I have started to dislike MSNBC’s Alex Witt intensely. I’m sure she’s a nice lady and all but, as a journalist, she’s the worst. She commits Journalistic Malpractice every time she goes on the air.
She’s totally unprepared.
When a journalist or reporter asks questions where the answers are already publicly available — but THEY simply haven’t done their homework — their due diligence — what they are doing amounts to Journalistic Malpractice.
For instance — The Devin Nunes Memo vs the Adam Schiff Memo…
If one were to, say, READ both memos — and all their supporting documents — you know, the work of being a ‘journalist’ — one would see — clearly — in black, white AND grey — what IS and what ISN’T. One would see what is Truth and what is Nonsense. One would see what is Stone Cold Reality and what is political Kabuki. And then one wouldn’t have to ask the generic question: “Are both sides just playing politics?”
That question — asked at this point in the story — says only one thing: The person asking the question either 1) knows NOTHING about the subject or 2) is too stupid to USE what everybody else knows about the subject and therefore is in the wrong line of work.
Trump-Russia has been the bane of most journalist’s careers — when it coulda shoulda woulda made them rock stars. If they’d just done their fucking homework…
Too many of our news media were unprepared to cover this story — and have done nothing to prepare since.
When Fusion GPS got the assignment to do opposition research against Donald Trump, as per Glenn Simpson’s congressional testimony, the very FIRST thing they did — their DUE DILIGENCE — was to get their hands on every last scrap of publicly available material about Donald J Trump. They got every book, every magazine article, every reference to him they could find, every radio interview, every TV appearance and puff piece. And they read, watched and listened to every last bit of it.
That was BEFORE they started their work. And what they saw there — in that PUBLICLY AVAILABLE MATERIAL — concerned them deeply. They did not expect to see what they found — but there it was. And that heightened concern — that the subject of their work — Donald J Trump — was involved in things so criminal and so pervasive it needed to be investigated by the best in the biz: Christopher Steele, formerly of the MI6 — and, by all agreement, the best Russia Hand alive.
Due Diligence. It is something most of our MSM does not do and seems unaware of. And THAT’S why we get so annoyed with them — they’re not very good at doing their jobs…