A New York Post writer has decided
to quit the Rupert Murdoch owned
tabloid, The New York Post,
after somehow realizing for
the first time that she's going to
be pressured to write negative news
articles about people like
Kamala Harris.
And according to
her open resignation,
that's exactly what happened.
Under the tabloid-ready headline,
KAM ON IN, The Post claimed that
copies of a children's book written
by Vice President Kamala Harris
were provided at taxpayer expense
in a welcome kit for unaccompanied
migrant children at a shelter in
Long Beach, California.
And, of course, just as you would
expect with any tabloid, you get
cheesy covers that look like this.
And, of course,
they show an image of one, just one
children's book, and they put
out an entire fake story about it.
And to be clear,
this story is fake.
The narrative here is unfounded.
There was absolutely no evidence
that this was actually happening.
The taxpayers were
footing the bill for
Kamala Harris's children's books.
But it was written,
it was published, and you also got
that incredibly goofy cover.
Well, the aftermath is pretty
fascinating, because it turns out
that the writer has stepped down
because she claimed she was forced
to write this piece, and
that it was completely inaccurate.
No books by Harris were provided by
government officials at
the shelter, and the sole copy seen
in the photograph that The Post
published on its front page, had
been donated through a neighborhood
toy and book drive for
the migrant children.
So, Laura Italiano is the person
who wrote the article.
And so, just last night on Twitter,
she shared with the world
an announcement.
Today I handed in my resignation to
my editors at the New York Post,
the Kamala Harris story,
an incorrect story I was ordered to
write.
And which I failed to push back
hard enough against,
was my breaking point.
And then she says,
it's been a privilege to cover
the City of New York for
its liveliest, wittiest tabloid,
a paper filled with reporters and
editors I admire deeply,
and hold his friends.
I'm sad to leave.
But, guess what?
The damage is already done.
Because, this is how the right wing
media ecosystem works,
you put out some false narrative,
some false news story.
I mean, it just happened with these
accusations regarding Biden
rationing red meat in order to save
the environment.
That was a completely made up
story, and
the media just ate it up.
They went with it,
conservative media, of course.
And Fox News covered it as if
there's going to be a rationing
of red meat.
You had all sorts of right wing
politicians repeating it on
Twitter.
And that's exactly what happened
in this case,
with the Kamala Harris story.
So, the headline for instance,
on Fox News, by the way,
which still stands today,
I saw this headline this morning
after it was already abundantly
clear that the story was fake,
that the writer had stepped down,
said, Kamala Harris's office stated
ignorance of how her book
was available for
migrant kids at California shelter.
It's currently the headline.
I would argue, you should probably
change the headline.
They updated the story, but
most people see headlines, and
that's it, it's over.
And they get ideas in their heads
and they're already misinformed
about what the situation really is.
So, why didn't Fox News change
their headline?
I'd love to know the answer
to that question.
Updating it at the bottom
of the article isn't enough.
Also, Laura Italiano gets no
cookies.
You get no cookies.
You don't get any respect.
You don't get any props because you
decided to write the article, and
then you quit.
I would argue that a smart person
who finds it reprehensible, who
finds it problematic, unethical,
to write fake news stories,
would step down before
writing the fake news story.
But she decided to write the fake
news story, first, and
then she quit.
No cookies for you, I'm sorry.
But I think the biggest takeaway
from this story is the fact,
that this is not rare,
this just isn't rare.
This happens all the time to
different extent, right?
To a different extent.
So, in this case, it was clear that
they had a fake news story and they
decided to run with it, even though
it was just wholly inaccurate.
In other cases, there's pressure to
avoid doing negative news coverage
on your sponsors.
In other cases,
you might not want to cover
a negative news story regarding
people you agree with politically.
I mean, this kind of stuff happens
all the time.
And sometimes it's explicit,
sometimes it's a little implied.
But when you have six major
corporations own 90% of the media,
you're going to have a problem.
You're going to have biased media.
You're not going to have
a diversity of opinions, or
a diversity of perspective for
a publication that's owned by
the Murdoch's, you're just not.
You're going to get a very
simplistic worldview, based
on so-called conservative values.
And conservative values are not
anything that they would describe.
It has nothing to do
with family values, it has nothing
to do with American patriotism.
We know what conservative
values are.
Conservative values
are corporate values.
And guess what,
you see the same thing in corporate
mainstream media, as well.
This effort to immediately question
how to pay for robust policies
that would dramatically improve
Americans' lives.
But you don't get that same type
of commentary, or that same type of
criticism when it comes to defense
contractors, when it comes to
engaging militarily in Asia, for
instance, which we've certainly
been doing since the end of
the Obama administration, when he
had his so-called Pivot to Asia.
We started arming India,
we started arming Japan, we started
selling record numbers of weapons
to countries in that area,
in an effort to try to intimidate
China.
You never hear any critical
coverage about stuff like that,
because a lot of these defense
contractors are sponsors for
the corporate media.
A lot of them are actually tied to
the major corporate conglomerates
that own 90% of the media.
So, look, this is my way of saying,
that corporate influence in media,
political agendas in media is as
common, I mean,
it's as common as, Cenk doing
a cheesy dad joke on the show.
It's just everyday.
Everyday, the coverage you get
is thought through carefully.
And, sometimes, you just have that
thought in the back of your mind,
I don't want to upset my sponsors.
Other times, they don't want to be
talking about corporate influence.
They don't want to talk about money
in politics, because it's really
hard to pass judgment when your
media organization is funded by
fossil fuel companies.
So, this is a more extreme example
because it's just such a false
story, and
they reported it as if it was true.
And what I also find interesting is
that, all these journalists
running around, or
all of these editors who, clearly,
have a political agenda, have
to immediately stoop to the lowest
common denominator in order
to smear their political opponents.
I'm not saying that Kamala Harris
is perfect.
I'm actually saying Kamala Harris
has quite a few things that you
could legitimately
criticize her on.
But they don't want to do that
work, they would rather go
to these made up narratives,
manufactured controversies,
in order to attack her.
Why not do your jobs?
If you actually do some reporting,
if you're a true journalist,
I'm sure that you can find things
in regard to Kamala Harris's
performance as a prosecutor in
California, for instance,
her votes in the Senate.
I mean, there's actual substantive
things they could focus on, but
they decided not to do that.
Because, a, they think their
readers are stupid, and so
they try to find ridiculous
scandals to scare them.
And, b, they're lazy, they don't
want to do anything tough.
Real reporting takes resources,
money, and courage.
And they don't really like to hire
people like that.
So, Laura Italiano, I apologize for
your joblessness right now, but
maybe you should have thought of
that before working for
a right wing tabloid.
As, by the way, she referred to it
as a tabloid, herself.