Drew Holden Profile picture
Jan 3, 2024 17 tweets 5 min read Read on X
🧵Thread🧵

It’s been a day of awful takes from the media about the resignation of former president Claudine Gay from Harvard. @FreeBeacon

I’d like to show you some of the worst. Follow along ⤵️
freebeacon.com/media/harvards…
Before we dive in, quick backstory. Gay resigned in the wake of allegations of plagiarism that @FreeBeacon (particularly @aaronsibarium) has reported on extensively. You can read the ones that immediately preceded her resignation here: freebeacon.com/campus/harvard…
A number of outlets wanted to blame anything but Gay for her own academic fraud.

@nytimes blamed “a proxy fight over campus politics” for her resignation.

It isn’t clear how this proxy fight could have caused her to commit plagiarism. Image
@politico did the same, blaming conservatives for doing journalism about a powerful person who had committed fraud. Image
And @CNN’s @MattEganCNN included perhaps the most head spinning word salad to explain how it wasn’t actually plagiarism. (H/t @SteveGuest ) Image
That Gay could have been the victim of her own bad behavior wasn’t something some folks in the media could accept.

Instead, many blamed racism. Here’s @ibramxk, who perhaps thinks that racism did the plagiarizing. Image
You’ll never guess what @MSNBC’s @TheRevAl blamed it on. Image
And I’m sure you’ll be equally surprised to hear that @nhannahjones did the same thing. Image
Her coworker @MaraGay did the same thing in this mind melting interview. (H/t @tomselliott) Image
@NBCNews convened a panel to figure out if racism was the culprit and — you’ll never believe this — @SymoneDSanders said that it was.
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Perhaps the best take, by my lights, was @AP, who is outraged that conservatives appear to have discovered the new “weapon” of journalism.

Luckily, AP and the rest of the gang have largely abandoned that mantle. Image
And as @peterjhasson and others have pointed out @AP took some creative liberties with their history, too. Image
More examples in the piece. The media didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory today. Link again is here: freebeacon.com/media/harvards…
And fear not. Gay still has a job…teaching at Harvard. Image
Media reaction summed up: Image
They haven’t stopped. Was waiting on something ridiculous from @washingtonpost and they didn’t disappoint.

No mention in the tweet about what actually caused Gay to resign: her penchant for plagiarizing
@washingtonpost One thing that I think this coverage makes clear: the mainstream media views themselves as in a pitched battle to defend not just Gay but any other powerful person who’s wrongdoing was exposed by conservatives.

That’s a horrific miscarriage of journalism.

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More from @DrewHolden360

Apr 29
🧵Thread🧵

Many in the media are trying to claim that the press was merely duped by Biden’s White House about the former president’s cognitive decline.

That simply isn’t true. The media actively took part in the coverup.

Don’t let them forget. I’ve got screenshots. ⤵️
I’ve done a number of threads on this but putting some of the most egregious stuff in one place.

Perhaps the most damming: Two weeks before the debate made Biden’s cognitive decline inescapable, @washingtonpost gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to allegedly edited videos showing Biden clearly displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype” while quoting the White House to say the videos were “cheap fakes” — all to defend Biden against criticisms about his age and well-being.Image
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That story came four days after a previous effort from @washingtonpost to write off these videos as Republican efforts to mislead voters: proof, the Post claimed, that “the politics of misinformation and conspiracy theories do not stop at the waters edge.” Image
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Read 24 tweets
Apr 15
🧵Thread🧵

I’m not sure people realize just how egregious some of NPR’s “journalism” has been. Amid the debate about defunding the network, I wanted to walk down memory lane to revisit some of its worst coverage.

There’s a lot. ⤵️
First, perhaps the most egregious display of activist journalism: their response to the Hunter Biden laptop story of corruption involving a major party candidate on the eve of the election.

Not only did @NPR not cover it, they bragged about refusing to do so. Image
Insofar as @NPR did cover the Hunter Biden scandal, they actively tried to cover it up.

They applauded Facebook & Twitter strangling the story as part of a push against “misinformation and conspiracy theories.”

The story, of course, turned out to be far from invented. Image
Read 20 tweets
Mar 12
When it’s a D // When it’s an R Image
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Oh there are a lot of these.
@mcmurphy_pat Image
Read 5 tweets
Mar 5
🧵Thread🧵

If you missed Trump’s address to Congress last night, I wouldn’t rely on media stories to explain it.

Rather than report on a speech viewers found “inspiring,” the corporate press played PR for Democrats.

Wanna know why trust in the press is underwater? Look. ⤵️
A @CBSNews poll of viewers found “A large majority of viewers approve” of Trump’s message, overwhelmingly describing it as “inspiring,” rather than “divisive.”

The speech was certainly partisan - and viewers skewed right.

But the press’s own view appears to slant their takes. Image
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What leads me to claim that? Well, just look at how @CBSNews decided to report on the speech.

They tweeted out that “there was a horribly tense feeling,” and it was “filled with drama.”

Why focus on how their reporter felt, rather than viewers? Image
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Read 20 tweets
Feb 6
Having worked on the Hill I get the ubiquity of Politico Pro and its cost.

But I think it takes an enormous suspension of disbelief to call it a conspiracy theory to look askance at the millions of dollars the Biden admin paid the paper that ran this hatchet job on his opponent. Image
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Which, to be clear, is exactly what outlets like @CNN are doing. Image
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@CNN This from @axios seems particularly unreasonable.

It isn’t a “fake theory” to say that Politico is “funded by the government.” It is, to the tune of $8 million. That isn’t in dispute. Image
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Read 5 tweets
Jan 25
Quick 🧵 revisiting corporate media claims on the Covid lab leak theory then (a “conspiracy theory,” “misinformation,” etc.) vs. now (“okay the CIA even admits it”).

@nytimes then // @nytimes now Image
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@washingtonpost then // now Image
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@USATODAY then // now Image
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Read 14 tweets

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