Oops, NY Times inadvertently helped prez

SIX months ago, I canceled my subscription to the New York Times because I felt the paper had become ethically challenged in its coverage of the presidential election. And, it turns out, I was right. Soon after the election — one in which the Times’ favorite candidate,

Hillary Clinton, lost — the paper admitted its mistakes. After the shocking defeat of the Democrats’ candidate, Times Publisher Arthur

(Pinch) Sulzberger begged for his readers’ forgiveness, although he did seem to choke a little on the apology.

“We aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor …,” Sulzberger said in a letter to the paper’s readers.

So the Times was “rededicating” itself to honesty. And that means it was admitting that it had strayed from being honest during the campaign.

The Times wasn’t just receiving criticism from me and a lot of others who don’t matter. Donald Trump, now president but then just a sure-to-lose candidate in the Times’ eyes, was constantly on the paper’s back.

Even Liz Spayd, who is the Times’ internal critic as that paper’s public editor, attacked the way the Times slanted its coverage to make Clinton look unstoppable and Trump to look “frazzled.” She said “the picture was of a juggernaut of blue state [Democrat] invincibility that mostly dismissed the likelihood of a Trump White House.”

The Times, like almost everyone else, predicted Clinton would win. And it was wrong.

So now, six months and a lot of criticism later, has the Times really “rededicated” itself to honesty and fairness? Has it learned its lesson? No, it hasn’t. As I’ve written before, back on Jan. 20 the Times carried a front-page story with the headline: “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.”

There were four bylines on the story, which means that four different reporters — not to mention multiple editors — must have known the source of the information about Trump’s aides being spied upon.

The story read, in part: “American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of Presidentelect Donald J. Trump.”

So, if that reporting was correct, the Times knew that some people associated with Trump were being wiretapped or — possibly — had been mentioned in wiretaps of foreign governments.

That story didn’t go as far as to claim what Trump did: that he was wiretapped in Trump Tower — by Obama. But the Times story does make Trump’s accusation look a little less crazy.

And the Times’ story never addressed who ordered the wiretapping.

There has been some discussion about what the Times article really meant. But the paper — as far as I can tell — never mentioned its Jan. 20 story in any of its main coverage of Trump’s accusations.

If the paper was really trying to be honest, it would have admitted that its own independent sources — and four reporters — had already verified something like what Trump had alleged. James Comey, the head of the FBI, recently denied Trump’s allegations in testimony before Congress, as did the head of the National Security Agency. Both are now expected to meet with Congress behind closed doors to see if they’d like to change their testimony.

My source, for what it’s worth, thinks the NSA probably had surveillance on all of Trump’s campaign correspondences and that’s where the Times’ story came from. In time, all of this will likely dribble out.

And that already started when California House Republican Devin

Nunes, head of the House Intelligence Committee, last week lapdogged his way over to the White House to tell his master that he had seen documents that alleged that there was surveillance.

Nunes’ action was widely criticized, as it should have been. But it also gave the Times another chance to admit that it, too, had evidence of Trump surveillance. But, as far as I can tell, it again failed to reference its Jan. 20 front-page story.

I say “as far as I can tell” because the Times didn’t return my call last week when I attempted to ask why it didn’t “rededicate” itself to honesty on a story that includes facts that would back up some of Trump’s claim. There are two other things. When mentioning the Trump campaign’s contact with people with Russian-sounding names, the Times should have also mentioned all the contacts that Democrats have had with the Kremlin. Others have reported that the Clinton campaign had lots of Russian contacts.

That would have covered the paper on Sulzberger’s pledge not to play favorites.

The second thing is another warning from me that the Democrats should be careful. I mentioned before the election that the Democrats were walking into an ambush by nominating Hillary. I think the same thing is happening with this Russian investigation — Trump’s claims about his office being wiretapped probably won’t be totally proven but, as Nunes indicated, some lesser level of espionage is likely to have happened. So, again, the Democrats are walking into a trap. This is the same trap that already has the Times and most of the other so-called mainstream media ensnared.