Wall Street Journal Killed Editorial on Trumps Mob Ties

[steve2470]

http://amp.nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/wall-street-journal-killed-editorial-on-trumps-mob-ties.html

In a short period of time, five staffers have departed The Wall Street Journal editorial page. The general cause of their departures, willing and otherwise, is known: the Journal editorial line has increasingly conformed with the pro-Trump dictates of the rest of the Murdoch media empire. (Most recently, Journal editorials, which once presented Ken Starr as the last hope to preserve the rule of law, have fomented various right-wing conspiracy theories about Robert Mueller and called for his firing.)

Sam Tanenhaus, deep into his excellent story on the dwindling band of anti-Trump conservative intellectuals, reports more specifically on the circumstances surrounding their departure. As Trump’s chances of winning the nomination grew, the paper buried an editorial highlighting his underworld connections:

Those were heavy losses in pages whose content is managed by fewer than thirty people in total. And the reason, according to several defectors, was the Journal’s skidding reversal once Rupert Murdoch realized Trump could win. Several sources pointed to the editorials by one writer, James Freeman. “All-in for Ted Cruz” during the primaries, Freeman wrote a strong attack on Trump’s Mob dealings, and had a second ready to go. But as Trump got closer to clinching the nomination, Paul Gigot kept delaying publication, saying “it needed work.” Once Trump became the likely Republican nominee, Freeman executed a neat volte-face. “The facts suggest that Mrs. Clinton is more likely to abuse liberties than Mr. Trump,” he wrote. “America managed to survive Mr. Clinton’s two terms, so it can stand the far less vulgar Mr. Trump.”

(Trump’s Mafia connections are the sort of scandal that would have killed an ordinary candidacy but barely even register on the outsize scale of Trump scandals.)

[triron]

1. This is a BIG deal! Why???

[UTUSN]

2. I was going to say that the authors could publish somewhere else or write books, but they are other

wingnuts ("conservative intellectuals" ). The whole (except George WILL?) anti-TWITLER wing collapsed and went all craven, so... these dudes just clammed up?

[Denzil_DC]

3. K&R n/t

[Gabi Hayes]

4. From the man who probably knows trumps finances better than anybody

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-drug-trafficker-donald-trump-risked-his-casino-empire-to-protect


http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/the-donald-and-the-dealer-173892

[denbot]

8. I read the dailybeast link.

Wow, how does this shit happen?

[VOX]

5. WSJ is a Rupert Murdoch-owned right-wing mouthpiece.

Not surprised. It also published an editorial recently calling on Mueller to stop the investigation. Again, not surprised.

[SeaDoo77]

6. Russia Mob

Get my drift.

[smirkymonkey]

7. America managed to survive Mr. Clintons two terms, so it can stand the far less vulgar Mr. Trump.

The far LESS VULGAR Mr. Trump? Can there possibly be ANYONE more vulgar than Donald Trump? He is the very definition of vulgar.

What is this shit?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. NYT keeps Thrush -- Rolling Stone sells -- WaPo raids WSJ -- Breitbart looks beyond Roy Moore

Retweeted by Dave Weigel: https://twitter.com/daveweigel

mass exodus...

Link to tweet

WSJ's @shaneharris and @PaulSonne are heading to WaPo http://politi.co/2z9zERP

Link to tweet

NYT keeps Thrush — Rolling Stone sells — WaPo raids WSJ — Breitbart looks beyond Roy Moore — Never Trumpers carry on

By MICHAEL CALDERONE 12/21/2017 05:34 AM EST

....
Good morning and welcome to Morning Media. Please send tips to [e-mail] and @mlcalderone. Cristiano Lima (@viaCristiano) and Daniel Lippman (@dlippman) contributed to the newsletter. Archives. Subscribe.
....

WASHINGTON POST RAIDS WALL STREET JOURNAL: Journal reporters Paul Sonne and Shane Harris are soon heading to the Post to cover the Pentagon and intelligence, respectively, according to sources familiar with the moves. The Post has already hired three other reporters from the Journal’s Washington bureau this year — Devlin Barrett, Beth Reinhard, and Damian Paletta — and last year nabbed Adam Entous, who is now heading to the New Yorker.
....

MEANWHILE, NEVER TRUMPERS CARRY ON: Sam Tanenhaus, the former New York Times book review editor and author of a forthcoming biography of William F. Buckley titled “The Death of Conservatism,” checks in with Never Trumpers like David Frum, Jennifer Rubin, and Ross Douthat for an Esquire feature.
....

— Tanenhaus also traced the Journal editorial page’s shift from Trump critics to broadly supportive of insurgent candidate as the Republican primary wound down. “Several sources pointed to the editorials by one writer, James Freeman,” he writes. “‘All-in for Ted Cruz’ during the primaries, Freeman wrote a strong attack on Trump’s Mob dealings, and had a second ready to go. But as Trump got closer to clinching the nomination, Paul Gigot kept delaying publication, saying ‘it needed work.’ Once Trump became the likely Republican nominee, Freeman executed a neat volte-face. ‘The facts suggest that Mrs. Clinton is more likely to abuse liberties than Mr. Trump,’ he wrote. ‘America managed to survive Mr. Clinton’s two terms, so it can stand the far less vulgar Mr. Trump.'"

MARK ZUCKERBERG WINS ‘MISINFORMER OF THE YEAR’ AWARD: Media Matters, the progressive watchdog group, has given this title in the past to familiar targets like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. So why Zuckerberg? "Much of what Facebook has done in 2017 has amounted more to a public relations effort than a deeper systemic and underlying approach," Media Matters president Angelo Carusone told Mashable. "What the election did was really illustrate the underlying problems — enabling all this right-wing misinformation and misinformation more broadly."