In the Elliott Broidy case, the media’s anti-Trump hysteria aligned with Qatar’s interests. The story of how Qatar’s paid actors targeted him using U.S. media deserves to be well-known.
Two interesting characteristics of journalism’s recent decline are apparent in the wake of last week’s dramatic layoffs at BuzzFeed, Gannett, Yahoo, AOL and the Huffington Post. The first is the industry’s commitment to propagandizing for social justice politics in thousands of cheap, disposable clickbait articles. The other, in ostensibly serious reporting, is the extent to which reporters and editors allow freelance influence operators and media manipulators to craft meta-narratives using their bylines and media outlets.
When both of these potent temptations collide—often in stories about Donald Trump and his associates that fit into a pre-set narrative of “collusion,” corruption, “treason,” and perfidy—the resulting media products are nearly always so histrionic as to undermine the potential for serious reportage about America’s political scene. What’s left is essentially stage-managed conspiracy-mongering delivered in a self-righteous, venomous, and vindictive style.
Last week, thanks to a new lawsuit, we learned the backstory for yet another cynical media operation involving a prominent Republican, and a campaign of email hacking and destruction the American media was only happy to abet. Former GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy filed a complaint in Washington alleging that three Americans working for the tiny but remarkably wealthy terror-funding Emirate of Qatar had conspired to silence one of that country’s most prominent critics by hacking his emails and distributing their contents to the media in an effort to destroy his reputation and his ability to oppose Qatar’s continued sponsorship of Islamist groups. more here
Integrity in journalism is rarely seen.
Money talks and bullshit propaganda is published.