New York Times Cover Up to Protect Obama No April Fool's Joke!
Covering up the truth about ACORN and the Obama campaign was a "horribly damaging" journalistic abuse.
On October 21, 2008, ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief finally agreed to let me publicly identify her because she had received this voice mail from New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom (for whom Ms. MonCrief had become an unidentified source on ACORN in July 2008):
"Hi, Anita. It's Stephanie. I have just been asked by my bosses to stand down...they want me to hold off on coming to Washington [to meet with Anita]. Sorry, I take my orders from higher up...ah...sometimes.
"Anyway, umm...I'm sorry about this and we'll still be in touch. Take care. And let me know if there is anything I can do to help you. Take care. Bye-bye."
In my October 22, 2008 article titled "ACORN Whistleblower: Obama's Third Strike?," I wrote:
"It had to be very hard for a 'progressive' who supported Obama to come forward.
"But before Anita emailed Michelle Malkin and me, she had been working with New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom, but what ended up published as Ms. Strom’s ACORN articles were so 'watered down' that Anita decided to turn elsewhere.
"Wisely so.
"Yesterday, Anita advised me, Ms. Strom apologetically canceled a meeting for today and explained that New York Times policy was not to publish what might be a game changing article this close to the election.
"I think that should be in a footnote to The Times' 'All the news that’s fit to print' motto."
This morning (April 1), Bill O'Reilly having reported on ACORN misconduct and New York Times cover up the night before, I emailed Ms. Strom as follows:
"Dear Ms. Strom:
"Heather Heidelbaugh, Esq. recently testified before a House committee:
'The New York Times articles stopped when Ms. Moncrief, who is a Democrat and a supporter of the President, revealed that the Obama Presidential Campaign had sent its maxed out donor list to Karen Gillette of the Washington, DC ACORN office and asked Gillette and Ms. Moncrief to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN. Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama Campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at the New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, "it was a game changer".'
"Please confirm or deny the accuracy of what Ms. Heidelbaugh said you reported to Ms. MonCrief.
"Thank you for your attention."
This afternoon, I received this reply from Catherine Mathis, a New York Times member of senior management whose biography lists "crisis communications" among her responsibilities:
"Mike,
"In response to your e-mail to Stephanie Strom, political considerations played no role in our decisions about how to cover this story.
"Sincerely,
"Catherine Mathis SVP, Corporate Communications The New York Times Company"
This evening Bill O'Reilly played the telling Strom voicemail on his program and reported that The New York Times had not made Ms. Strom available but had issued the same 'no political considerations" statement I had received.
That statement was an April Fool's Day joke!
On May 8, 2005, Ms. Strom inspiringly wrote to an inquiring student: "I wish, too, that we could do something to restore or at least improve the credibility and integrity of the [journalism] profession. Nothing troubles me more than the seemingly endless litany of stories about abuses by journalists of the trust they rely on to do their jobs effectively. It’s horribly damaging."
Covering up the truth about ACORN and the Obama campaign was a "horribly damaging" journalistic abuse.
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.