This was one of the best articles I have read about the inherent dishonesty and complete nonsense of the Maggie Haberman's era of WH journalism. She is hardly a giant of reporting as the NY Times would have us belief…she is, rather, to journalism what a TV host of the QVC sales channel is to tele-marketing.
Trump spent months talking up election fraud and saying he would not accept an electoral loss. The media should have been ringing alarm bells over this shocking lack of regard for the democratic process being demonstrated by the President of the United States. Instead, thanks to "access is everything" reporters like Haberman, this seditious behavior was dismissed as more of Trump's bluster and BS, and we were fed stories about the president's mood, and how he was begrudgingly moving on. And then - January 6th, which was not only foreseeable, but inevitable. Trump made no effort to disguise the fact that he was totally in thrall to his delusions, but Maggie stood by her pals who were telling her Trump was just pouting, and would eventually move on. There was nothing normal about Trump...unless you read the Times.
WHY is all the GOP voter suppression and other diabolical strategies to grab power back not a #1 story? If this was the Clintons leading the kind of anti-democratic actions Trump and the GOP do, it would be treated like the national crisis that this really is. Why is Biden and Democrats not making it a more prominent issue in the media? I get so frustrated that Democrats aren't as ruthless as Republicans - there should be a commission to investigate and reveal the failures of the Trump pandemic response, the insurrection, and now, voter suppression. Republicans used Benghazi to injure Hillary politically and succeeded despite the fact that it was a hyped up faux crisis. These are REAL crises and incompetence that should be used to damage Trump and his army now and in 2022 and 2024. So frustrated.
Mr. Boehlert, Off topic, but I'm surprised you missed the headline on yesterday's Washington Post, "Infections climb on Biden's watch".
It is hard to imagine any universe where the uptick in Covid cases can be compared to those of 1/20/21.
It's hard to imagine that such an inflammatory headline is justified by the fact that Covid infections were up last week.
It's hard to imagine any honest headline writer choosing that where the second paragraph admits that infections are off 2/3 from the inauguration.
I would love to see new Covid infections drop each and every week. I fear Governors DeSantis & Abbot have made that impossible. But such a headline? Really?
Honesty forces us to admit that the President, whether Biden or Trump, has little control over the spread of Covid.
The difference is that Biden is doing much while claiming little. Trump wanted to be seen as active & assertive & only wound up adding needless complications.
Yes, when I read that headline my jaw dropped. Such an obvious misrepresentation of the important story of progress made on this front by Biden. An embarrassing and obvious stretch of the truth. Ugh. As to Haberman, a shameful example of access journalism vs the real thing. I couldn’t bear reading her unserious stories about that former guy. No news there, ever. Just a lot of sucking up for non scoops. Haberman hasn’t helped herself as a journalist, which disappoints me. I’m a cheerleader for women in the workplace, but I believe she’s discredited herself and not provided any of us with a valuable service. Now she’s off the front page reporting on trivia from Mar a Lago. Was it worth it?
Same here — and this isn’t the first time the Post has had hyped headlines. They even had one about the infrastructure bill that said Biden was returning to Pennsylvania because his political future was on the line. The Times didn’t do anything close to that. There was also one about Biden “taming” the left — for now instead of a headline about Biden uniting Democrats. The implication is that “the left” are a bunch of out of control kids or wild animals. This from the same publication that is always urging people to be respectful of and sensitive to Trump’s extremist, hateful voters.
The WaPo is also obsessing about debt with multiple articles saying “Larry Summers” and some economists say inflation is a threat. The Post is choosing to deliberately ignore the fact that Janet Yellen, Jerome Powell and over a hundred economists publicly support Biden’s spending plans. This is even worse than bothsiderism, it’s one siderism and that side is the Republican’s one.
Well said. They’re forfeiting their credibility as they turn themselves into pretzels to report on both sides vs the truth, creating conflict where there really isn’t any; knowledgeable reader knows the difference. Have they forgotten who their readers are? Sad.
We naively assume that journalists get into the business to be the best at informing the public of the truth. Great journalists do so by digging deep, acquiring reputable sources, then fashioning the real story for the public to consume. Certainly Jane Mayer comes to mind with her brilliant books and articles. Maggie Haberman is a hack. Like all professions, there are pros and there are cons. In the case of Haberman, her goal was only to promote herself, her career. During Trump and since, It has not been to inform us all of what was really going on during the past administration. It was to bend the sick truth to keep her in the good graces of her paper so she could continue spewing out more trash to live another day. Sadly many of the "journalists" at the Times and the WPO feel that their career is most important. I believe that was the root of calling a lie a mistruth.
A commenter on one of the blogs I read has raised an excellent point about the fact "reporters" withhold real "news" because they're saving it for their books so we are not getting real time information we need to make decisions about issues or elected officials. I hesitate to summon the dreaded slippery slope/First Amendment concerns but if the denizens of the press aren't making informing the citizens a priority why should they be afforded Constitutional protection? To be clear that's my question, not the commenter's. I know we really don't want to "go there" for many reasons and I think in reality the only response is market driven. We just stop reading or watching the offending parties and the publications/programs who employ them..
Agreed. Money is the only thing they understand. Don't think for a second Coca Cola and Delta are upset about voting rights. They only care about folks paying for their products to drink and flying to their destination respectively. Unfortunately it's only the bottom line that matters to these quarter driven number crunchers.
The bottom line is the bottom line. Before I lose all faith, I must celebrate the folks like Eric, Jennifer Rubin, PAUL Waldman, Greg Sargent, et al who see the forest for the trees and write about the truths they see within. Michael Gerson too.
Yes. I tell myself I should focus on the good reporters/analysts. But I'm Irish and tend to be "Glass is half empty/Who Lit That Darn Candle" kind of gal.
Really awful. Celebrating celebrity has become the value of the day and has infiltrated way too much of our culture. As to reporters hanging on to nuggets for their books, shameless.
Just a reminder that Nancy Haberman, Maggie’s mother, works for the PR firm, Rubenstein, which was founded by Howard Rubenstein – a PR legend, who was once called “the dean of damage control” by Rudy Giuliani.
Google Howard Rubenstein. You'll be amazed to see what you find.
It's really remarkable to look at the headlines from a year ago, and how they all took the remarks of a clearly, deeply stupid man who had no interest in anything but how he looked and gently repositioned them as unconventional ideas by an unconventional thinker.
I always assumed anything bylined by Haberman was the story (or the version) that Trump/Jared/Ivanka wanted us to hear as it was mostly inside-the-palace gossip. It was all sugar and no substance: who is in the dog house, who is on the up-swing according to the Trumps themselves. It was all BS.
Rosenstein, Burkes & all of those who defended & protected him. I know I sound like a broken record, bu Dr. Bandy Lee & her cohorts warned us that Trump needed to be contained from early on. And if he wasn’t the pathology that is his vile contagion would multiple among the masses. He wasn’t then and isn’t today and the poison is spreading. He continues to be an increasing danger as he and his enablers (Miller, Hannity, Pompeo, McEnany) walk freely in the world of disinformation & lies and land 7 figure platforms! He’s spawned MTG, Boebert, Hawley, anti -vaccine diehards, the hubris of state legislatures to write and pass voter suppression laws, a vice on previously, (at least semi-reasonable), representatives and the arrogant strategy of Gaetz who will turn the “I’m the victim here” playbook on the feds (remember Mueller, Kavanaugh & 2 impeachment’s?) while viewed as “being cancelled” by his millions of supporters. Haberman became drunk on his abusive relationship with the NYT’s and represents what some view as the most prestigious tools of the 4th estate.
I don’t know if this exactly applies here, but didn’t someone write once: “Everything Trump Touches Dies?” We thought so, didn’t we?
I totally agree. It's so easy for the media and the public to "cancel" an accomplished woman... Hillary, AOC, and get ready, they're gunnin' for Kamala Harris. I'm reading and hearing a lot about the RQP's salivating to go after her. Look at Katie Hill....!
Thank you for this coverage of someone who gets so many accolades yet seems to have all of credibility of Fox News. I still blame Haberman for her coverage of Sec. Clinton during the election and wonder if that might have made some difference with the razor thin Electoral College win. Her demeanor when interviewed on TV always sets my teeth on edge and most (all?) of the interviewers seem so deferential to her. So, thank you.
PS I decided after 50 years of reading and subscribing to the NYT to cancel and I told them why. My money, my choice.
Still waiting for one example of a story by Haberman which revealed anything which might help her readers understand what the administration was doing and how it affected them; i.e., a story which was <i>not</i> some variation on Who's Up, Who's Down, Who's Miffed at Whom, Who's (Anonymously) "Concerned."
And I'm loving it....too too bad Ms. Maggie. Am beginning to really detest Ashley Parker of the WaPo as well. Everything she has a hand in has a negative tone about Biden.
She’s both siding it re: Biden as Eric might say. AHHHHH. Seems to me negativity is a journalistic requirement these days. Ashley is also turn me off these days. Too bad.
Haberman landed a gig with the Murdoch tabloid and favorite Trump daily New York Post right out of college. I am not sure why she took that job, seems an unusual way to start a career in journalism. Shall we grant "first job" benefit of the doubt? Maybe--but she stayed for 5-6 years. We should all think about the first 5-6 years of our professional life, how meaningful they were, and how they shaped us. She jumped to the New York Daily News, but returned to the classy New York Post. (see headline 2/8/19 "Bezos Exposes Pecker") Again, why?
When the NYT plucked her in 2016 it was in my opinion to cover the tabloid candidate and gain access. The awards that followed will always have an asterisk as trump WH coverage. This period will not age well, and the damage of normalizing these years is still unfolding.
Haberman covered Trump for years for the Post. When she was asked by David Remnick about the fact that she was aware of all the corruption that surrounded Trump she replied :
“I think that people don’t know the extent of it. One of the things that I was really shocked by, covering him in 2015, was the disparity between the five-borough view—or four-borough; take out Staten Island, where he did very well—but the view of him, certainly in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, was that he was not a real businessman. And he, at that point, had been bankrupted several times, and he had gone on to licensing businesses and becoming a reality-TV star.”
People didn’t know “the extent of it” because reporters like Haberman were too busy obsessing the email pseudo-scandal to inform them about Trump’s world of sleaze and corruption and his terrible record as a businessman. Her father Clyde Haberman had also covered Trump for the Times back in the day but why bother to let the rest of us in on that? Maybe because her mom worked for the firm that did PR work for Trump?
Really well articulated, Eric. I've never figured out the exaltation of Haberman. She didn't start out this blatantly obsequious, but has certainly cemented a reputation as 45's stenographer. I can't imagine much interest in her book next year.
The more you emphasize this point in your posts, the more I see what you see. Is this because rich white men make all the rules? So disheartening, but better to see than not. Thx.
This was one of the best articles I have read about the inherent dishonesty and complete nonsense of the Maggie Haberman's era of WH journalism. She is hardly a giant of reporting as the NY Times would have us belief…she is, rather, to journalism what a TV host of the QVC sales channel is to tele-marketing.
thanks, appreciate it
Trump spent months talking up election fraud and saying he would not accept an electoral loss. The media should have been ringing alarm bells over this shocking lack of regard for the democratic process being demonstrated by the President of the United States. Instead, thanks to "access is everything" reporters like Haberman, this seditious behavior was dismissed as more of Trump's bluster and BS, and we were fed stories about the president's mood, and how he was begrudgingly moving on. And then - January 6th, which was not only foreseeable, but inevitable. Trump made no effort to disguise the fact that he was totally in thrall to his delusions, but Maggie stood by her pals who were telling her Trump was just pouting, and would eventually move on. There was nothing normal about Trump...unless you read the Times.
so true. when NYT reported late last year that a WH meeting had featured talk of martial law re: election, they ran the story on page. 24.
WHY is all the GOP voter suppression and other diabolical strategies to grab power back not a #1 story? If this was the Clintons leading the kind of anti-democratic actions Trump and the GOP do, it would be treated like the national crisis that this really is. Why is Biden and Democrats not making it a more prominent issue in the media? I get so frustrated that Democrats aren't as ruthless as Republicans - there should be a commission to investigate and reveal the failures of the Trump pandemic response, the insurrection, and now, voter suppression. Republicans used Benghazi to injure Hillary politically and succeeded despite the fact that it was a hyped up faux crisis. These are REAL crises and incompetence that should be used to damage Trump and his army now and in 2022 and 2024. So frustrated.
Mr. Boehlert, Off topic, but I'm surprised you missed the headline on yesterday's Washington Post, "Infections climb on Biden's watch".
It is hard to imagine any universe where the uptick in Covid cases can be compared to those of 1/20/21.
It's hard to imagine that such an inflammatory headline is justified by the fact that Covid infections were up last week.
It's hard to imagine any honest headline writer choosing that where the second paragraph admits that infections are off 2/3 from the inauguration.
I would love to see new Covid infections drop each and every week. I fear Governors DeSantis & Abbot have made that impossible. But such a headline? Really?
I did miss that one. But I have seen other coverage where Biden gets blamed and virtually no coverage of GOP gov’s opening states
Honesty forces us to admit that the President, whether Biden or Trump, has little control over the spread of Covid.
The difference is that Biden is doing much while claiming little. Trump wanted to be seen as active & assertive & only wound up adding needless complications.
Presidents lead by example. Personal behavior, and pronouncements based on facts and science.
Afraid I disagree.
Leaving aside the argument if Trump ever “lead; he did so with image and bluster. Facts and science were irrelevant. Image everything.
Now, I’ll agree if you insert “should” into your comment.
Trump simply didn’t.
Yes, when I read that headline my jaw dropped. Such an obvious misrepresentation of the important story of progress made on this front by Biden. An embarrassing and obvious stretch of the truth. Ugh. As to Haberman, a shameful example of access journalism vs the real thing. I couldn’t bear reading her unserious stories about that former guy. No news there, ever. Just a lot of sucking up for non scoops. Haberman hasn’t helped herself as a journalist, which disappoints me. I’m a cheerleader for women in the workplace, but I believe she’s discredited herself and not provided any of us with a valuable service. Now she’s off the front page reporting on trivia from Mar a Lago. Was it worth it?
Same here — and this isn’t the first time the Post has had hyped headlines. They even had one about the infrastructure bill that said Biden was returning to Pennsylvania because his political future was on the line. The Times didn’t do anything close to that. There was also one about Biden “taming” the left — for now instead of a headline about Biden uniting Democrats. The implication is that “the left” are a bunch of out of control kids or wild animals. This from the same publication that is always urging people to be respectful of and sensitive to Trump’s extremist, hateful voters.
The WaPo is also obsessing about debt with multiple articles saying “Larry Summers” and some economists say inflation is a threat. The Post is choosing to deliberately ignore the fact that Janet Yellen, Jerome Powell and over a hundred economists publicly support Biden’s spending plans. This is even worse than bothsiderism, it’s one siderism and that side is the Republican’s one.
Larry Summers, mad because no one wants him. He rates right up there with Larry Kudlow now. hahaha
Well said. They’re forfeiting their credibility as they turn themselves into pretzels to report on both sides vs the truth, creating conflict where there really isn’t any; knowledgeable reader knows the difference. Have they forgotten who their readers are? Sad.
Theodora, would you mind posting a link to the Post article you mention?
"There was also one about Biden “taming” the left — for now instead of a headline about Biden uniting Democrats."
Thank you.
I saw that and I thought, is this REALLY the WaPo? What's the new game?
We naively assume that journalists get into the business to be the best at informing the public of the truth. Great journalists do so by digging deep, acquiring reputable sources, then fashioning the real story for the public to consume. Certainly Jane Mayer comes to mind with her brilliant books and articles. Maggie Haberman is a hack. Like all professions, there are pros and there are cons. In the case of Haberman, her goal was only to promote herself, her career. During Trump and since, It has not been to inform us all of what was really going on during the past administration. It was to bend the sick truth to keep her in the good graces of her paper so she could continue spewing out more trash to live another day. Sadly many of the "journalists" at the Times and the WPO feel that their career is most important. I believe that was the root of calling a lie a mistruth.
A commenter on one of the blogs I read has raised an excellent point about the fact "reporters" withhold real "news" because they're saving it for their books so we are not getting real time information we need to make decisions about issues or elected officials. I hesitate to summon the dreaded slippery slope/First Amendment concerns but if the denizens of the press aren't making informing the citizens a priority why should they be afforded Constitutional protection? To be clear that's my question, not the commenter's. I know we really don't want to "go there" for many reasons and I think in reality the only response is market driven. We just stop reading or watching the offending parties and the publications/programs who employ them..
Bob Woodward
Agreed. Money is the only thing they understand. Don't think for a second Coca Cola and Delta are upset about voting rights. They only care about folks paying for their products to drink and flying to their destination respectively. Unfortunately it's only the bottom line that matters to these quarter driven number crunchers.
The bottom line is the bottom line. Before I lose all faith, I must celebrate the folks like Eric, Jennifer Rubin, PAUL Waldman, Greg Sargent, et al who see the forest for the trees and write about the truths they see within. Michael Gerson too.
Yes. I tell myself I should focus on the good reporters/analysts. But I'm Irish and tend to be "Glass is half empty/Who Lit That Darn Candle" kind of gal.
Funny. I’m Irish with Greek and Judaism thrown in so mixed up emotions. Idealism vs realism is my struggle.
Add a book deal into the mix. So seductive.
Really awful. Celebrating celebrity has become the value of the day and has infiltrated way too much of our culture. As to reporters hanging on to nuggets for their books, shameless.
Eric does it again! It’s about time someone called out that overrated Trump enabling hack Haberman.
Just a reminder that Nancy Haberman, Maggie’s mother, works for the PR firm, Rubenstein, which was founded by Howard Rubenstein – a PR legend, who was once called “the dean of damage control” by Rudy Giuliani.
Google Howard Rubenstein. You'll be amazed to see what you find.
Here's a starter http://www.citjourno.org/maggie3
That firm also did PR for Trump.
And yet did Axis Maggie or NYT ever disclose that?
Like the trope that Black journalists aren't "objective" enough to cover Black Lives Matter protests.
Holy moly. The plot thickens....
Holy Sh*t...the state is deep, isn’t it?
It's really remarkable to look at the headlines from a year ago, and how they all took the remarks of a clearly, deeply stupid man who had no interest in anything but how he looked and gently repositioned them as unconventional ideas by an unconventional thinker.
it is. it was maddening in real time, and it's maddening today.
I always assumed anything bylined by Haberman was the story (or the version) that Trump/Jared/Ivanka wanted us to hear as it was mostly inside-the-palace gossip. It was all sugar and no substance: who is in the dog house, who is on the up-swing according to the Trumps themselves. It was all BS.
oh yes! i didn't have time to go into the obvi Haberman/Ivanka connection.
Totally off topic but why is Manchin being lionized by the press?
He's this year's Joe LIEberman tossing endless monkey wrenches into Democratic proposals.
Especially note the Washington Post's anti-Biden slant in their articles.
Take PA and WI and that's the end of Manchin's elongated 15 minutes of fame.
Well said. Yes, those slants are becoming obvious. Thx, Joe B
The Media love "Democrats and Liberals" who lambast or challenge Democrats. They hate anyone who supports Democrats.
Rosenstein, Burkes & all of those who defended & protected him. I know I sound like a broken record, bu Dr. Bandy Lee & her cohorts warned us that Trump needed to be contained from early on. And if he wasn’t the pathology that is his vile contagion would multiple among the masses. He wasn’t then and isn’t today and the poison is spreading. He continues to be an increasing danger as he and his enablers (Miller, Hannity, Pompeo, McEnany) walk freely in the world of disinformation & lies and land 7 figure platforms! He’s spawned MTG, Boebert, Hawley, anti -vaccine diehards, the hubris of state legislatures to write and pass voter suppression laws, a vice on previously, (at least semi-reasonable), representatives and the arrogant strategy of Gaetz who will turn the “I’m the victim here” playbook on the feds (remember Mueller, Kavanaugh & 2 impeachment’s?) while viewed as “being cancelled” by his millions of supporters. Haberman became drunk on his abusive relationship with the NYT’s and represents what some view as the most prestigious tools of the 4th estate.
I don’t know if this exactly applies here, but didn’t someone write once: “Everything Trump Touches Dies?” We thought so, didn’t we?
I totally agree. It's so easy for the media and the public to "cancel" an accomplished woman... Hillary, AOC, and get ready, they're gunnin' for Kamala Harris. I'm reading and hearing a lot about the RQP's salivating to go after her. Look at Katie Hill....!
Thank you for this coverage of someone who gets so many accolades yet seems to have all of credibility of Fox News. I still blame Haberman for her coverage of Sec. Clinton during the election and wonder if that might have made some difference with the razor thin Electoral College win. Her demeanor when interviewed on TV always sets my teeth on edge and most (all?) of the interviewers seem so deferential to her. So, thank you.
PS I decided after 50 years of reading and subscribing to the NYT to cancel and I told them why. My money, my choice.
Still waiting for one example of a story by Haberman which revealed anything which might help her readers understand what the administration was doing and how it affected them; i.e., a story which was <i>not</i> some variation on Who's Up, Who's Down, Who's Miffed at Whom, Who's (Anonymously) "Concerned."
And I'm loving it....too too bad Ms. Maggie. Am beginning to really detest Ashley Parker of the WaPo as well. Everything she has a hand in has a negative tone about Biden.
She’s both siding it re: Biden as Eric might say. AHHHHH. Seems to me negativity is a journalistic requirement these days. Ashley is also turn me off these days. Too bad.
Thanks Eric.
Haberman landed a gig with the Murdoch tabloid and favorite Trump daily New York Post right out of college. I am not sure why she took that job, seems an unusual way to start a career in journalism. Shall we grant "first job" benefit of the doubt? Maybe--but she stayed for 5-6 years. We should all think about the first 5-6 years of our professional life, how meaningful they were, and how they shaped us. She jumped to the New York Daily News, but returned to the classy New York Post. (see headline 2/8/19 "Bezos Exposes Pecker") Again, why?
When the NYT plucked her in 2016 it was in my opinion to cover the tabloid candidate and gain access. The awards that followed will always have an asterisk as trump WH coverage. This period will not age well, and the damage of normalizing these years is still unfolding.
Haberman covered Trump for years for the Post. When she was asked by David Remnick about the fact that she was aware of all the corruption that surrounded Trump she replied :
“I think that people don’t know the extent of it. One of the things that I was really shocked by, covering him in 2015, was the disparity between the five-borough view—or four-borough; take out Staten Island, where he did very well—but the view of him, certainly in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, was that he was not a real businessman. And he, at that point, had been bankrupted several times, and he had gone on to licensing businesses and becoming a reality-TV star.”
http://www.citjourno.org/maggie4
People didn’t know “the extent of it” because reporters like Haberman were too busy obsessing the email pseudo-scandal to inform them about Trump’s world of sleaze and corruption and his terrible record as a businessman. Her father Clyde Haberman had also covered Trump for the Times back in the day but why bother to let the rest of us in on that? Maybe because her mom worked for the firm that did PR work for Trump?
And Sarah Lawrence such a great school
T-wow I didn’t know that. Awful
Axis also had a stint at Pols**tico, from which NYT hired her. What a stellar CV.
Yes it does.
Really well articulated, Eric. I've never figured out the exaltation of Haberman. She didn't start out this blatantly obsequious, but has certainly cemented a reputation as 45's stenographer. I can't imagine much interest in her book next year.
She's the Judith Miller of the Trump years.
The more you emphasize this point in your posts, the more I see what you see. Is this because rich white men make all the rules? So disheartening, but better to see than not. Thx.
I have a Kamala Harris quote t-shirt I was wearing in a Twitter post the other day and had no idea I was a proud member of the K-Hive.
And Maggie Haberman is irrelevant.
My God, Eric, everything about this article just makes me smile. What a great way to start the weekend. Thank you.