Trump will prevail over ‘scalp-hunting’ journalists

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Ever since Watergate and the fall of Richard Nixon, a not-so-secret appeal of journalism has been the possibility that you, too, could bring down a president. Get a press pass and, presto, you’re another Woodward and Bernstein.

Donald Trump just spoiled the fantasy.

If, as expected, the Democrats’ impeachment dies a quick death in the Senate, it’s not just Speaker Nancy Pelosi who will have been thwarted. Presidential scalp-hunting by a biased media will be another Washington game disrupted by Trump.

Backed by a press corps eager to get Trump, Pelosi felt confident to authorize the flimsy effort to remove the president from office. She assumed media bullhorns would push the public into her camp and that would win her Republican votes for a bipartisan takedown.

She certainly got the media support, but the public and the GOP aren’t following. Indeed, the harder that Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler push and the louder the ­anti-Trump media scream, the more the public resists impeachment over the Ukraine piffle.

That was true even before last week’s sensational revelations that the FBI was   both corrupt and incompetent   in the Russia collusion probe. The r eport and testimony by Michael Horowitz , the inspector general of the Justice Department, further undermined impeachment by revealing the rampant misconduct in the earlier case.

The fact that Trump was unfairly targeted then buttresses his claim that Ukraine is just a second-rate sequel.

Thankfully, the accountability fallout from the Russia misconduct has started, with Attorney General Bill Barr suggesting possible prosecutions of FBI agents and perhaps others.

But what of the media? After all, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and the broadcast networks were spectacularly wrong in their coverage.

And not just once or twice. For years they were the faithful errand boys of   the slimy Jim Comey   and the odious John Brennan, using anonymous FBI and CIA sources to heap certainty on Trump’s guilt.

As Barr put it, “the nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press.”

Pulitzers and other journalism prizes lionized some reports that are now as discredited as the Steele dossier. Yet the news organizations still protect the secret ­sources who misled them and act as if they themselves did nothing wrong.

One glaring example. The Times   reported last May   that the FBI sent a female investigator “posing as research assistant” to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016. The woman, who called herself Azra Turk, met with George Papadopoulos in a London bar.

In his memoir, “Deep State Target,” Papadopoulos described Turk as a “sexy bottle blonde in her 30s” who “isn’t shy about showing her curves — as if anyone could miss them.”

He also said “she acted and looked like CIA.”

The inspector general’s report doesn’t identify by name or agency affiliation the informants sent to spy on Trump associates, but the Times knows much more about Azra Turk than it told readers.

The day after the paper’s story on her appeared, one of its bylined reporters ducked when CNN asked if Turk was an FBI agent.

“I’m just, what I’m gonna, I’m just gonna leave it at right now as a government investigator,” reporter Adam Goldman answered.

“I use that, I use that, I use that wording for a reason, and I’m going to leave it at that.”

The Times’ story also says Turk and another informant, Stefan Halper, “failed to glean any information of value” from several meetings with Papadopoulos, but that is not true, according to the inspector general. He says one of the FBI’s most significant “inaccuracies and omissions” was the failure to tell FISA judges that Papadopoulos repeatedly denied to Halper and Turk that the campaign was collaborating with Russia or WikiLeaks.

Did the Times reporters know about that exculpatory information, or did their FBI sources lie to them? Either way, the paper now knows its May story was wrong on key points, yet it remains uncorrected.

Days after the 2016 election, the Times issued an apology of sorts to subscribers for failing to realize that Trump could win. “Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?” the publisher and editor wrote.

Though they claimed that “we believe we reported on both candidates fairly” (a line later deleted), they pledged to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
That never happened, as the paper immediately ramped up its assault on Trump and hasn’t stopped.

So now it’s time for a second apology — a sincere one. And an honest inquiry into how the paper continues to get the big stories so wrong.

My view is that   top editor Dean Baquet made a disastrous mistake   by eliminating the traditional   standards of fairness and impartiality   in a bid to stop Trump and upend his presidency. Supposedly straight-news stories are corrupted by bias and ambition, with the goal of taking down Trump oozing from every page.

There may also be other reasons why the Times continues to go off track, but that’s why an inquiry is essential. As several media companies did with #MeToo investigations when charges implicated top managers, the Times should hire a law firm or outside adviser to examine what’s wrong with its newsroom.

Because of its prominence, other media organizations would confess their own mistakes, both of omission and commission. When it concerns Trump, what the media don’t report reveals their bias as much as what they do report.

To its credit, the Times articles on the inspector general didn’t flinch from his devastating findings on the FBI. But the paper must also admit the obvious corollary: Its coverage was deeply flawed.

As part of its admission, it should name the sources who falsely painted the president as a traitor and reveal what it knows about Azra Turk, Stefan Halper and others who were sent to spy on a presidential campaign.

Only then can the Gray Lady begin to repair her shredded credibility.

From bad to ‘Worst’ 

Following his predecessors,   Public Advocate Jumaane Williams   is compiling a list of the city’s Worst Landlords.

While there are certainly some bad private owners, for size and the number of suffering tenants, none compares with the city’s Housing Authority. That makes Mayor de Blasio the Worst Landlord.

Years of neglect and shoddy maintenance, including lying about lead paint, are routine, as illustrated by another tenants’ lawsuit Friday.

“We are living as if it’s a third-world country,” one Harlem leader said. “It is time to fight back.”

That’s a cause worthy of a public advocate.

Get reel, Congress! 

Reader Matthew Kichar wants Congress to halt impeachment until it sees a movie. He writes: “Congress should watch ‘Mr. Smith goes to Washington’ twice before voting. The first time to open their eyes and the second time to wake up their hearts.”