MSNBC host Rachel Maddow condemned the New York Times for its coverage of investigations related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the years.
Particularly during the 2016 campaign, when Clinton was a Democratic candidate for president, Maddow said on her show Friday that the Gray Lady has really stuck it to Clinton in a way that would fill her political rivals with glee.
“I’ll tell you, as a matter of my opinion that the New York Times is one of the great wonders of the world, and we are a better country and a better world for having the New York Times in it, but the New York Times has something wrong with it when it comes to reporting on Hillary Clinton,” Maddow said with a laugh.
“They’ve got some sort of unresolved internal issues when it comes to their reporting on Hillary Clinton. I don’t know if they will ever resolve it,” Maddow continued. “But the Times, more than any other mainstream print publication, has hammered away at the Hillary Clinton email thing as if it really was as big a scandal as people like Mike Flynn and Donald Trump were saying it was.”
During the segment, Maddow put on display several Times reports over the years with alarming headlines related to investigations into Clinton and her emails. The host said such articles appeared on the front page of the print edition “countless” times. But, when a State Department investigation found “no persuasive evidence of systematic, deliberate mishandling of classified information” last fall, Maddow said the story ended up on Section A, Page 16 of the Saturday print edition with a headline that called it a “quiet ending” to the inquiry.
“Yes, it was a quiet ending. Yes, New York Times, you gave it quite a quiet ending, especially compared to how big an opening you gave it on the front page for months,” Maddow said.
The segment Friday came after the Washington Post reported last week that a federal investigation into the allegations of corruption involving Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and Uranium One was nearing completion.
Maddow noted the Times‘s controversial dealings with author Peter Schweizer, whose book Clinton Cash, gave rise to the Uranium One controversy. She also said the Times has yet to do its own report on the winding down of U.S. Attorney John Huber’s inquiry, despite giving the Uranium One deal controversy a great deal of coverage.
“Thus far, at least, the New York Times has not reported on the conclusion of that review at all. It’s been reported in the Washington Post and in CNN, thus far, but we haven’t seen the Times touch it. I bet they will,” Maddow said. “I look forward to seeing their story and how they contend with the fact that they, more than anybody else in the mainstream media, promoted that story. I also look forward to seeing whether the “lock her up” chant about Hillary Clinton will nevertheless live forever even after Mike Flynn’s sentencing.”
A representative for the New York Times did not immediately return a request for comment on Maddow’s segment. The Times did publish a Reuters write-up on the Post report.
