Hawaii Congresswoman Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s critique of U.S. foreign policy is so threatening to the custodians of conventional wisdom that the NBC News abandoned to basic journalistic practice to smear her as a tool of Russia.
In The Intercept Glenn Greenwald demolishes the NBC News report purporting to show that Gabbard, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, is favored by Russian botnets.
The fatal flaw in the story: It is attributed to a company that has been exposed for faking stories about Democratic candidate favored by Russian botnets. The NBC News piece cited “analysts at New Knowledge, the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election” to suggest that the Kremlin “had a crush” on Gabbard.
NBC News chose to overlook the fact that six weeks ago, the New York Times reported that New Knowledge had mounted a phony campaign during the recent Alabama U.S. Senate election to suggest that Republican candidate Roy Moore was supported by Russian social media bots.
Greenwald:
The New York Times, when exposing the scam, quoted a New Knowledge report that boasted of its fabrications: “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the [Roy] Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.’”
In other words, NBC cited a source that had been exposed for making fraudulent statements on the exact subject as their story.
What explains this journalistic malpractice? There’s only one possible answer: political bias.
