The headline left no doubt about what The New York Times was trying to do when they went to press on September 13: Nikki Haley’s View of New York is Priceless. Her Curtains? $52,701.
This was not, as you might have guessed, the New York Times suddenly deciding to be a watchdog for federal government waste. That’s not in the paper’s nature, since by their very bias, they crave government waste. The Democratic Party can’t claim total dominion over wasting taxpayer dollars, but let’s be real: Of the two parties, they’re the only ones who actually put it in their platform. So it would be unusual for one of their biggest media cheerleaders to start pointing it out. Military waste? Sure. Wasted money for UN diplomacy? No way, Jose.
No, this was an excuse to drag Haley’s name through the mud and maybe even start up a Scott Pruitt Scandal, Part II. After all, $50K for curtains? That’s ridiculous. What the hell was Nikki thinking?
Knowing that 90% of their readers aren’t going to go past the headlines and that 95% aren’t going to read past the first couple of paragraphs, the Times carefully waited until Paragraph #6 to get to this rather important clarification:
A spokesman for Ms. Haley said plans to buy the curtains were made in 2016, during the Obama administration. Ms. Haley had no say in the purchase, he said.
But after getting heat from others in the media, The Times finally came back a few days later to issue a correction, change the headline, remove the photograph of Haley that accompanied the original piece, and alter the article to reflect the facts.
“An earlier version of this article and headline created an unfair impression about who was responsible for the purchase in question,” the correction said. “While Nikki R. Haley is the current ambassador to the United Nations, the decision on leasing the ambassador’s residence and purchasing the curtains was made during the Obama administration, according to current and former officials. The article should not have focused on Ms. Haley, nor should a picture of her have been used. The article and headline have now been edited to reflect those concerns, and the picture has been removed.”
If you navigate to the article today, the headline reads: State Department Spent $52,701 on Curtains for Nikki Haley’s Residence.
Which, frankly, is still a little misleading.
In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Haley said there was no excuse for the smear job.
“They knew the facts and they released the story anyway,” Haley said. “I hadn’t even taken the job when these curtains were picked out. We told the reporters that these were the facts.”
This, of course, is proven by the fact that the original story included that bit from her spokesperson. A bit that, if true (and it was), should have invalidated the story’s focus right off the bat. And if the NY Times weren’t so consumed with trying to destroy this administration, it would have.
We’d say they should be ashamed of themselves, but who are we kidding…
