NYT Reporter Lifts Material from Local Reporter then Plays Dumb When Caught
[guest post by JVW]
As a follow-up to the story last night about GOP House candidate Greg Gianforte of Montana “body-slamming” Guardian reporter Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs during what Gianoforte characterizes as an unwelcome intrusion into a private interview last night, comes some typically douchy behavior from a New York Times reporter. Whitney Bermes of the Daily Chronicle newspaper in Bozeman tweeted out a picture that she took this morning when the citation issued to Gianforte. The link to the tweet is in the proceeding sentence, and I’ll attach an image here in case the tweet has trouble embedding:
And then, a mere 44 minutes later, Jonathan Martin of the NYT sent out this tweet:
Note the tone of accomplishment in Martin’s tweet: “I’ve obtained a copy. . . ” He makes it sound as if he was doing good old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism and hanging out at the police station asking all the right questions and uncovering every lead. But don’t the two photos there look awfully similar, and by “similar” I mean one and the same? Note how the redacted information is the same as well as the shadow on the document from the person who snapped the photo. This coincidence was not lost on Ms. Bermes who had the following exchange with Martin:
Twitter reaction is overwhelmingly critical of Martin and supportive of Ms. Bermes, and it would appear that all of the big poo-bah media watchers have been alerted to this. I don’t think I would want to be in Jonathan Martin’s shoes right now. It will be interesting to see what if any censure he might face from his employer.
But just another reason to distrust Big Media.
[Cross-posted at the Jury Talks Back.]
– JVW