Conservative Group Has Started Making Journalists Play by the New Rules and the Journalists Are Terrified of What's Coming

If you’ve ever watched CNN’s rainman, Andrew Kaczynski, aka @KFile, at work you know how this stupid gotcha game is played. You go back through the target’s writings, often delving into college newspaper columns, looking for untoward things that they may have said and then splash the findings across the internet as though they were particularly relevant. This is an example that is happening now where out of context and completely defensible statements are being manipulated by CNN to try to torpedo an appeals court nominee:

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https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1164653219080998914

So today, the New York Times reported that what was sauce for the goose will be sauce for the gander in 2020:

A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.

Operatives have closely examined more than a decade’s worth of public posts and statements by journalists, the people familiar with the operation said. Only a fraction of what the network claims to have uncovered has been made public, the people said, with more to be disclosed as the 2020 election heats up. The research is said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president.

The group, so far, has been responsible for the firing of a CNN photo editor who liked to tweet anti-Semitic stuff in his free time and it unearthed racist and anti-Semitic writings by a New York Times politics editor named Tom Wright-Piersanti

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There are more on the way:

The operation has compiled social media posts from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and stored images of the posts that can be publicized even if the user deletes them, said the people familiar with the effort. One claimed that the operation had unearthed potentially “fireable” information on “several hundred” people.

“I am sure there will be more scalps,” said Sam Nunberg, a former aide to Mr. Trump who is a friend of Mr. Schwartz.

Mr. Nunberg and others who are familiar with the campaign described it as meant to expose what they see as the hypocrisy of mainstream news outlets that have reported on the president’s inflammatory language regarding race.

“Two can play at this game,” he said. “The media has long targeted Republicans with deep dives into their social media, looking to caricature all conservatives and Trump voters as racists.”

The are also aggregating social media and other writings by spouses and associates of major media reporters. What I particularly like is that the group isn’t going after obviously hostile reporters, they are simply going after any employee of the organization. If nothing else, this should make some of the staff meetings in these outlets rather gothic.

Predictably, the media has been stopped by a bout of fecal incontinence:

But using journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations as retribution for — or as a warning not to pursue — coverage critical of the president is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power.

“If it’s clearly retaliatory, it’s clearly an attack, it’s clearly not journalism,” said Leonard Downie Jr., who was the executive editor of The Post from 1991 to 2008. Tension between a president and the news media that covers him is nothing new, Mr. Downie added. But an organized, wide-scale political effort to intentionally humiliate journalists and others who work for media outlets is.

“It’s one thing for Spiro Agnew to call everyone in the press ‘nattering nabobs of negativism,’” he said, referring to the former vice president’s famous critique of how journalists covered President Richard M. Nixon. “And another thing to investigate individuals in order to embarrass them publicly and jeopardize their employment.”

A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, said in a statement that such tactics were taking the president’s campaign against a free press to a new level.

“They are seeking to harass and embarrass anyone affiliated with the leading news organizations that are asking tough questions and bringing uncomfortable truths to light,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “The goal of this campaign is clearly to intimidate journalists from doing their job, which includes serving as a check on power and exposing wrongdoing when it occurs. The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.”

In a statement, a CNN spokesman said that when government officials, “and those working on their behalf, threaten and retaliate against reporters as a means of suppression, it’s a clear abandonment of democracy for something very dangerous.”

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This is just bullsh**. The media has long ago given up the pretense of being anything but an adjunct of the Democrat party. Their reporters a closely affiliated with far left outlets. The leaking of John Podesta’s emails showed that reporters, such as the incompetent lecher Glenn Thrush, sent their stories to Democrat operatives for approval. They are a combatant and they need to be treated as such.

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