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Once upon a time, the mainstream media used to at least pretend to hide their liberal biases and not openly admit to pushing the talking points of Democratic politicians or campaigns. That time has long passed us, though, as exemplified by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman in a series of tweets she posted Tuesday in the aftermath of Joe Biden announcing he’d picked Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his VP running mate.

Not long after the news broke about Harris, Democrats and the mainstream media were, among other things, rushing to declare any and all criticisms of Harris to be racist and sexist. In addition to that, Haberman took to the Twitter machine to relay her thoughts on how Biden had allegedly made a deliberate calculation in picking Harris because it showed his selfless willingness to be conciliatory to a former campaign rival or something:

In same way that Obama asked Clinton to be Sec of State after a brutal primary, Biden is choosing the person who dinged him hardest on stage. His team knows this and is betting people realize it's something Trump, who lives in grievance, would not do

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 11, 2020

After Newsday columnist Dan Janison pointed out that Republican campaigns have done this, too, Haberman clarified that she was just passing along Biden campaign talking points:

Right. I’m reporting what the campaign is saying.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 11, 2020

Oh.

Haberman’s father also responded by pointing out prior Democratic campaigns that have done this, but Ms. Haberman continued to press the Biden campaign’s talking points:

Sure. But one of the contrasts they’re trying to draw relates to ability to work with people without hoping to grind them to dust over arguments big and small.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 11, 2020

Haberman was corrected on a number of fronts. Firstly, the fact that Biden chose Harris was because Democrats gave him no choice but to pick a WOC running mate, which narrowed the field quite a bit:

No, this is revisionist history. The reason for the Harris pick is because during the primary Biden was pressured into promising to pick a woman of color, and she was the only realistic option. https://t.co/SQ9rQn15Ws

— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) August 11, 2020

Well…no, @maggieNYT . Not in the "same way" at all. The same way would be if Obama chose Clinton as his running mate, not SecState. His team "knows" that they boxed themselves in to a small group of mediocre VP candidates and they made do with the options they had. That's it. https://t.co/BxOaWHnW16

— Jason Beale (@jabeale) August 11, 2020

There was also the more immediate issue of why Haberman thought passing off talking points from a Democratic presidential campaign without quotes or attribution qualified as objective journalism:

This is not “reporting” it is editorializing. If you’re reporting, please use quotes.

— Downtowne (@BrowneDowntowne) August 12, 2020

Well, of course you are. But you didn't include that "disclaimer" in your original reporting, did you. Not a problem. We all assume you're saying whatever the Biden campaign wants you to say. After all, it's a day that ends in Y.

— Indie Voyce (@IndieVoyce) August 12, 2020

I see no quotation marks in your tweet

— Optimus Maximus (@OptimusMaximi) August 12, 2020

If you’re reporting what the campaign is saying, it might make sense to say, “reporting what the campaign is saying” in the actual tweet.

— Charles (@cdfrance03) August 12, 2020

Weird how it's written in the first person and not "The Biden campaign says." Are you part of "the campaign?" pic.twitter.com/kG5ZkuU5v9

— Virus-Free Cornbread (@JerOHMee) August 12, 2020

She didn’t answer. Probably because the answer was pretty obvious. In fact, it’s been obvious for quite some time which political team she roots for. Flashback from October 2016:

Internal strategy documents and emails among Clinton staffers shed light on friendly and highly useful relationships between the campaign and various members of the U.S. media, as well as the campaign’s strategies for manipulating those relationships.

[…]

One January 2015 strategy document — designed to plant stories on Clinton’s decision-making process about whether to run for president — singled out reporter Maggie Haberman, then of Politico, now covering the election for the New York Times, as a “friendly journalist” who has “teed up” stories for them in the past and “never disappointed” them. Nick Merrill, the campaign press secretary, produced the memo, according to the document metadata:

Any questions?

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