The New York Times Hit Piece on John Solomon - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The New York Times Hit Piece on John Solomon
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You know you’ve scored when the New York Times runs a lengthy, front-page hit piece on you.

Ace journalist John Solomon has scored big time — and the left-wing Times has had enough of the “all the news that’s fit to print” coming from Solomon.

Here are samples from the Times hit piece. Allow me to translate.

The headline:

The Man Trump Trusts for News on Ukraine

Translation: If this particular president of the United States trusts John Solomon, that means Solomon

  1. Is not to be trusted
  2. Has specious credentials as a journalist
  3. Needs to be stopped because he is extremely effective at uncovering the truth

And, most importantly, John Solomon has been a leader on Sean Hannity’s “ensemble team” of journalists who have been relentlessly investigating the attempted coup d’état against the legitimately elected president of the United States. An investigation that has unearthed one fact after another after another in thoroughly documented fashion. This is totally unacceptable.

Next the Times says,

Mr. Solomon has been a surprisingly central figure in the impeachment proceedings so far. But the glare has not been so kind.

Translation: My God, Solomon is getting the truth! He has to be smeared — and stopped.

Next is this:

So who exactly is John Solomon? A Washington-based reporter and Fox News personality who had until recently been working at the politics outlet The Hill, Mr. Solomon, 52, is not well known outside conservative media. But, according to interviews and testimony, his writing and commentary helped trigger the chain of events that are now the subject of the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump.

Translation: He’s a star in conservative media? Then Solomon must be painted as not really a journalist.

Next:

Though he worked for years at The Associated Press and briefly at The Washington Post, he moved on from mainstream outlets and now sits at the center of a network of conservative journalists, radio hosts, cable news pundits and activists whose work reaches millions of Americans every day, and shapes the way a large swath of the country sees this pivotal moment.

Translation: My God, Solomon left the mainstream media!!! His work is used and complimented by Hannity, by Fox, Limbaugh, Levin, The American Spectator, Breitbart, and all the rest of those in conservative media. And millions of Americans have stopped listening to us and now listen to them! Totally unacceptable!

Next:

Understanding their work is key to explaining how Mr. Trump’s approval ratings remain so durable with his base — and why, as some polls suggest, far more direct and damaging evidence would have to emerge from the impeachment hearings that begin their public phase on Wednesday for that support to crack.

Translation: Impeachment is failing! Oh nooooooooooo!

Next:

According to transcripts released last week, Mr. Solomon and his pieces for The Hill are a focus for congressional investigators as they look into Mr. Trump’s efforts to push Ukrainian officials to investigate his rivals.

Translation: Who gives a damn about the First Amendment?! The government has to investigate Solomon and get him stopped. We can’t have investigative journalists digging for the truth!

Next:

One particular area of interest for Democrats, the transcripts show, is Mr. Solomon’s role in advancing claims by Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family deserved to be investigated for their own dealings in Ukraine.

Translation: Good God! Solomon caught Biden using his office to benefit his family financially. He’s got to be stopped! We must protect Sleepy Joe!

Next:

Mr. Solomon’s work has been endorsed by some of the most influential figures on the right like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the president, who has highlighted Mr. Solomon’s articles on Twitter.

Mark Levin, the radio and Fox host, recently said that Mr. Solomon and Sara Carter, a journalist with whom he frequently appears on television, were “like the Woodward and Bernsteins of our time.”

Media scholars describe the environment that has elevated Mr. Solomon’s stories as an information ecosystem entirely sealed off from other news coverage.

Translation: This is terrifying! Hannity???? Limbaugh???? Levin???? Solomon and Sara Carter as the new Woodward and Bernstein????? Smelling salts!! Smelling salts!! Memo: Get Woodward and Bernstein to sue Levin for trashing the sacred heroes of Watergate!

Next:

Nicole Hemmer, a historian at Columbia University who studies the conservative media, said people often mistakenly refer to the Fox News-talk radio world as an “echo chamber” of opinion when in fact it is more like “an interconnected set of authorities.”

“Sean Hannity talks about John Solomon,” she said, “and then that gets picked up on Rush and Levin.” The effect, she added, is that his reporting carries weight with conservative audiences. “That gives it an authority when they’re hearing it from multiple sources every day.”

When Mr. Solomon appears on television and the radio, Mr. Hannity and other conservative hosts often identify him as an investigative reporter and cite his decades of experience at news organizations like The A.P. But his critics see this as a sleight of hand to give his writing a veneer of nonpartisan objectivity.

Translation: Hannity, Hannity, Hannity. Good God! We have got to shut Hannity up! Will someone please silence Hannity — now! He’s feeding the entire conservative media food chain! Get Media Matters on the line!

Next:

“Part of the issue is that for years he was identified with the mainstream media,” said James Manley, a former aide to Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who tangled with Mr. Solomon in the 2000s over stories insinuating Mr. Reid had benefited inappropriately from his office. The Columbia Journalism Review later singled out Mr. Solomon’s reporting, saying it was “much ado about very little.”

Translation: OMG! The audacity of Solomon! We took him into our elitist club and he used his membership to ask questions about Harry Reid! He had the nerve to ask why the poor boy from Search Light, Nevada goes to Congress, spends an entire career there, and emerges a millionaire! We don’t do that in Washington. That’s a total violation of club rules! And we gave him credibility!

Next:

While Mr. Solomon was at The Hill, his relationships with sources were sometimes closer than reporters typically get with the people they cover.

Translation: JFK and Ben Bradlee? The Clintons and CNN — the Clinton News Network? Oh, please. Solomon is no Bradlee, and CNN was right to defend their friends. Stop with the Whataboutisms.

In short, after almost three years of Solomon’s relentless reporting that has been critical in uncovering what, by the day and sometimes by the hour, is the greatest political scandal in American history, the New York Times — which refused to investigate this massive story — has rushed to defend those involved in the scandal. Instead, the Times pushed the crazy and debunked Trump–Russia conspiracy theory.

Now that they realize that John Solomon’s reporting, along with the work of Sean Hannity and conservative media, has in fact revealed this scandal — in documented detail — the move is on to discredit and silence.

Memo to the Times: Too late.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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