NYT: Mistakes Were Made, But We Stand By Ukrainium One Joe Biden Hitpiece

Of course they do!

Yesterday Iuliia Mendel, the author of the New York Times 's notorious Ukrainium One story that gave Rudy Giuliani 18 paragraphs to slime Joe Biden before admitting in the 19th that there was actually no evidence to support his smears (it's a Times tradition! ), had a big announcement.

Thanks everyone for your congratulations. There were 4000 applications. It is a big honor and big responsibility to… https: //t.co/BeidARfY3O

— Iuliia Mendel (@Iuliia Mendel) 1559559990.0 

O RLY? So, while Mendel was writing multiple stories about Ukraine's government for the Times, she was also interviewing for a position with that very country's incoming government? And she failed to disclose this information while reporting a story which contained demonstrably false allegations against a major American presidential candidate?

Boy Howdy, does the New York Times public editor have egg on her face today! HAHA, we are silly! The Times fired its public editor last year and replaced her with a "Reader Center" where the public can "collectively serve as a modern watchdog." Obviously, this is far preferable to having a professional journalist whose IRL job is to hold the paper accountable and ensure that the BUTTERY MALES lapses in coverage of the 2016 election won't be repeated next year.

It didn't take long for Giuliani's Ukraine bullshit to fall apart, with Bloomberg taking the lead in curbstomping Mendel and Ken Vogel's story. Rudy's now moved on to vomiting accusations to Sean Hannity that Biden took actual bribes from the Ukrainian government, and he canceled his trip to meet with representatives of incoming Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, calling them "enemies of the president, in some cases, enemies of the United States." Whether this group, which now includes Mendel, the reporter who originally served his bullshit up to America, is still Rudy's enemy is an open question.

At the Times, however, there are no such open questions. They commit no errors of judgment or ethics, and if they do, these errors are entirely harmless. Here's NYT spokesman Ari Isaacman Bevacqua's statement on the Mendel fuck up:

Iuliyya Mendel was a freelance contributor to the New York Times based in Kiev, Ukraine.

Last week The Times learned that she had applied for a job as spokesperson to the president of Ukraine on May 3 and has now accepted this position.

Ms. Mendel wrote one story for the times in May when she was a candidate for the government position, about the dissolution of Parliament. Had she informed editors of her job application, they would not have given her that assignment and we would have stopped working with her immediately given this serious conflict of interest. All reporters, including freelance reporters, must abide by our ethical journalism guidelines.

Editors are confident that despite the conflict that should have been disclosed reporting -- including her work on our recent Hunter Biden story -- was fair and accurate.

OUR BOLD. So the Times story implying a conflict of interest because of "the Bidens' work in Ukraine" based on nothing at all except Rudy Giuliani's innuendo, which disregarded the fact that the investigation in the company which employed Joe Biden's son had been dropped a whole year before Biden pere called for the corrupt prosecutor to be fired, is "fair and accurate." But the undisputed fact that the author was shopping herself for a position in Ukraine's government while working on multiple stories about that country is totally legit. Got it.

Move along, kids, nothing to see here! America's paper of record is totally ready to cover the 2020 election and provide US citizens with the media coverage we deserve. Exactly the way they did in October 2016, when they told us that the FBI had given Trump a clean bill of health and found "no link" between his campaign and Russia. Thanks, NYT!

[ NYT / CNN / Nieman Lab ]

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