Tiffany Hsu, who covers “misinformation and disinformation” for the New York Times, took the reins of the paper’s “On Politics” newsletter Wednesday and issued the latest hypersensitive media defense of the newly minted Democratic nominee, under the inflated headline, “Tackling the falsehoods about Kamala Harris.” Yet much of what the paper condemned as “falsehoods” was merely partisan rhetoric which would have gone unremarked upon if thrown at Republicans by Democrats.
Vice President Kamala Harris has been campaigning for president for three days. And she is already facing disinformation and abuse of a far different caliber than President Biden ever has.
Ever since Sunday, when Biden backed her candidacy for president in his stead, many social media posts have parroted variations on the sexist and racist rumors that have followed Harris for years. Within hours of Biden’s announcement, more than 11 percent of related mentions of Harris on X involved attacks related to her race or gender, according to the data firm PeakMetrics. Many posts, including one from a woman running for secretary of state in Missouri, involved hostile sexual references.
Hsu strongly hinted for online censorship, faulting “weak oversight” and hauling out Nina “Mary Poppins” Jankowicz, previously appointed director of the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board before that Orwellian outfit was scuttled.
Disinformation researchers, however, said the normalization of misogynistic language had become an inexorable byproduct of an online ecosystem run with weak oversight and powered by a hunger for engagement. The toxic discourse surrounding Harris has often recycled earlier falsehoods about her, said Nina Jankowicz, the chief executive of the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit studying disinformation.
Under the heading “Claims tied to race,” Hsu sympathetically defended Harris from charges of being a “D.E.I. hire.” Never mind that Biden bragged about appointing a black woman as his vice president and promised to put a black woman on the Supreme Court.
….Harris was derided as a “D.E.I. hire” in posts and television appearances by Republican lawmakers who accused her of being unsuited for leadership because diversity, equity and inclusion policies could have helped her advance. The comments largely ignored her extensive history holding public positions in jurisdictions that required her to navigate widely disparate activist circles and what she has called “blood sport” establishment politics.
Some of Hsu’s “misinformation” examples were just unfriendly assumptions.
Harris has long been subject to exaggerated or unfounded claims that her past romantic partners enabled her political ascent.
Those have only picked up this week. From Saturday to Monday, posts on X referring to claims that Harris “slept her way to the top” garnered nearly 40.3 million impressions -- a 44,000 percent increase from the prior two-day period, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research group.
The sexist insinuations point in part to her brief relationship in the 1990s with Willie Brown, who was 60 and the speaker of the California Assembly when Harris was 29 and rising in the Bay Area legal scene. He appointed Harris to two well-paid state board positions and introduced her to his political connections.
Does that sound “exaggerated or unfounded”?
Among the “Misrepresentations of her political positions” was the now-infamous question of whether Harris was ever appointed the Biden Administration’s “border czar.” Hsu huffed:
The title, however, is a misleading one that was never officially bestowed on the vice president. Instead, Biden deputized her with a diplomatic mission to evaluate the factors that cause people to leave their home countries in the first place. Both she and Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, have noted that it is his job to manage the border.
NewsBusters Tim Graham reminded us that the press often referred to Harris as “border czar” and underlined that “Biden appointed her to stem the tide” of illegal immigration.
PS: Wednesday’s newsletter included this story link:
Harris gave a speech to thousands of Black women in Indianapolis, warning that former President Donald Trump is a threat to children and families.
So is Donald Trump a confirmed “threat to children and families”? That vitriolic accusation doesn’t seem to pass standard media fact-check scrutiny. But don’t expect the New York Times ever to flag such overheated Democratic rhetoric as “disinformation.”
