It's even worse than it appears.
Monday December 14, 2020; 10:33 AM EST
  • The further we slide down the slope remember that it required some grease and a push from the great NYT which still has not accepted their responsibility for the Hillary's Emails story that was so pivotal in 2016. I mistakenly thought we were witnessing journalism's self-awareness and shame when I saw this headline. But no, they weren't accepting blame, they were blaming you and me.#
  • A friend writes: "Why does the blame lie with NYT?" #
  • I wrote this back.#
    • Good question.#
    • They were fed the Hillary's Emails story by a conservative dirty trickster, and they went with it, made it a campaign, based on either cynicism or ignorance.#
    • It hinges on whether the people at the NYT understood what email servers are, and have some basic idea of how they work and what they do. If they didn't know then it was ignorance. If they did know, then it was cynicism that basically their readers would have no idea and would trust them when they said this is a big story by repeatedly putting it on page one.#
    • Yet the things they said amounted to WTF -- how is this relevant. They never explained. And of course we now understand that there was nothing there.#
    • I don't doubt that HRC would have been president for the last four years if they had done their job honestly and competently. #
    • The NYT's impact was at least that of Facebook. So when they blame Facebook they should have just as many column-inches about how the NYT screwed us in 2016. #

© 1994-2020 Dave Winer.

Last update: Tuesday December 15, 2020; 9:42 AM EST.

You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)