The New York Times Has a Source Pollution Problem

A certain kind of source has burned the paper more than once this year.

The New York Times has a serious source pollution problem. As is now obvious, somebody fed the paper bad information on San Bernardino murderess Tashfeen Malik's social media habits. It was said that she was posting jihadist screeds on Facebook. The Times hyped the scoop by stating pretty clearly that the government—and the administration running it—slipped up. It was the inspiration for endless bloviating about how "political correctness is killing people" at Tuesday night's Republican debate. Then comes FBI director James Comey to say that, no, there were no public Facebook posts that the government missed because there weren't any at all.

More than a few people have noted that two of the three reporters who were fed this story also had their bylines on the notorious (and thoroughly debunked) piece about how the FBI had launched a "criminal inquiry" into Hillary Rodham Clinton's alleged mishandling of classified materials in her e-mails. Pretty clearly, somebody's peddling bad information and its apparent purpose is to submarine both the current Democratic administration and the prospective one. I'm more concerned about that than I am about the Times' having fallen for it. If the same source is responsible for both of these debacles, then that source should be outed by the reporters who currently are twisting in the wind.

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