Where to start?
How about with this New York Times story back there in the stone age of August 2019. The headline:
Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House
The gist of this gem of a story was that various Trump supporters had turned the table on the media’s lust for digging up old tweets and other records from various Trump nominees and publishing them – with no other purpose in mind than embarrassing them to block their appointment. As CNN noted here the list of Trump nominees who had aspects of their background surfaced by the media included Federal Reserve nominee Stephen Moore (who, per CNN “had written two decades earlier that criticized female athletes who demanded equal pay and dismissed women for voting for Democrats.”) So too was Heather Nauert, the ex-State Department spokesperson and Fox host nominated to be UN Ambassador, forced to withdraw because of allegations of hiring a nanny not legally allowed to work in the US.
Now, it was Trump supporters rooting through the old postings of journalists, the Times in particular – and the Times was distinctly not happy at having the table turned. In fact, they were furious that a Times staff member had been discovered to have posted anti-Semitic tweets in his past.
So the Times story said this:
“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.”
Huffed Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger of the campaign by Trump supporters to dig into his reporters past:
“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.”
Well now. Let’s repeat a couple of Sulzberger’s sentences:
“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.”
Which brings us to Tucker Carlson. On Monday night, freshly returned from vacation, Tucker had this startling bit of news. The headline from NewsBusters:
Tucker Exposes NYT Plot to Dox His Family, Put Their Lives in Danger
The story says this:
“Fox News host Tucker Carlson closed out Monday’s edition of his show on an extremely serious note that pertained to the life and safety of his wife and four kids. For over two minutes, he exposed how the radically leftist New York Times had assigned a so-called “journalist” and photographer to hunt him down, find out where he lives, and print it for all his haters to find him. And according to Carlson, their mission was nearly complete with the publication happening later in the week.
Carlson began by reminding folks that he didn’t like to talk about himself. “But tonight, we’re going to make an exception to that rule. We don’t have much choice,” he lamented.
“Last week, The New York Times began working on a story about where my family and I live. As a matter of journalism, there is no conceivable justification for a story like that,” he decried. “The paper is not alleging we’ve done anything wrong, and we haven’t. We pay our taxes. We like our neighbors. We’ve never had a dispute with anyone. So why is The New York Times doing a story on the location of my family’s house?”
Answering his own question, Carlson put it bluntly: “To hurt us, to injure my wife and kids so that I will shut up and stop disagreeing with them. They believe in force. We’ve learned that.”
And he did not hesitate to specifically name those the Times assigned to their doxxing assignment, saying:
“‘The paper has assigned a political activist called Murray Carpenter [pictured above] to write a story about where we are now. They’ve hired a photographer called Tristan Spinski to take pictures,’ he informed the world.”
In other words? The Times itself was doing exactly what it had been fulminating about only a year ago. They were trying to intimidate Tucker Carlson from doing his job for no other reason than that they don’t like his show – and most particularly they don’t like the popularity of his show.
An underlying force at work here? Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are, to the Times, reviled symbols of the popularity – and the power – of the News Corporation created by Rupert Murdoch. And there is a reason – a deeply personal reason.
As I noted over at NewsBusters when the Times ran a hit piece on the Murdoch media
over a year ago, once upon a time it was the Times and its owners, the Sulzberger family, who ruled the global media roost. As I wrote then:
“Let’s take a stroll back in the history of – The New York Times. To a time long before the dawn of cable news.
In 1966, former New York Times reporter Gay Talese – he had departed the prestigious paper after ten years – penned a hefty book that was titled The Kingdom and the Power: The Story of the Men Who Influence the Institution That Influences the World – The New York Times.
In which Talese says, among other things, that The Times in 1966 was:
‘…the world’s mightiest newspaper kingdom – whose power is such that those who run it and work for it influence the course of human history. Each day the ‘paper of record,’ The New York Times, appears in 11,464 cities around the world, and in all capitals of the world. A foreign minister in Taiwan is so dependent on its news coverage that he has the thick Sunday edition flown in to him each weekend-at a cost of $16.40. The fifty copies of The Times that make their way to the White House each morning are scanned apprehensively for the verdict on government policies, while hundreds of thousands of Americans learn what is happening all over the globe – and what to think of it – from The New York Times.’”
And now? In today’s media world? I went on:
“In other words? Long before the dawn of cable news, and long before Rupert Murdoch arrived in America to expand his Australian newspaper empire, The New York Times and the Sulzberger family that owned it ruled the media roost.
And now – they don’t. Because of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper and television genius, the Sulzberger influence on the world and in America has been overshadowed by Murdoch’s News Corporation and Fox News.
The America where attention was paid to Times columnists and their dominating left-wing world view has vanished – replaced by massive audiences listening in prime time these days to Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Breakfast is not about reading The Times – it’s about tuning in to Fox & Friends.
The Times hit job on the Murdochs and Fox News is furious that the President of the United States – on whom they spent volumes of print and cyber-ink insisting he would never win-calls not them but Rupert Murdoch and – oh the horror!!!! – Sean Hannity.”
And right there is the reason the Times seethes with a personal hatred for, in this case, Tucker Carlson. Using the Fox platform, Tucker has fashioned a show that has scored big time with viewers. He has a larger audience than the Times by far – and the Times cannot stand it. So, they have made it personal.
For the record, the Times denies they were preparing to dox Tucker. Precisely because he has now personally called them out they may in fact not go through with it. And, just as the Times was livid when the game of surfacing old tweets was played with one of their own, to have Tucker identify by name the Times reporter and photographer who, he alleges, were assigned the doxxing task, the paper’s bosses, undoubtedly infuriates. Not to mention that Tucker ever so casually mentioned that Times personnel could themselves be doxxed – on his show.
But make no mistake. The idea that The New York Times would in fact do exactly what Tucker Carlson has accused them of doing is only another point on the continuum to the riots, looting and burning in left-wing run cities around America.
In the end, it’s always about power. And if you don’t give it to them, not to mention if, in the world of a free press, you have a bigger audience than they do – they will come for you.
One way or another.
