Lawsuit Says NY Post Aimed to Slant News to “Destroy Barack Obama”
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A lawsuit by a former Washington editor for the New York Post has revealed that the paper’s Washington bureau chief told her the newspaper’s official aim was to “destroy Barack Obama”. The revelation comes amid a spreading controversy over accusations the media properties owned by conservative media tycoon Rupert Murdoch have been used to fabricate news, organize phony Republican rallies, orchestrate sham grassroots groups —called ‘astroturf’ organizations—, systematically misrepresent the facts and personally attack political opponents of Murdoch’s preferred party and candidates.
Sandra Guzman, a former executive editor who was dismissed after she objected to the paper running a cartoon portraying Barack Obama as an escaped chimpanzee shot dead by police. She alleges that the in-house culture of the New York Post is loaded with racist and sexist abuse. She also said the paper knew the cartoon was seriously offensive but brushed off the idea there could be any serious objection because Post directors believed only “minorities” would be offended and in one editor’s words “most of them are uneducated”.
Ms. Guzman’s revelations could bring a flurry of lawsuits against the Post and other Murdoch media properties, if there is evidence that facts were deliberately distorted in order to cause material harm to individuals. That is the textbook definition of libel, and the New York Post’s Washington bureau chief having declared the paper’s mission to be to “destroy Obama” suggests not only that libel was a possible outcome, but that there was a deliberate and coordinated effort to ensure that the paper was engaging in libel.
Some critics have been slow to see the gravity of the revelations, in part because the Post already has a reputation for playing fast and loose with facts, having an aggressive political bias and following the mold of a typical sensationalist tabloid. If we recall the film Bright Lights, Big City, based on Jay McInerney’s novel, the main character says reading the New York Post is one of his most shameful “vices”, despite the more immediate physical danger of his cocaine habit: so ingrained in the New York psyche is the paper’s ill repute.
Others argue the New York Post, like any tabloid, is really more an advertising vehicle than a news source, so somehow fact-checking cannot be expected. But Guzman’s allegations are of grave concern for a number of reasons:
1) ad-rag or not, a widely circulated newspaper may have been used as a political weapon to manipulate the media environment and undermine the American electoral process;
2) it is no minor detail that a candidate of vast popularity, whose politics won a landslide victory, with no scandal or radical ideas whatsoever was the target of a deliberate campaign of character assassination, openly admitted to by the paper’s editors;
3) Guzman’s revelations also appear to confirm that Post editors were willing to knowingly thrust into the nation’s political discourse cartoons (and by extension ideas) they knew to be nakedly racist and condoning of race-based killing.
The level of professional irresponsibility alone is shocking, but that this reckless amorality may have been part of a planned, concerted campaign, backed by a major media firm that owns nit only one of the three major cable news channels but also the Wall Street Journal, means we have to ask ourselves how many inflammatory, dangerous lies, toxic to the democratic process and designed to brainwash American media consumers, were part of this propaganda effort. Does this mean the privately-owned “free press” is extinguished, replaced by a command-and-control libel mill, bent on using the First Amendment to undermine other Constitutional liberties?
Guzmán’s lawsuit specifically and explicitly alleges that the work environment at the New York Post is “permeated with racist and sexist conduct and comments toward employees of color and women”, adding that “the Post has also repeatedly targeted people of color and women outside of the Company with its racism and sexism through racially and sexually offensive news headlines, news stories and humiliating, insulting and degrading cartoons.”
The clear suggestionis that neither her own experience of harassment and mistreatment nor the cartoon attacking Obama as a chimpanzee shot by police were isolated incidents, but that they were part of a pattern of consistent abuse and intimidation, both inside and outside the editorial offices of the paper. The complaint also alleges “unlawful retaliation” against anyone who dares to complain of the abuse and harassment, up to and including deliberate efforts to undermine individuals’ career prospects.
Specifically, Guzman’s suit alleges:
… when employees complain about the discrimination in the workplace, they are often subjected to unlawful retaliation by the White management and editors at the Company, who, among other things, unlawfully retaliate against them by unfairly criticizing their work performance, overly scrutinizing their work, giving them unjust performance evaluations, denying them assignments and/or terminating their employment.
Guzman’s complaints about the racist cartoon depicting the assassination of an ape meant to represent the president, is alleged, in the suit, to have led directly to her being fired, without cause, as an illegal act of personal retaliation for raising objections to an atmosphere of aggression, bigotry and intimidation. The chimp cartoon was such an offensive and obvious racist attack, with real potential for incitement to physical violence, that Post owner Rupert Murdoch actually was driven to issue an apology, almost unheard of despite the intense controversy and allegations of systematic distortion consistently leveled at his media company.
The allegations are gravely serious; they go to the heart of what journalism is and why the press has such a privileged place in the rights enshrined in the US Constitution. The press is thought to be a check on the arbitrary and corrupt use of power, a way for the citizenry to protect against abuses by the powerful. But the allegation that the New York Post had a stated internal mission to “destroy Obama”, coupled with the alleged climate of hostility and persecution within the Post organization itself, suggests a deliberate betrayal of everything the free press is supposed to be.
It suggests a concerted effort to manipulate the truth, destroy an individual’s character and career, possibly based on a routine system of doing exactly that within the organization itself, and a campaign of fear-mongering, distortion and intimidation either explicitly or implicitly condoned by the tabloid’s owner.
While it is fundamentally problematic for the government to launch investigations of media outlets for behavior that might be intended to destroy politicians’ careers or manipulate voters’ behavior, even in cases of systematic libel, civil courts could provide a means for further investigation into the allegations against the paper, and other media outlets are virtually guaranteed to probe as deeply as possible the critical and outrageous substance of the allegations, putting the post in a far deeper hole than where it already finds itself.
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