TOO MUCH IRONY: NY Times Wants Examples of “Political Disinformation”

We have to wonder if anyone in The New York Times editorial meeting on Wednesday started thumbing through their emails and tweets and said, “Well, I don’t know what else we were expecting.” Because just from the public messages that we’ve seen, the paper is getting hammered with some of the most hilarious (and frankly, completely predictable) messages you can imagine. Why? Because the day before, they actually had the temerity to write a short post asking readers for “examples of online ads, posts and texts that contain political disinformation or false claims and are being deliberately spread on internet platforms to try to influence local, statewide, and federal elections.”

Oh boy.

Seeing as how The New York Times has become Train Depot #1 for fake news in the Donald Trump Era, it shouldn’t surprise anyone (at the paper or otherwise) that the majority of tweets contain variations of, “Look in the mirror, turkeys!” And they really deserve nothing else. For them to actually have the gall to print this is a sign of just how caught in their own echo chamber they really are.

But then, if you look closer at their post, you can see they anticipated this kind of reaction. That’s why they tried (vainly) to head it off with a disclaimer:

What we’re not looking for

Posts or news stories you don’t agree with. While we agree that social media vitriol can be obnoxious, your uncle’s Facebook post probably is not newsworthy unless he is a paid internet troll, or the post is part of a deliberate disinformation campaign.

Instead of using the generic “your uncle’s Facebook post” example, they could have just as easily said, “We know we skew the facts, twist the truth, and generally just make up sources from time to time if it gives us something dreadful and click-baity to write about this administration, but please don’t flood our emails with examples of terrible New York Times stories. We’re well aware of what we’re doing and why. Leave it to the professionals.”

But this continues a trend that has become all too familiar. The left is always, always, always willing to talk about “fake news” if it’s something some Russian troll said on Twitter or it’s some random meme posted by Donald Trump Jr. But when it comes to the major source of fake news – the one that actually has an effect on millions of readers, viewers, and listeners every single day? Oh no, THAT they don’t want to talk about. THAT is an attack on the free press. THAT makes life dangerous for American journalists.

In the meantime, here’s what 334 anonymous Trump administration sources told us yesterday…

They never learn.