News/Commentary

Leftist outlet buried in backlash as Hegseth email is made public: ‘This isn’t journalism. It’s unethical garbage’

December 14, 2024 | | Print Article

Backlash intensified against a leftist nonprofit once its methods were exposed after a hoax narrative against defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth was stymied.

“This isn’t ‘journalism.’ It’s unethical garbage.”

Unrelenting character assassinations against President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Defense Department had included dredging up sexual misconduct allegations, accusing him of having a drinking problem, and, most recently, a squashed claim he’d never been accepted to the United States Military Academy West Point.

Now, after Hegseth had preempted a ProPublica report throwing a spotlight on those claims, an email obtained by The Daily Caller inspired further criticism of the investigative organization and how the nominee had been given one hour to refute accusations that he was a liar.

In the email from ProPublica’s Justin Elliot, Hegseth’s attorney Timothy Parlatore was asked, “How can Mr. Hegesth be Secretary of Defense given that he had made false statements about getting in to the military’s most prestigious academy?” Is there anything else we should know?”

RedState’s Bonchie was among those slamming the approach as the email was captioned, “ProPublica did not contact Pete Hegseth to get the full story. They contacted him to claim he was a liar while demanding a response within one hour not to offer his side, but to ask why he ‘lied’ and what else he ‘lied’ about. This isn’t ‘journalism.’ It’s unethical garbage.”

As had been reported, West Point had issued an apology for providing incorrect information about Hegseth’s acceptance to the academy to ProPublica after the nominee had shared his acceptance letter online ahead of any story’s publication.

“We understand that ProPublica (the Left Wing Hack group) is planning to publish a knowingly false report that I was not accepted to West Point in 1999,” said Hegseth with the letter signed by then-West Point Superintendent U.S. Army Lieutenant General Daniel Christman.

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Reacting to the post, ProPublica editor Jesse Eisinger contended, “Hegseth has said that he got into West Point but didn’t attend. We asked West [Point] public affairs, which told us twice on the record that he hadn’t even applied there. We reached out. Hegseth’s [spokesperson] gave us his acceptance letter. We didn’t publish a story. That’s journalism.”

He’d then gone on to offer a thread on “how journalism works,” recounting the steps taken in their decision to ultimately not publish a story with false claims, which journalist Jerry Dunleavy had called out for failing to point out the approach exposed in the email.

“***Nothing*** in Jesse’s 11-tweet thread even hinted that ***this*** is how ProPublica actually approached the story–taking the falsehood from West Point, repeatedly asserting to Hegseth that he was a liar & implying he is unfit for SecDef, & giving him just one hour to respond,” wrote Dunleavy.

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The latest concerns about the organization follow a track record of questionable decisions that included relying on a majority of ethics experts with a record of donating to leftist causes while questioning the ethics of Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, as well as their past reporting on private tax information of many of the nation’s richest individuals without disclosure on how they came across the data.

Notably, ProPublica, which had opted against publishing a story about receiving false information from West Point, had defended their methods to Fox News Digital in a statement from a spokesperson contending, “Reporters do their job by asking tough questions to people in power, which is exactly what happened here. Responsible news organizations only publish what they can verify, which is why we didn’t publish a story once Mr. Hegseth provided documentation that corrected the statements from West Point.”

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Kevin Haggerty
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