All the News That’s Fit to Print

The media are having a lovely time smearing White House adviser Stephen Miller as a “white nationalist” or worse. The campaign began with a November 12 “Hatewatch” column by the Southern Poverty Law Center that was based on no fewer than 900 email messages between Mr. Miller and a former Breitbart editor, Katie McHugh. Miss McHugh turned over correspondence Mr. Miller no doubt assumed was private.

The direct quotations from Mr. Miller are very tame. I kept thinking: “Out of 900 messages, this is the most ‘racist’ stuff they could find?” No doubt that is why Mr. Miller’s own words account for only about 10 percent of the article. The SPLC spent the other 90 percent telling us why we are supposed to think that what he wrote was racist and awful.

The most serious accusations against Mr. Miller seem to be that he liked Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel, Camp of the Saints, and that he read articles at American Renaissance and VDARE.com. This has been enough to send the media from New York Times to  Washington Post to NBC to Daily Beast into a frenzy, with 80 members of Congress now calling on Mr. Miller to resign.

Two days ago, Katie Rogers of the New York Times called to ask about my “relationship” with Mr. Miller. I’m sure I disappointed her by telling her I had none; I have never met him nor spoken to him. This didn’t stop her from wanting to know: Do I think he is an ally in the White House? Is he a white nationalist? I told her I have no idea; I can’t read his mind. She asked if I am happy he read the website. I told her I want everyone to read it, including Hillary Clinton.

I asked her why it is scandalous for Mr. Miller to read VDARE or American Renaissance. Mr. Miller passed along to Miss McHugh an article we published on Justice Department statistics on interracial crime. Why shouldn’t people with inquiring minds go to our site to find information that the Times would never publish? I told her what she was doing was obvious: trying to smear Mr. Miller by associating him with me, and thereby smear the president. I was not my usual polite self.

Miss Rogers, who also contacted Mr. Brimelow, has now published the fruits of her research, which begin with these words:

Peter Brimelow, the founder of the anti-immigration website VDARE, believes that diversity has weakened the United States, and that the increase in Spanish speakers is a “ferocious attack on the living standards of the American working class.”

Jared Taylor, the editor of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance, is a self-described “white advocate” who has written that “newcomers are not the needy; they are the greedy.”

If you follow the link to Mr. Brimelow’s remarks, you will understand the context of his words — if, in fact, those were his words. They are offered by a hostile source as something he said at a conference seven years ago.

The Times has no link to my words, and when I found them I could see why. Miss Rogers suggests I am writing about immigrants to the United States, but I was writing about Syrians going to Europe:

Many have decided they are just tired of refugee camps – and the ones in Lebanon have cut back somewhat on handouts. Those coming straight from Syria just want a chance at Europe, too. As one 35-year-old woman who brought two young children with her from Aleppo explained at the Hungarian border, “I decided to leave Syria because I want my kids to have a comfortable life, to study.”

In any case, it’s hardly the poor who are making the trip. Smugglers charge as much as $2,000 per adult to ferry people just a couple of miles from Turkey to a Greek island. It takes money to travel on to Germany or Sweden – though some European countries are laying on free travel, food, and shelter. These newcomers are not the needy; they are the greedy.

What if a reader wanted to know what I actually wrote, and searched the phrase the Times quoted: “newcomers are not the needy; they are the greedy”? Google will not return our page. The Times shows up in the number-one slot, along with eight other pages, but AmRen is absent. Duck Duck Go, however, returns AmRen as the first result.

You would think media giants would be embarrassed to be so terrified of us. The Times dares not link to us; YouTube bans and restricts us; Twitter and Facebook silenced us years ago; Amazon bans our books; Google pretends we don’t exist.

When media distort our words, we have no way to correct the record except on a website that only our readers know exists. Times readers who just want to check the quote have almost no way of doing so.

Finally, why is this not a story about journalist ethics? Journalists are supposed to guard the confidentiality of their sources, and many have gone to court to fight subpoenas of sources. In this case, a former Brietbart editor leaked 900 private email messages from Stephen Miller to an organization hostile to him. So far as I can tell, not one media account — not one — has called this a breach of ethics. Why? Because the media hate Mr. Miller, and no doubt believe journalist ethics don’t apply to “racists.”

O tempora, o mores!

Update: I’ve now learned that this story was on the Times‘ front page:

Second update: I sent this letter to the Times on November 19, but the Times has yet to respond.

Dear New York Times,

On November 18, you published this article about Stephen Miller, which quotes me and Peter Brimelow. It begins with the following words, which I assume were written by Miss Rogers, who contacted both of us before publication:

Peter Brimelow, the founder of the anti-immigration website VDARE, believes that diversity has weakened the United States, and that the increase in Spanish speakers is a “ferocious attack on the living standards of the American working class.”

Jared Taylor, the editor of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance, is a self-described “white advocate” who has written that “newcomers are not the needy; they are the greedy.

Miss Rogers at least provides a link to the Brimelow quote — to a hostile account of a speech he gave seven years ago. Miss Rogers cannot know if this is an accurate transcription, but even that account makes it clear that Mr. Brimelow was talking about Spanish-speaking immigrants arriving in such numbers that English-speaking Americans can’t even get a job at McDonald’s. Without this context, Mr. Brimelow’s remarks make no sense.

Miss Rogers treats me even more deceptively. First, by quoting me immediately after comments about the United States, she implies I am talking about newcomers coming here — which is wrong. Second, she provides no link. You will understand why, if you read what I actually wrote, in an article about Syrian migrants to Europe:

Many have decided they are just tired of refugee camps – and the ones in Lebanon have cut back somewhat on handouts. Those coming straight from Syria just want a chance at Europe, too. As one 35-year-old woman who brought two young children with her from Aleppo explained at the Hungarian border, “I decided to leave Syria because I want my kids to have a comfortable life, to study.”

In any case, it’s hardly the poor who are making the trip. Smugglers charge as much as $2,000 per adult to ferry people just a couple of miles from Turkey to a Greek island. It takes money to travel on to Germany or Sweden – though some European countries are laying on free travel, food, and shelter. These newcomers are not the needy; they are the greedy.

Miss Rogers quotes me as saying “newcomers are not the needy; they are the greedy.” She left out the word “these” because she didn’t want to explain why, in my view, these particular newcomers are not needy. Instead, she attributes to me a harsh position on all newcomers.

If I had visited a prison for violent women and had written that I thought “these women deserve to be locked up,” would it be accurate journalism to leave out the word “these,” and quote me as saying that I think “women deserve to be locked up”?

Please correct the article so that the Brimelow and Taylor quotes are honest, not deceptive. Please also correct the YouTube video that includes the quotes.