STOP THE PRESSES! NYT Discovers That Democrats Aren’t Always Truthful

Politics can be a grim business and those of us who cover it can always use a little comic relief. Not a moment too soon the New York Times rides to the rescue by publishing this breaking news from Stuart Thompson and Tiffany Hsu:

For years, the discussion about misinformation online has focused on falsehoods circulating on the American right. But in recent weeks, a flurry of conspiracy theories and false narratives have also been swirling on the left.

Some misinformation researchers are worried that the new spate of left-leaning conspiracy theories could further polarize political discourse before the November election.

It’s an interesting question raised by the Times scoop. What would it do to our politics if this allegedly new phenomenon of falsehood on the political left, which according to the Times may already be weeks old, were to exert a significant influence on political media coverage?

Hard as it may be to imagine, consider for a moment if left-leaning journalists were to swallow whole a bogus story fed to them by anonymous sources suggesting that a Republican candidate had colluded with Russia to rig a U.S. presidential election. Imagine that as part of the misinformation campaign a left-leaning FBI official was caught fabricating evidence against an associate of this Republican candidate and that even after conviction the left-leaning FBI criminal was not sentenced to even a single day in prison and the story was largely ignored by left-leaning journalists. What would it do to our politics if to this day millions of voters believed the false claim that the Republican candidate had colluded with Russia and millions more voters remained infuriated because they knew the collusion tale was false? Then imagine that when this candidate ran for re-election, many of the same left-leaning media outlets fell for his left-leaning opponent’s false claim of ignorance about foreign enrichment schemes, and this false claim was supported by CIA contractors falsely suggesting that evidence of the scheme was also from Russia. Now imagine that it worked so well that the opponent persuaded much of the media industry to suppress true stories about millions of dollars of foreign money flowing into his family’s accounts.

It truly is a fascinating thought experiment. Perhaps such a scenario is not as likely as a cognitively impaired but left-leaning president being protected by a phalanx of friendly media folk. Imagine if, instead of reporting on the full extent of his impairment, newspaper editors chose to cast him as a solemn and serene figure embarking on perhaps the most productive period of his political career.

As fanciful as these possibilities may seem, we should always be on guard against people using the fact that the Russian regime is a malignant force in the world to spread falsehoods about Americans who choose to participate in politics, and to use the Russian threat as a pretext to infringe on the rights of American citizens and influence our elections.

Also today in the New York Times, Julian Barnes, Glenn Thrush and Steven Lee Myers report:

The United States plans to unveil indictments on Wednesday that accuse Russia of trying to influence the election in November by using its state-run media to push divisive messages and misinformation, according to U.S. officials.

The indictments are part of a larger federal effort to push back on the Kremlin’s effort to influence the vote. The Treasury Department is set to announce a set of sanctions on Wednesday, and the State Department is set to announce new actions against Russians involved in election influence efforts.

U.S. officials have been stepping up their warnings about Russian election influence efforts. American spy agencies have assessed that the Kremlin favors former President Donald J. Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the November contest, seeing him as more skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine.

The Justice Department and the F.B.I. have been investigating a handful of Americans accused of knowingly spreading false Kremlin narratives. But officials have emphasized they are not aiming to curb free speech.

Have the Justice Department and the FBI given us any reason to believe that last sentence?

As for the Times, they may wish to consider the possibility that misinformation has been coming from the left for more than a few weeks.

More From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):