By Reginald Johnson
Commentary
The last few days
I’ve headed over to the news stand (there are still a few left) to pick up a
New York Times.
I don’t normally do
this, as I’ve grown increasingly disappointed with the quality of the Times’
reporting, both on the domestic side and the foreign policy side.
But the Times is
still considered the standard bearer for American journalism and in the interest
of fairness, I wanted to be absolutely sure that the paper was in fact not
covering --- as critics charge --- one
of the biggest potential corruption scandals in recent history.
That story centers
on the allegation made by an FBI informant that President Biden, when he was
serving as vice president, and his son Hunter, took a total of $10 million
worth of bribes from a Ukrainian businessman to get help from the US government
in stopping a criminal investigation of his oil and gas firm.
This story broke
last week after the House Oversight committee, which has been investigating
wrongdoing by Hunter Biden, was finally able to get the FBI to release a
statement by the informant called a “1023”
which, while partially redacted, indicated that the two Bidens had received payments.
The story exploded further
on Monday when U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, got up on the
Senate floor and said that he had received information that the Ukrainian
businessman had audiotapes of his discussions with the two Bidens about the
bribes.
“According to the
1023, the foreign national possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between
him and Hunter Biden,” Grassley said. “According to the 1023, the foreign
national possesses two audio recordings of phone calls between him and then Vice
President Joe Biden,” said a report on Fox News.
The allegations
obviously are shocking and are widely deserving of coverage. Anytime a President
or top official in an administration is implicated in potential bribery that is
a huge story.
Yet, except for
conservative outlets like Fox News and Newsmax, the electronic media has
ignored the claims. That includes CBS News NBC News, ABC News, CNN and MSNBC.
On the print side, outlets
such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post have given the claims strong
coverage.
I wasn’t totally
sure whether all the print outlets were ignoring the story, so that’s why I went
to check on the Times. Surely, I thought, the Gray Lady, which throughout the
decades covered governmental corruption quite well, would give some attention
to these new claims, even if they haven’t been verified yet.
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| The New York Times building. (Photo, Wikimedia Commons) |
I mean, we’re talking
about the President of the United States. What could be more important than
that? Bribery is listed as one of the reasons why a President can be impeached,
so certainly if a President is implicated in taking illegal payments, it’s
paramount that any allegations related to that be checked out by the proper
authorities in the government. But they should also be the subject of vigorous
inquiry by the press.
When mayors and
governors are implicated in bribery or corruption schemes, that kind of thing
is covered avidly by local papers and TV outlets, as it should be.
Why should a President
be any different?
I must say I was
disappointed after my review of the Times. I read three days of the Times, and I
found not one reference to the Biden bribery claims.
Obviously, the last few days have been dominated
by the Trump indictment and all outlets are giving this blanket coverage --- as
they should be. This is a massive story --- the first time in US history that a
former president has been indicted on federal charges ( he’s already been
indicted on state charges in New York) so it deserves a huge amount of
coverage. I have no problem with that.
But the Biden story
is big, too. Joe Biden is the current president, not former, and he’s the
person who is overseeing the conduct of domestic and foreign policy affecting
hundreds of millions of people and public expenditures worth trillions of
dollars. If claims about criminality are made against him, that should be the
subject of a laser focus by the media, and not just shunted aside.
The fact that the
New York Times --- probably the most widely known media outlet in the world and
still one of the most respected --- does not give the story about the Bidens
and potential bribery even a mention or a small story in the back pages, is a
complete outrage. This is NOT reporting and it is NOT journalism. The Times is
shirking its duties as a member of and the leader of the media.
The press or what is
known as the Fourth Estate is supposed to play a critical function in our society.
The press traditionally is supposed to act as a “watchdog” against government
wrongdoing. Right now, the New York Times and many other media outlets are not
acting as that watchdog. Instead, they’re acting more like a guard who’s drunk on
duty.
We don’t know
whether the Biden allegations are true. Maybe the informant is not to be
trusted. But the point is, this needs to be checked out. The FBI has sat on
this story for several years and it took a lot of cajoling and threats of a
contempt citation by the House Oversight committee to finally get FBI Director Christopher Ray to release the document prepared by the informant. Then parts of it,
apparently those dealing with the audiotapes, were redacted.
So there’s been some
prevarications by the FBI in terms of investigating this issue and that’s also
part of the wider story. It’s not just about whether the President and his son
took bribes but also whether the agency that is supposed to be ferreting out
information about possible criminal misconduct is doing its job. Right now, it
doesn’t look like they are.
The New York Times
and much of the rest of the media have to get back on track and report on the
basics of news. When officeholders are involved in possible corruption that’s
one of those basics and they must report on it. They cannot put something aside
simply because somebody is a favored political person and covering that
particular person in a negative way might hurt their electoral chances. I hope
the Times has not been thinking like this but it kind of looks like they have
been.
If you’re a reporter
or journalist with a daily news operation, you MUST cover corruption. If you’re not, you’re not a reporter
and you’re not a journalist. It’s really that simple.
The New York Times
has to decide whether they’re still in the news business or whether they’re in
public relations. Shame on them if it’s the latter.
