NY Times Has a Very Convenient View of Press Freedom

For the last three years, we’ve watched as The New York Times (among many in the mainstream media) waxes indignant every time President Trump, any of his supporters, or anyone who bends to the right politically says a bad word about their unimpeachable reputation. They’ve called Trump’s “enemy of the people” refrain a “dangerous” piece of rhetoric that could put their reporters’ lives in jeopardy. Hell, we’re pretty sure we heard editor Dean Banquet hammering on this tired narrative as recently as a week ago.

So imagine our surprise when the Times uncritically jumped to support Lt. Col Alexander Vindman and his lawyers, who are demanding retractions from Fox News because…well, some guests said some bad stuff about him.

This week, Vindman sent a letter to Fox demanding a “retraction or correction” for a segment on Laura Ingraham’s show where guest John Yoo offered criticism of the Democrats’ star impeachment witness. The lawyers say that Woo, Ingraham, Fox News, Donald Trump Jr., and Tucker Carlson are “liable for punitive damages” and that they peddled “false and defamatory allegations published about LTC Vindman, knowing they were false.”

Fox News has sent a response saying, basically, take a hike – it’s called the First Amendment.

“As a guest on FOX News, John Yoo was responsible for his own sentiments and he has subsequently done interviews to clarify what he meant,” the network said.

You’d think The Times would rush to come to the defense of their colleagues in the news business, but instead they gushed over Vindman’s “hitting back at the smear campaign against him.”

“Much of the right-wing criticism of Colonel Vindman accuses him of being partisan, despite his long career of nonpartisan military service, or that he has divided loyalties, since he immigrated from Ukraine when he was 3. The president himself has suggested that the colonel is a ‘Never Trumper,’ without evidence,” they reported.

Ah, we get it now. It’s “press freedom” when it’s liberal news outlets smearing Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, Nicholas Sandmann, or anyone else in the conservative spectrum. But it’s a “smear campaign” if people have not-nice things to say about members of the #Resistance.

The media’s pathetic and obvious double standards continue to amaze.