David Brock, the founder of liberal watchdog Media Matters who crusaded against the Clintons decades ago before becoming one of their fiercest supporters, takes on the New York Times in a new book depicting a conservative media witch hunt against the former Secretary of State.
In his upcoming book, “Killing the Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary Clinton and Hijack Your Government,” Brock accuses the Times’ recently-ousted Washington bureau chief Carolyn Ryan of being a driving force behind turning the paper into a “megaphone for conservative propaganda” by unfairly covering Clinton.
The paper of record will “have a special place in hell,” he wrote in the book, which Politico obtained. Brock suggested interviews with Times staffers adds credibility to his case.
The author focused on Ryan, who is now overseeing 2016 coverage, ripping her for not publishing Clinton’s full statement in response to a piece about her personal email server from her house.
“Ryan held forth to colleagues that the response from [spokesman Nick Merrill] had been edited down to a few stray phrases because she — Carolyn Ryan — believed it was a lie — and that the Clintons just lie,” Brock wrote, citing unnamed sources at the Times.
The Times fired back at the accusations, telling Politico: “David Brock is an opportunist and a partisan who specializes in personal attacks.”
“We’ve seen him lash out at some of our aggressive coverage of important political figures and it’s unsurprising that he has now turned personal. He’s wrong on all counts,” a spokesperson concluded.
One of the reporters Ryan edited, Amy Chozick, also defended her. “Carolyn Ryan has edited nearly every story I’ve written about the Clintons since I moved to the beat in 2013. She has always been a fair-minded, inspiring and brilliant editor who has never shown even a hint of bias (for or against) any candidate we cover. I suppose being viscously attacked by both sides goes with the territory, but it is unfortunate that one of the best editors in the business is the target this time.”
The relationship between the New York Times and the Clintons has grown increasingly tense over the last few months. In April, former President Bill Clinton criticized a Times story calling him frail and older than his 68 years as “creative writing.”
In July, the Times had to issue a full story editor’s note to correct the record on a botched story that reported an FBI criminal investigation had been opened into Clinton’s email use as Secretary of State. The paper changed full sections of the story without correction or notation, drawing strong pushback among other journalists.
Clinton’s campaign attacked the story as an “abandonment of standard journalistic practices.”