It’s one of journalism’s lesser-celebrated rites of passage – getting a story killed. Editors spike stories for any number of reasons, and sometimes they don’t give any reason at all.
When USA Today killed this opinion piece by Margot Cleveland, a senior contributor for The Federalist, the reasons were pretty clear. In a column ruminating on her rejection, Cleveland included emails from USA Today’s deputy editorial page editor, David Mastio, who made the call after the publication “spent some time trying to fact check (her) piece,” language that suggests she included facts that couldn’t be verified.
Mastio name went on to note that USA Today requires original documents or mainstream media sources, adding, “Links to National Review or the Federalist (or similar sites on the left) are not reliable.”
The Federalist is a conservative site named after the political party responsible for the Sedition Act, which criminalized writing anything false or deemed to be in “malicious” opposition to President John Adams, his administration or the legislature. Calling The Federalist unreliable is a tactful way to describe much of what you’ll find there.
Example: Last week, Talking Points Memo’s included The Federalist in a rundown of “conspiracy-stoking conservative media,” outlining how they responded to a letter from Attorney General William Barr that summed up the findings of the Russia investigation. The piece mentioned that the site had previously run op-eds that gave credence to the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.
Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi said on Twitter that only one columnist had mentioned Seth Rich, and that was “before we knew what that was all about.” I searched the site, and according to editor’s notes, two pieces by James Hyde included speculation about Rich that The Federalist later removed. However, just last month, another piece by a different author casually threw out, “You don’t have to think that the Clintons killed Seth Rich to think something stinks to high heaven here.”
I wrote here today about some of the things that make factchecking partisan media so hard. Individual pieces contain not one, but often many, misleading or inaccurate statements, frequently anchored with opinions masquerading as facts. Factchecking individual statements is a worthwhile effort, but it neglects to convey the nuance and scope of misinformation.
Factchecking an entire piece of problematic reporting is time consuming and even feels a little crazy. But Cleveland’s rejected piece, which The Federalist published instead, became my Mount Everest. Could I scale the mountain and live to tell the tale, or would my frozen corpse remain for all eternity as a warning to my fellow travelers?
They said it couldn’t be done. They said it shouldn’t be done. They said writing about problematic information amplifies it, thus defeating the purpose of factchecking. But none of that has stopped me from tagging along behind USA Today and attempting to factcheck Cleveland’s column.
So, here’s to you, Mastio. And if you never hear from me again after this, tell my family I love them and that I would want them to watch “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” without me.
Like most partisan journalism, Cleveland’s column includes statements that can be verified as fact or fiction, alongside opinions that the writer asserts as facts. Here’s a rundown of the things I could factcheck.
Fact or fiction: Did the special counsel investigation start because former FBI director James Comey leaked notes from a conversation with Trump?
No. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to serve as special counsel in May 2017 about a week after Trump fired Comey. It later came out that the president had asked Comey to stop investigating former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The firing spurred calls for a neutral party to head the Russia investigation, and it also led the FBI to investigate whether or not Trump had obstructed justice.
Fact or fiction: Is the FBI guilty of misconduct related to the Russia investigation?
Here, Cleveland’s talking about former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired last year due to allegations that he had lied under oath. The inspector general for the justice department referred those allegations to the US attorney’s office in Washington, but he has not been charged. Furthermore, McCabe’s supposed “lack of candor” pertained to the source of a news article about the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation, not the Russia investigation. The claim that the FBI committed mass acts of misconduct during the Mueller investigation doesn’t coincide with what we know about the inquiry.
Fact or fiction: Did the justice department and FBI rely on unverified opposition research and hearsay in order to get a court order for surveillance of Carter Page?
Cleveland argued this was the case, based on conservative ire over a FISA application for the surveillance, which cited reports from Christopher Steele, a former British spy who wrote an infamous dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia.
Although the FBI cited other reasons for suspecting Page was a foreign agent, investigators were criticized for using the dossier as a source, particularly since the report came about because of Democratic funding. The FBI verified some of the claims in the dossier, while other areas, like the claim that Russia has information that it could use to blackmail Trump, remain unconfirmed. That means the FBI, by citing the dossier to get the warrant, weren’t using entirely unverified information as Cleveland and others claim.
But did the FBI rely on hearsay? That theory gets a little muddier and also is based on the dossier. The idea, as carried out in pseudo-intellectual excellence here, is that Steele was “merely the purveyor of information,” rather than a direct source, such as someone who witnessed a crime.
That is technically accurate, but opinion dictates whether or not that rises to the level of scandal. Without reviewing a batch of FISA warrant applications, it’s impossible for me or anyone else to know their standards. Do these documents usually include testimony from direct, named and fully unredacted sources? I’ve only seen a few applications for surveillance warrants (filed by local law enforcement agencies, not the FBI) but they referred to confidential informants, who weren’t named. We should know the standards for these requests before jumping to conclusions that something untoward took place.
Fact or fiction: Did the justice department and FBI’s FISA application disclose that Democrats funded the dossier?
Cleveland noted that the FISA application didn’t state that Democrats and Clinton funded the dossier. In fact, the application doesn’t mention by name Trump, Clinton, intelligence firm Fusion GPS or Steele. Technically, law firm Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS to research Trump on behalf of the DNC and Clinton campaign, and then Fusion hired Steele.
Fact or fiction: Did the justice department and FBI falsely claim that Steele was no longer an FBI source when he was?
Cleveland wrote that after Steele’s relationship with the FBI ended, he continued to deliver “opposition research” to former Associate Deputy US Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who then gave the information to the FBI. Ohr testified last year that when Steele called with information Ohr thought was significant, he passed it on the the FBI. He added: “I have received information from different people about organized crime over the years, and in each case I’ve provided it to the FBI.”
Again, opinion dictates if this rises to the level of scandal, but here’s a question. Is it more ethical not to share information relevant to an investigation if you work at the justice department?
Fact or fiction: Did the FBI and justice department fail to properly update the court after applying for the warrant?
Cleveland wrote that “while the released FISA applications remain heavily redacted, the details disclosed suggest that the (Department of Justice) and FBI did not update the court on developments, such as statements made by key witnesses during interviews with agents.”
Now, how’s a gal supposed to factcheck redactions? Further, is this truly a scandal? Are the justice department and FBI required to update courts every time they do an interview after they get a surveillance warrant? That sounds unnecessarily time-consuming, sort of like factchecking this column.
And with that, having scaled my personal Mount Everest, I must take my leave.
Contact Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her onFacebook and Twitter.
An excerpt from this piece also ran in our newsletter, Hard Reset. Sign up for Hard Reset here.