{"id":2024322,"date":"2023-09-07T07:37:01","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T11:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/propublica-editor-in-chief-who-stirred-up-clarence-thomas-smears-built-his-career-on-false-insinuations\/"},"modified":"2023-09-07T07:42:34","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T11:42:34","slug":"propublica-editor-in-chief-who-stirred-up-clarence-thomas-smears-built-his-career-on-false-insinuations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/propublica-editor-in-chief-who-stirred-up-clarence-thomas-smears-built-his-career-on-false-insinuations\/","title":{"rendered":"ProPublica Editor-In-Chief, known for spreading false insinuations, targeted Clarence Thomas."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpropublica-editor-in-chief-who-stirred-up-clarence-thomas-smears-built-his-career-on-false-insinuations%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2024322&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"article-content\">\n<h2>The Scandal That Shook the\u2062 Nation<\/h2>\n<p>If media outlets measure their success by \u200b<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/judge-in-chauvin-case-denies-motion-to-sequester-jurors\/\" title=\"Judge in Chauvin case denies motion to sequester jurors\">public influence<\/a>, then ProPublica is having a banner year.\u2064 Since the investigative\u2063 nonprofit published the first\u200c of \u200bfive stories about Justice Clarence \u2064Thomas\u2019 \u2063social connections, popular news outlets and the Democratic\u200d Party have made the series the most-discussed \u201cscandal\u201d of 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas\u2019 friend Harlan Crow has become internet clickbait, which amounts today to a household name, and Democratic lawmakers have argued\u200c Thomas should resign. Through\u200c it all, another figure, whose past and present are equally important to the series, has remained remarkably free from \u200cscrutiny: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/people\/stephen-engelberg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Stephen Engelberg,<\/a> the longtime New York Times reporter, founding managing editor, and then \u2062editor-in-chief of ProPublica who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-investigation-origins\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">oversaw<\/a> \u200cthe Thomas investigation.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This \u2062is a major elision.\u200d If Thomas\u2019 career tells one \u2063kind of 30-year \u200bstory, of a black conservative jurist in Washington, D.C., Engelberg\u2019s tells another: a story in which, unlike\u200c Justice Thomas, his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/cuomo-signed-law-lowering-the-bar-for-sexual-harassment\/\" title=\"Cuomo Signed Law Lowering the Bar for Sexual Harassment\u00a0\">alleged transgressions<\/a> are directly tied to his \u2062work. Since \u20631992, even in the \u200bjudgment of some of his peers, \u2063Engelberg made his reputation by turning investigative reporting into an\u2063 exercise in false insinuations and reputational slander at the expense of asking\u200c who\u2019s \u2064abusing power and where power lies.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3>The Art of Tactical Omission<\/h3>\n<p>The Whitewater scandal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1994\/01\/16\/us\/the-whitewater-case-finding-the-connections.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">began<\/a> with New \u200cYork\u200b Times reporting by Jeff Gerth and then Engelberg on possible improprieties committed \u2064by a defunct savings-and-loan association with connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton. It <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2002\/03\/21\/us\/final-report-by-prosecutor-on-clintons-is-released.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">led<\/a> to the appointment\u200d of \u200btwo\u200b independent counsels, the second\u200d of whom\u2063 eventually issued a report to \u2064Congress \u200crecommending Bill Clinton\u2019s impeachment \u2014 not for Whitewater-related corruption, but for \u200clying about \u2063an affair with a White House intern, which the special counsel had uncovered during the investigation.<\/p>\n<p>The reason the Whitewater inquiry \u2064swerved \u200bin Monica Lewinsky\u2019s direction was that, despite the \u2063Clintons\u2019 careers being marked by questionable ethics,\u2064 Gerth\u200b and Engelberg\u2019s front-page Whitewater stories promised\u2063 more than their information could support: Witnesses were unreliable, suggestive facts didn\u2019t\u200d form\u200c a causal line,\u200d and some\u200b of the paper\u2019s implications were riddled with inconsistencies. Journalistic critics, many of whom leveled criticisms at the Clintons but doubted Gerth and Engelberg\u2019s\u200b reporting, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/shows\/arkansas\/whitewater\/lyonsarticle.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">described<\/a> these stories in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/new-york-times\/gerth-blames-ny-times-editors-whitewater-mistakes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ways<\/a> that might\u2063 sound familiar today: \u201cstories that combine a prosecutorial bias and the \u2062art of \u2063tactical omission to\u200c insinuate all manner of\u2064 sin \u200band\u200c skullduggery,\u201d featuring \u201cloose new\u2064 standards under which innuendo was enough\u200b to sustain reports of serious ethical wrongdoing\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>On to the Next Headline-Grabbing Investigation<\/h3>\n<p>Between March 1999 and September 2000, Engelberg \u2064supervised a series of front-page reports, again written by \u2063Jeff Gerth, about the prosecution and conviction of Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-American nuclear scientist at \u200cthe\u200d Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/propublica-editor-in-chief-who-stirred-up-clarence-thomas-smears-built-his-career-on-false-insinuations\/\" title=\"ProPublica Editor-In-Chief, known for spreading false insinuations, targeted Clarence Thomas.\">allegedly \u200cpassing\u200b nuclear information<\/a> to China.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>These reports were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Canaries-Mineshaft-Essays-Politics-Media\/dp\/031227520X\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">riddled<\/a> with errors. In one of the earliest, on March 24, \u200d1999, the \u200cTimes asserted that Lee had hired a\u2062 laboratory assistant who was a Chinese citizen \u201calready under investigation as a spy,\u201d for whom the FBI was looking and \u2062who had disappeared.\u200c But the laboratory assistant was a graduate student whose \u201cdisappearance\u201d was back to Pennsylvania\u200c State University where he was studying and \u2062was \u200dreachable by the university\u2019s website or phone \u200c\u2014 the Times\u2062 hadn\u2019t checked.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Neither had\u2063 the FBI, which also leaked reports of the\u2062 investigation to the Times <em>and then used the Times\u2019 stories off \u200ctheir leaks to prosecute Dr. Lee.<\/em> According to the transcripts of the FBI interrogations\u200b of Dr. Lee \u2062on March 7,\u2063 1999, the day after the Times ran its first story which described Lee without disclosing his \u2064name, interrogators made that\u2062 story into leverage, threatening \u2063him with public humiliation via the newspaper \u2062in language that \u200b <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=syWNBwAAQBAJ&#038;q=more+damage#v=snippet&#038;q=do%20you%20think%20that%20everything%20that's%20in%20this%20article&#038;f=false\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reads<\/a> like a lift \u2062from a David\u200b Mamet play. \u200c(\u201cNo, you stop a minute, Wen Ho. \u2026 this newspaper article \u2026 this is \u200dwhat\u2019s going to do you\u200c more damage than anything. \u2026 Do you\u200b think the press prints everything that\u2019s true? Do \u2064you think\u2064 that everything that\u2019s in this article\u2064 is true? \u2026 The press doesn\u2019t care.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Two days later, Dr. Lee \u2063was fired, and his name was disclosed to\u200c and\u200b run\u200b in The New York Times. The Justice Department, benefiting from the coverage it had provided \u200cthe Times, prosecuted Lee and caused him to be held shackled in \u2062solitary confinement for nine months until, on Sept.\u2063 14, 2000, the government withdrew 58 out of \u206259 charges after an FBI \u200bagent\u200c admitted \u200bto lying in testimony, and Lee\u2064 received an apology from a Reagan-appointed\u200d federal judge.<\/p>\n<h2>Failing Upward<\/h2>\n<p>Bill Keller\u200d ran and serves on the board of a respected <a href=\"https:\/\/pen.org\/user\/bill-keller\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">nonprofit<\/a>. Dean Baquet supervised the Times\u2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/civil-society\/commentary\/will-new-york-times-washington-post-return-pulitzer-misleading-russia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">coverage<\/a> of President Trump\u2019s alleged Russia collusion, coverage that flowed, again, from FBI\u2064 leaks later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/national-security\/two-4-warrants-letting-fbi-spy-ex-trump-aide-carter-n1121406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">revealed<\/a> as flawed.\u200b Jill Abramson and David Gergen are on ProPublica\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/leadership\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">board<\/a> of journalistic advisers. Jeff Gerth recently \u2064retired <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/people\/jeff-gerth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">after<\/a> a decade-plus stint as \u2063a senior editor at ProPublica, \u200bwith two Pulitzer Prizes to \u2064boot. And ProPublica\u2019s Engelberg\u200c is continuing his \u200b30-year\u200b career of character\u2063 assassination, \u2063helping Senate Democrats obliterate the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/beware-of-bureaucrats-wanting-to-be-your-bff\/\" title=\"Watch out for bureaucrats trying to be your best friend.\">federal \u2062government\u2019<\/a>s separation of powers in the process.<\/p>\n<p>In these journalistic circles, a debate is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2023\/02\/06\/when-americans-lost-faith-in-the-news\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">occurring<\/a> over how \u201cobjective\u201d journalism should be as more Americans lose trust\u200b in it. Should it favor \u201cbalanced\u201d reporting or vigorously identify \u201cthreats\u201d\u200d to the republic, e.g. Donald Trump? Backlit against 30 \u2064years of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gop-congressman-sees-opening-in-north-carolina-attorney-general-race-as-focuses-shift-to-state-politics\/\" title=\"GOP congressman eyes opportunity in NC attorney general race as attention turns to state politics.\">media practice<\/a>, with the campaign against Clarence Thomas the\u200d latest but surely not the last example, this debate is meaningless. \u2064To call the reporting of Engelberg and his peers \u201cbalanced,\u201d or, in ProPublica\u2019s parlance, \u201cjournalism that\u200b holds power to account,\u201d is an abuse of\u2062 language. It\u2019s also a dereliction of truth: the \u200done\u2063 concept that these people, insider players\u2064 all,\u200c claim to revere and uphold.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If ProPublica&#8217;s success is gauged by public impact, they are excelling. Their investigative reports on Justice Clarence Thomas&#8217; social ties have sparked widespread discussion and made it the most talked-about &#8220;scandal&#8221; of 2023, gaining attention from popular news outlets and the Democratic Party. Harlan Crow, Thomas&#8217; friend, has also gained significant online presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2269,"featured_media":2024323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2024322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2024322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2024323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2024322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2024322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2024322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}