claim was too unhinged to be embraced provided that it fed the social media # Resistance masses .
Sullivan ’ s article quoted no critics of Wheeler ’ s incredibly controversial behavior — no need to : She was on the right side of social media reaction .
And Sullivan never bothered to return to wonder why her prediction — “ Wheeler hasn ’ t named the source publicly , though his name may soon be known @ @ @ @ @ @ @ investigation ” — never materialized .
Both CNN and , incredibly , the Columbia Journalism Review published similarly sympathetic accounts of Wheeler ’ s desperate attempts to turn over her source to the FBI and then cosplay as though she were some sort of insider in the Mueller investigation .
of what Smith calls “ Resistance Journalism ” is that it permits and tolerates no dissent and questioning : perhaps the single most destructive path journalism can take .
It has been well-documented that MSNBC and CNN spent three years peddling all sorts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ excluding from their airwaves anyone who dissented from or even questioned those conspiracies .
Instead , they relied upon an increasingly homogenized army of former security state agents from the CIA , FBI , and NSA to propound , in unison , all sorts of claims about Trump and Russia that turned out to be false , and peppered their panels of “ analysts ” with journalists whose career skyrocketed exclusively by pushing maximalist Russiagate claims , often by relying on the same intelligence officials these cable outlets sat them next to .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and dissent from orthodoxies are excluded from media discourse — is worsening rapidly due to two major factors .
The first is that cable news programs are constructed to feed their audiences only self-affirming narratives that vindicate partisan loyalties .
One liberal cable host told me that they receive ratings not for each show but for each segment , and they can see the ratings drop off — the remotes clicking away — if they put on the air anyone who criticizes the party to which that outlet is devoted ( Democrats in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the GOP in the case of Fox ) .
But there ’ s another more recent and probably more dissent-quashing development : the disappearance of media jobs .
Mass layoffs were already common in online journalism and local newspapers prior to the coronavirus pandemic , and have now turned into an industrywide massacre .
With young journalists watching jobs disappearing en masse , the last thing they are going to want to do is question or challenge prevailing orthodoxies within their news outlet or , using Smith ’ s “ Resistance Journalism ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tides of social media ” or question the evidence amassed against those “ most disliked by the loudest voices.
” Affirming those orthodoxies can be career-promoting , while questioning them can be job-destroying .
Consider the powerful incentives journalists face in an industry where jobs are disappearing so rapidly one can barely keep count .
During Russiagate , I often heard from young journalists at large media outlets who expressed varying degrees of support for and agreement with the skepticism which I and a handful of other journalists were expressing , but they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for good reason .
They watched the reprisals and shunning doled out even to journalists with a long record of journalistic accomplishments and job security for the crime of Russiagate skepticism , such as Taibbi ( similar to the way MSNBC fired Phil Donahue in 2002 for opposing the invasion of Iraq ) , and they know journalists with less stature and security than Taibbi could not risk incurring that collective wrath .
All professions and institutions suffer when a herd , groupthink mentality and the banning of dissent prevail .
But few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than journalism is , which has as its core function skepticism and questioning of pieties .
Journalism quickly transforms into a sickly , limp version of itself when it itself wages war on the virtues of dissent and airing a wide range of perspectives .
I do not know how valid are Smith ’ s critiques of Farrow ’ s journalism .
But what I know for certain is that Smith ’ s broader diagnosis of “ Resistance Journalism ” is dead-on , and the harms it is causing are deep and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thrive by affirming pleasing falsehoods , and suffer when they insist on unpopular truths , journalism not only loses its societal value but becomes just another instrument for societal manipulation , deceit , and coercion .

The New York Times’ recently hired media columnist Ben Smith, who spent the previous nine years as editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News as it grew into a media behemoth, did something Sunday night that very few other U.S. journalists would be willing to do: He published an unflinching and sometimes scathing critique of former-MSNBC-daytime-host-turned-widely-beloved-New-Yorker-star-investigative-reporter Ronan Farrow.
Farrow’s work in exposing Harvey Weinstein as a serial predator earned him celebrity, wealth, adoration in liberal circles, and — along with two New York Times reporters whose work on Weinstein was crucial — a Pulitzer Prize. His multiple appearances on late-night entertainment talk shows, his family lineage (he is the son of actors Mia Farrow and Woody Allen or, according to his mother, perhaps Frank Sinatra), his bestselling book, his New Yorker perch as star reporter, his marital engagement to former Obama speechwriter and current Pod Save America co-host Jon Lovett, and his telegenic appearance have all cemented Farrow’s status as one of the country’s most untouchable and lucrative media commodities. Few journalists have the stature or courage to criticize his work, especially in the pages of the New York Times, but Smith did exactly that in paragraph after paragraph of a long critique that seriously called into question the reliability and even integrity of Farrow’s reportorial methods.
Smith’s critique of Farrow’s journalism raises complex questions that are not easy to assess, and that critique is already receiving its own criticisms. Much of that particular debate depends on how one views the unique journalistic challenges of #MeToo reporting (though one of the most embarrassing mistakes Smith flags was unrelated to sexual assault claims: Farrow’s breathless and ultimately misguided allegation that the Trump administration destroyed records involving former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, a “blockbuster” revelation mindlessly and predictably hyped by MSNBC’s prime-time on-air personalities). I admire much of what Farrow has done over the last several years in battling corporate media outlets, particularly NBC and MSNBC, to get stories about powerful factions published, but I’ll leave the assessments of Smith’s specific critique of Farrow’s reporting to others more steeped in the specifics of those debates.
What is particularly valuable about Smith’s article is its perfect description of a media sickness borne of the Trump era that is rapidly corroding journalistic integrity and justifiably destroying trust in news outlets. Smith aptly dubs this pathology “resistance journalism,” by which he means that journalists are now not only free, but encouraged and incentivized, to say or publish anything they want, no matter how reckless and fact-free, provided their target is someone sufficiently disliked in mainstream liberal media venues and/or on social media:
[Farrow’s] work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.
That can be a dangerous approach, particularly in a moment when the idea of truth and a shared set of facts is under assault.
In assailing Farrow for peddling unproven conspiracy theories, Smith argues that such journalistic practices are particularly dangerous in an era where conspiracy theories are increasingly commonplace. Yet unlike most journalists with a mainstream platform, Smith emphasizes that conspiracy theories are commonly used not only by Trump and his movement (conspiracy theories which are quickly debunked by most of the mainstream media), but are also commonly deployed by Trump’s enemies, whose reliance on conspiracy theories is virtually never denounced by journalists because mainstream news outlets themselves play a key role in peddling them:
We are living in an era of conspiracies and dangerous untruths — many pushed by President Trump, but others hyped by his enemies — that have lured ordinary Americans into passionately believing wild and unfounded theories and fiercely rejecting evidence to the contrary. The best reporting tries to capture the most attainable version of the truth, with clarity and humility about what we don’t know. Instead, Mr. Farrow told us what we wanted to believe about the way power works, and now, it seems, he and his publicity team are not even pretending to know if it’s true.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected , and one could argue even in the months leading up to his election, journalistic standards have been consciously jettisoned when it comes to reporting on public figures who, in Smith’s words, are “most disliked by the loudest voices,” particularly when such reporting “swim[s] ably along with the tides of social media.” Put another way: As long the targets of one’s conspiracy theories and attacks are regarded as villains by the guardians of mainstream liberal social media circles, journalists reap endless career rewards for publishing unvetted and unproven — even false — attacks on such people, while never suffering any negative consequences when their stories are exposed as shabby frauds.
It is this “resistance journalism” sickness that caused U.S. politics to be drowned for three years in little other than salacious and fact-free conspiracy theories about Trump and his family members and closest associates: Putin had infiltrated and taken over the U.S. government through sexual and financial blackmail leverage over Trump and used it to dictate U.S. policy; Trump officials conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election; Russia was attacking the U.S. by hacking its electricity grid, recruiting journalists to serve as clandestine Kremlin messengers, and plotting to cut off heat to Americans in winter. Mainstream media debacles — all in service of promoting the same set of conspiracy theories against Trump — are literally too numerous to count, requiring one to select the worst offenses as illustrative.
Glenn Beck 2009 + Maddow 2019 is the greatest crossover event in history pic.twitter.com/D1NElGBq3U — Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) January 31, 2019
In March of last year, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi — writing under the headline “It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD” — compared the prevailing media climate since 2016 to that which prevailed in 2002 and 2003 regarding the invasion of Iraq and the so-called war on terror: little to no dissent permitted, skeptics of media-endorsed orthodoxies shunned and excluded, and worst of all, the very journalists who were most wrong in peddling false conspiracy theories were exactly those who ended up most rewarded on the ground that even though they spread falsehoods, they did so for the right cause.
Under that warped rubric — in which spreading falsehoods is commendable as long as it was done to harm the evildoers — the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the most damaging endorsers of false conspiracy theories about Iraq, rose to become editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, while two of the most deceitful Bush-era neocons, Bush/Cheney speechwriter David Frum and supreme propagandist Bill Kristol, have reprised their role as leading propagandists and conspiracy theorists — only this time aimed against the GOP president instead of on his behalf — and thus have become beloved liberal media icons. The communications director for both the Bush/Cheney campaign and its White House, Nicole Wallace, is one of the most popular liberal cable hosts from her MSNBC perch.
Exactly the same journalism-destroying dynamic is driving the post-Russiagate media landscape. There is literally no accountability for the journalists and news outlets that spread falsehoods in their pages, on their airwaves, and through their viral social media postings. The Washington Post’s media columnist Erik Wemple has been one of the very few journalists devoted to holding these myth-peddlers accountable — recounting how one of the most reckless Russigate conspiracy maximialists, Natasha Bertrand, became an overnight social media and journalism star by peddling discredited conspiratorial trash (she was notably hired by Jeffrey Goldberg to cover Russigate for The Atlantic); MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow spent three years hyping conspiratorial junk with no need even to retract any of it; and Mother Jones’ David Corn played a crucial, decisively un-journalistic role in mainstreaming the lies of the Steele dossier all with zero effect on his journalistic status, other than to enrich him through a predictably bestselling book that peddled those unhinged conspiracies further.
Wemple’s post-Russiagate series has established him as a commendable, often-lone voice trying — with futility — to bring some accountability to U.S. journalism for the systemic media failures of the past three years. The reason that’s futile is exactly what Smith described in his column on Farrow: In “resistance journalism,” facts and truth are completely dispensable — indeed, dispensing with them is rewarded — provided “reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices.”
That describes perfectly the journalists who were defined, and enriched, by years of Russiagate deceit masquerading as reporting. By far the easiest path to career success over the last three years — booming ratings, lucrative book sales, exploding social media followings, career rehabilitation even for the most discredited D.C. operatives — was to feed establishment liberals an endless diet of fearmongering and inflammatory conspiracies about Drumpf and his White House. Whether it was true or supported by basic journalistic standards was completely irrelevant. Responsible reporting was simply was not a metric used to assess its worth.
It was one thing for activists, charlatans, and con artists to exploit fears of Trump for material gain: that, by definition, is what such people do. But it was another thing entirely for journalists to succumb to all the low-hanging career rewards available to them by throwing all journalistic standards into the trash bin in exchange for a star turn as a #Resistance icon. That, as Smith aptly describes, is what “Resistance Journalism” is, and it’s hard to identify anything more toxic to our public discourse.
Perhaps the single most shameful and journalism-destroying episode in all of this — an obviously difficult title to bestow — was when a national security blogger, Marcy Wheeler, violated long-standing norms and ethical standards of journalism by announcing in 2018 that she had voluntarily turned in her own source to the FBI, claiming she did so because her still-unnamed source “had played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US” and because her life was endangered by her brave decision to stop being a blogger and become an armchair cop by pleading with the FBI and the Mueller team to let her work with them. In her blog post announcing what she did, she claimed she was going public with her treachery because her life was in danger, and this way everyone would know the real reason if “someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow.”
To say that Wheeler’s actions are a grotesque violation of journalistic ethics is to radically understate the case. Journalists are expected to protect their sources’ identities from the FBI even if they receive a subpoena and a court order compelling its disclosure; we’re expected to go to prison before we comply with FBI attempts to uncover our source’s identity. But here, the FBI did not try to compel Wheeler to tell them anything; they displayed no interest in her as she desperately tried to chase them down.
By all appearances, Wheeler had to beg the FBI to pay attention to her because they treated her like the sort of unstable, unhinged, unwell, delusional obsessive who, believing they have uncovered some intricate conspiracy, relentlessly harass and bombard journalists with their bizarre theories until they finally prattle to themselves for all of eternity in the spam filter of our email inboxes. The claim that she was in possession of some sort of explosive and damning information that would blow the Mueller investigation wide open was laughable. In her post, she claimed she “always planned to disclose this when this person’s role was publicly revealed,” but to date — almost two years later — she has never revealed “this person’s” identity because, from all appearances, the Mueller report never relied on Wheeler’s intrepid reporting or her supposedly red-hot secrets.
Like so many other Russiagate obsessives who turned into social media and MSNBC/CNN #Resistance stars, Wheeler was living a wild, self-serving fantasy, a Cold War Tom Clancy suspense film that she invented in her head and then cast herself as the heroine: a crusading investigative dot-connecter uncovering dangerous, hidden conspiracies perpetrated by dangerous, hidden Cold War-style villains (Putin) to the point where her own life was endangered by her bravery. It was a sad joke, a depressing spectacle of psycho-drama, but one that could have had grave consequences for the person she voluntarily ratted out to the FBI. Whatever else is true, this episode inflicted grave damage on American journalism by having mainstream, Russia-obsessed journalists not denounce her for her egregious violation of journalistic ethics but celebrate her for turning journalism on its head.
Why? Because, as Smith said in his Farrow article, she was “swim[ing] ably along with the tides of social media and produc[ing] damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices” and thus “the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness [were] more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.” Margaret Sullivan, the former New York Times public editor and now the Washington Post’s otherwise reliably commendable media reporter, celebrated Wheeler’s bizarre behavior under the headline: “A journalist’s conscience leads her to reveal her source to the FBI.”
Despite acknowledging that “in their reporting, journalists talk to criminals all the time and don’t turn them in” and that “it’s pretty much an inviolable rule of journalism: Protect your sources,” Sullivan heralded Wheeler’s ethically repugnant and journalism-eroding violation of those principles. “It’s not hard to see that her decision was a careful and principled one,” Sullivan proclaimed.
She even endorsed Wheeler’s cringe-inducing, self-glorifying claims about her life being endangered by invoking long-standard Cold War clichés about the treachery of the Russkies (“Overly dramatic? Not really. The Russians do have a penchant for disposing of people they find threatening.”). The English language is insufficient to convey the madness required to believe that the Kremlin wanted to kill Marcy Wheeler because her blogging was getting Too Close to The Truth, but in the fevered swamps of resistance journalism, literally no claim was too unhinged to be embraced provided that it fed the social media #Resistance masses.
Sullivan’s article quoted no critics of Wheeler’s incredibly controversial behavior — no need to: She was on the right side of social media reaction. And Sullivan never bothered to return to wonder why her prediction — “Wheeler hasn’t named the source publicly, though his name may soon be known to all who are following the Mueller investigation” — never materialized. Both CNN and, incredibly, the Columbia Journalism Review published similarly sympathetic accounts of Wheeler’s desperate attempts to turn over her source to the FBI and then cosplay as though she were some sort of insider in the Mueller investigation.
The most menacing attribute of what Smith calls “Resistance Journalism” is that it permits and tolerates no dissent and questioning: perhaps the single most destructive path journalism can take. It has been well-documented that MSNBC and CNN spent three years peddling all sorts of ultimately discredited Russiagate conspiracy theories by excluding from their airwaves anyone who dissented from or even questioned those conspiracies. Instead, they relied upon an increasingly homogenized army of former security state agents from the CIA, FBI, and NSA to propound, in unison, all sorts of claims about Trump and Russia that turned out to be false, and peppered their panels of “analysts” with journalists whose career skyrocketed exclusively by pushing maximalist Russiagate claims, often by relying on the same intelligence officials these cable outlets sat them next to.
That NBC & MSNBC hired as a "news analyst" John Brennan – who ran the CIA when the Trump/Russia investigation began & was a key player in the news he was shaping as a paid colleague of their reporters – is a huge ethical breach. And it produced this: pic.twitter.com/nPlaq5YVxf — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 2, 2019
This trend — whereby diversity of opinion and dissent from orthodoxies are excluded from media discourse — is worsening rapidly due to two major factors. The first is that cable news programs are constructed to feed their audiences only self-affirming narratives that vindicate partisan loyalties. One liberal cable host told me that they receive ratings not for each show but for each segment, and they can see the ratings drop off — the remotes clicking away — if they put on the air anyone who criticizes the party to which that outlet is devoted (Democrats in the case of MSNBC and CNN, the GOP in the case of Fox).
But there’s another more recent and probably more dissent-quashing development: the disappearance of media jobs. Mass layoffs were already common in online journalism and local newspapers prior to the coronavirus pandemic, and have now turned into an industrywide massacre. With young journalists watching jobs disappearing en masse, the last thing they are going to want to do is question or challenge prevailing orthodoxies within their news outlet or, using Smith’s “Resistance Journalism” formulation, to “swim against the tides of social media” or question the evidence amassed against those “most disliked by the loudest voices.”
Affirming those orthodoxies can be career-promoting, while questioning them can be job-destroying. Consider the powerful incentives journalists face in an industry where jobs are disappearing so rapidly one can barely keep count. During Russiagate, I often heard from young journalists at large media outlets who expressed varying degrees of support for and agreement with the skepticism which I and a handful of other journalists were expressing, but they felt constrained to do so themselves, for good reason. They watched the reprisals and shunning doled out even to journalists with a long record of journalistic accomplishments and job security for the crime of Russiagate skepticism, such as Taibbi (similar to the way MSNBC fired Phil Donahue in 2002 for opposing the invasion of Iraq), and they know journalists with less stature and security than Taibbi could not risk incurring that collective wrath.
All professions and institutions suffer when a herd, groupthink mentality and the banning of dissent prevail. But few activities are corroded from such a pathology more than journalism is, which has as its core function skepticism and questioning of pieties. Journalism quickly transforms into a sickly, limp version of itself when it itself wages war on the virtues of dissent and airing a wide range of perspectives.
I do not know how valid are Smith’s critiques of Farrow’s journalism. But what I know for certain is that Smith’s broader diagnosis of “Resistance Journalism” is dead-on, and the harms it is causing are deep and enduring. When journalists know they will thrive by affirming pleasing falsehoods, and suffer when they insist on unpopular truths, journalism not only loses its societal value but becomes just another instrument for societal manipulation, deceit, and coercion.