A funny thing happened on the way to the conspiracy
A CEO's arrest blows up a New York Times "conspiracy" in a matter of hours
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Dear Friends,
In the good ol’ days, conspiracy theories were strong. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Moon Landing Hoax were as hearty as Paul Bunyan. They could live for decades.
Now? Weak tea conspiracies often fall within months, whether it’s Trump’s secret computer lines to Russia, him watching girls pee on a Russian bed, or the Russians fabricating the Hunter Biden laptop. (And yes, I’m noticing a geographic theme here.)
If there were an award for weak conspiracy theories, it would definitely go to New York Times writer Stuart Thompson.
His 1,500-word article blasting right-wing election-denying conspiracists didn’t even last a full day before being blown into bits.
In short, some claimed that a U.S. election software company named Konnech had secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the Chinese government access to personal data on poll workers in the United States.
The Times’ job wasn’t to find out the truth behind this, but to strike another pretend blow for democracy. The piece is, at its core, a master class in how reporters spin the truth to match their political ends.
Thompson set the tone in the opening sentence. (It’s best to hear Oliver Stone’s voice when reading this.)
At an invitation-only conference in August at a secret location southeast of Phoenix, a group of election deniers unspooled a new conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential outcome.
A secret location in the desert? Election deniers? Unspooling a new theory? It was great.
But you need more than a good opening line to give birth to a wannabe conspiracy. You first need the right words. “Deniers” is a good start.
It’s a favorite word of the media class to show that someone’s not just a skeptic, but one who denies reality. Election deniers, climate change deniers – they all spring from the original Holocaust deniers.
His article word count: “Denier” – 5 times. “Conspiracy” – 9 times.
The Times then attacked researchers who supposedly relied on “threadbare evidence, or none at all”. Thompson made it clear how harmful the accusations and supposed anonymous threats were to Konnech’s employees, especially CEO Eugene Yu, who allegedly went into hiding with his family.
“I’ve cried,” Mr. Yu wrote in an email. “Other than the birth of my daughter, I hadn’t cried since kindergarten.”
Hopefully, Mr. Yu kept his tissues handy, because the day after the Times rode to his defense, he was arrested by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.
According to the definitely-not-a-conservative L.A. District Attorney, George Gascón:
Under its $2.9 million, five-year contract with the county, Konnech was supposed to securely maintain the data and that only United States citizens and permanent residents have access to it.
District Attorney investigators found that in contradiction to the contract, information was stored on servers in the People’s Republic of China.
The company maintains its innocence and calls Yu’s arrest “wrongful.” The D.A.’s office says personal information on election workers was “criminally mishandled” and is seeking to extradite him to California.
In the ultimate irony, the Times assigned the “Yu arrested” story once again to Stuart Thompson, the same reporter who just hours before had painted him as a victim.
The paper even used the same sad sack photo of Yu in both. Here were the captions:
October 3: “Threatening messages forced Konnech’s chief executive, Eugene Yu, and his family into hiding.”
October 4: “Eugene Yu was taken into custody on the suspicion of the theft of poll workers’ personal information, the Los Angeles County district attorney said.”
Did the Times and its reporter learn any lessons? It’s hard to tell.
In the follow-up arrest story, they still mentioned “deniers” 5 times. One word, though, was completely missing … “conspiracy.”
A last note: The Times piece smeared a lot of people in that article and distributed to millions. It’s more than about politics; it’s about real people.
Excellent as always