Media critique: Russia 'targeted' all 50 election systems, Senate intel committee says

But the evidence is all redacted

By Tatiana Prophet
editor@backtofacts.com

Sound the alarm, Russia interfered in all 50 state election systems, say Senators from both political parties in the Senate intelligence committee. But the evidence is all redacted. Let’s just get that out of the way right now. You can read the report here.

Wait, what?! Why didn’t the special counsel find this evidence? So the day after Robert Mueller’s testimony before the House Intel and Justice committees, and the day that Mitch McConnell has blocked not one, but two election protection bills, this news hits:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has reached a bipartisan report stating that Russia interfered in the 2016 election "in all 50 states." But it's heavily redacted at the request of "the intelligence community," according to The New York Times in their urgent headline:

"Election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, a Senate report said, showing a more far-reaching effort than previously known."

Yet back on February 19, the NYT headline for when the bipartisan report from the same Senate committee came out stating there was no evidence of “collusion” by the Trump campaign, was this:

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Yes, that’s right. There wasn’t a single article written in The New York Times about THAT Senate report (remember when everyone was so shocked that a Democratic Senator - in this case Mark Warner - would admit there was no evidence of conspiracy?)

But do you know what headline they did run?

Intimidation, Pressure and Humiliation:
Inside Trump’s Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him
President Trump’s efforts have exposed him to accusations of obstruction of justice as Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, finishes his work.

In case you’re not familiar with how The New York Times shapes thinking in the United States, much of it has to do with anonymous government sources – no, not like Deep Throat – essentially, those sources have a microphone directly to the ears of the American people. How someone hasn’t spotted the vulnerability to our democracy in this scenario is beyond me. To be sure, this report by the Senate Intel Committee is not an anonymous source. But it’s heavily redacted. And that leaves room for a broken connection between the truth and its arbiters. The kind of anonymous sources that The New York Times and the Washington Post use to shape the national narrative are almost always current or former “intelligence officials.” And if it’s a matter of elections or national security, the government can reinforce a scenario ad infinitum when the underlying evidence is classified for the next 50 years.

Pro tip: Start paying attention to how often, and when, The New York Times and The Washington Post run stories related directly to the President or foreign policy, and those stories happen to be based solely on assertions from anonymous sources. Well, you may say, anonymous sources are good for democracy! As usual, we as a populace are quote prone to binary thinking: good or bad, useful or not useful, skilled or inept. Like assertions such as the idea that if you criticize political journalism, you’re criticizing all journalists.

The real purpose of an anonymous source is to act as a lead, something not ready for publication, but ready for more research. This has been completely flouted by the political journalism class for at least five decades that I can tell, to varying degree. When you have an anonymous source, you can use the knowledge as a way to draw the evidence out of a subsequent interview subject. If you can’t do that, you are encouraged to use the information in an article – but not rely on that anonymous source as your only source. In journalism school, one of the first things you learn is “Beware of the one-source story.” And it used to be, if you do have a once-source story, you knew you were sitting on a pile of coal, basically. Sawdust. And no self-respecting journalist would go ahead and write that article without first calling someone – even in an earlier time zone – just so you can get something, anything, to give a sense of reinforcing the original anonymously sourced premise, or in turn, introducing reasonable doubt about it.

But some of the most influential reporters in Washington do write that article. And their motive is not to determine if the premise is true; oh no. Their motive is to 1) get the scoop; and 2) *establish* the premise asserted by the anonymous source(s). By the way, more than one anonymous person “familiar with the matter” is in my book, just as bad as one source because of course they don’t usually disagree with each other. (If they do, the reporter gets a few points for effort).

Ask yourself next time you see an article with an anonymous source:  What does the new information succeed in doing? Does it change public opinion? What else was going on that day or very recently?

Sure enough, tonight this story is the top story on both network and cable news tonight.