Tag: Robert Zimmerman

There’s nothing new about the media’s failure to expose George Santos

Peter Blute back in the day. Photo via Wikipedia.

I doubt anyone is reading today, but here I am. I want to share an anecdote that I think sheds some further light on the media’s failure to expose serial liar George Santos before he was elected to Congress. My point is not to make excuses for the press — quite the opposite.

Way back in 1996, a somewhat obscure aide to Democratic congressman Joe Moakley named Jim McGovern stunned political observers by beating Republican congressman Peter Blute in the Central Massachusetts district that Blute had represented for two terms. Blute was scandal-free (at that time, anyway) and was not thought to be in any trouble. Polling in congressional districts, then as now, tends to range from poor to non-existent. Because of those factors, the race got virtually no coverage.

After McGovern won, I learned that political reporters were upset — not with themselves, but with Blute’s political consultant, Charley Manning, for not warning them that Blute might be in trouble. Yes, you read that correctly. Members of the press — some of them, anyway — thought it was Manning’s job to let them know that Blute wasn’t a shoo-in and that maybe they ought to pay some attention before Election Day.

Now, this isn’t entirely outrageous. Even 26 years ago, the media had limited resources, and there was a huge battle that year between Democratic Sen. John Kerry, who faced a strong challenge for re-election from Republican Gov. Bill Weld. It was a presidential year. And reporters (including me) were also busy covering the rematch between North Shore congressman Peter Torkildsen and attorney John Tierney; Torkildsen, a Republican, had nearly lost to Democrat Tierney two years earlier. (Kerry and Tierney both won in 1996, leaving Massachusetts with an all-Democratic congressional delegation, which has been unbroken to this day except for the brief Scott Brown interregnum.) Still, the idea of blaming Blute’s political consultant for their own inattention seemed then and now as fairly ridiculous.

So it strikes me that a large part of what went wrong in that Long Island House district was that the media made assumptions — always a bad idea, but nevertheless not at all unusual. Santos, a Republican, had lost in 2020 by a dozen points (albeit to an incumbent in a good year for Democrats). He seemed like a nonentity. The Democratic nominee in 2022, Robert Zimmerman, reportedly hadn’t turned up much beyond “Santos is a MAGA Trumper blah blah blah.” The New York media were obsessed with the possibility of a Red Wave and whether Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul might be able to hang on. Inexcusably, everyone ignored pre-election reporting by the weekly North Shore Leader, which was able to publish some key details about Santos’ lies. And there matters stood until Dec. 19, when The New York Times published the first in a series of stories exposing Santos as an utter fraud.

So unless someone proves that Santos isn’t a U.S. citizen (a possibility), he’ll be sworn in on Jan. 3, casting a crucial vote to make Kevin McCarthy speaker. All because the media was depending on others to do their job for them.

Earlier:

A WashPost story sheds new light on big media’s failure to expose George Santos

Sarah Ellison of The Washington Post (free link) has a terrific story on The North Shore Leader, the Long Island weekly that broke parts of the George Santos story several weeks before the election only to be ignored by larger media outlets. I want to focus on this astonishing section:

Despite a well-heeled and well-connected readership — the Leader’s publisher says it counts among its subscribers Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters and several senior people at Newsday, a once-mighty Long Island-based tabloid that has won 19 Pulitzers — no one followed its story before Election Day.

For obvious reasons, we can set Fox News aside. But one of the big questions all along has been why Newsday didn’t follow up. Now we know, at least according to the Leader, that “several senior people at Newsday” are among its readers. Assuming they saw the Leader’s coverage, which included a hard-hitting news story as well as a withering editorial endorsing Santos’ Democratic opponent, then there is no excuse for Newsday’s failure to dive in. Not to let The New York Times off the hook, either — though it is primarily a national and international newspaper, it does purport to cover the New York metro area. Yes, it’s the Times that finally exposed Santos as the fraud that he is, but it’s a little late.

I’ve seen a number of observers try to fit this square peg into the round hole of the ongoing local news crisis. Frankly, this strikes me as having more to do with journalistic sloth and arrogance, which have always been with us.

Finally, I talked with the USA Today podcast “Five Things” about the media and political breakdown that led to Santos’ winning a congressional seat without anyone other than the Leader holding him up to any scrutiny. You can listen here.

Earlier:

A Long Island weekly had the goods on Santos several weeks before Election Day

The North Shore Leader described Santos as “bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy” in an editorial published Oct. 20.

Josh Marshall, who’s been all over the George Santos story, has an update that casts media non-coverage of this fraud in an entirely new light. It turns out that there was a local news outlet reporting on several aspects of Santos’ fabricated history before Election Day.

You may recall that Santos is the newly elected Republican congressman from western Long Island who picked off a Democratic seat on the strength of his phony résumé. As best as anyone can tell, he’s been lying about his education, his career and maybe even whether he’s Jewish and gay. The New York Times exposed those fabrications on Monday, leaving a number of outraged observers to ask where the Times was last fall.

My own take was that the Times, as a national and international paper, couldn’t be expected to vet every candidate in New York State. At a certain point, you have to hold political candidates themselves responsible, and it appears that Santos’ Democratic opponent, Robert Zimmerman, didn’t do a very good job. As Marshall observes, the dossier Zimmerman’s campaign put together focused on the usual stuff — that Santos was a MAGA-loving Trump supporter — and missed the bigger picture.

But wait. A newspaper in Santos’ district called The North Shore Leader had it all along. Marshall posted the details on Thursday. As Leader reporter Niall Fitzgerald writes:

In a story first broken by the North Shore Leader over four months ago, the national media has suddenly discovered that US Congressman-elect George Santos (R-Queens / Nassau) — dubbed “George Scam-tos” by many local political observers — is a deepfake liar who has falsified his background, assets, and contacts. He is fact a wanted petty criminal in Brazil.

Fitzgerald doesn’t link to that earlier story, but the Leader endorsed Zimmerman nearly three weeks before Election Day and raised some serious questions about Santos’ background:

In 2020 Santos, then age 32, was the NY Director of a nearly $20 million venture fund called “Harbor City Capital” — until the SEC shut it down as a “Ponzi Scheme.” Over $6 million from investors was stolen — for personal luxuries like Mercedes cars, huge credit card bills, and a waterfront home — and millions from new investors were paid out to old investors. Classic Bernie Madoff “Ponzi scheme” fraud.

Santos’ campaign raises similar concerns. On paper Santos has raised over $2 million. But the money seems to have vanished — or never been there. Huge sums are listed with the FEC for personal expenses — like Brooks Brothers, Florida beach resorts, lavish restaurants and limo services — but many hundreds of thousands more disappear into a black hole of dubious “consulting fees.”

In other words, much of the Santos story was already out there before Election Day. It’s too bad that the Leader’s endorsement didn’t influence enough voters to drag Zimmerman across the finish line.

The Leader’s endorsement raises serious questions about the timing of the Times’ reporting. I was willing to give them a pass for not doing a scrub on Santos in the absence of specific information. Large news organizations rely on oppo research to signal them whether they need to do a deeper dive, and, as I said, Zimmerman’s oppo was lame. But the Times does cover metropolitan New York, and it should be a basic part of every metro newspaper’s duties to scan the local papers. The Leader’s endorsements ran in its Oct. 20 edition, more than enough time to gear up for an exposé.

Nor could the Times dismiss the Leader’s endorsement of Zimmerman as an act of partisan hackery. The Leader endorsed four candidates for the House, and three of them were Republicans. The Zimmerman endorsement laments that it couldn’t back a Republican in that district as well.

The Leader does not report its circulation to the Alliance for Audited Media, but according to the Leader’s About page, the paper was founded more than 60 years ago and reaches “thousands of Gold Coast readers.” Sounds like a fairly reliable source to me.

And let’s not let Newsday off the hook, either. Long Island’s daily paper, once regarded as among the best in the country, still has a substantial readership, according to the most recent figures filed with the AAM — 218,953 print and digital subscriptions on Sunday and an average of 191,413 on weekdays. I could find no evidence that Newsday examined Santos’ background in any substantial way in the run-up to the election. Don’t they read the weeklies?

At the very least, interns at the Times and at Newsday should be assigned to scan the local papers every day. If they had, it seems probable that someone would have seen the Leader’s reporting and amplified it before voters headed to the polls and elected a candidate who appears to be an utter fraud. Santos is even on the take from Russian interests, as The Daily Beast Reported — several weeks after the election.

It will be fascinating to see whether Santos can survive in office. At one time we’d be counting the days. But Kevin McCarthy needs him in his pathetic campaign for House speaker. Incredibly, Santos is likely to survive until the next election.

Why the Times didn’t expose George Santos before Election Day

The New York Times today published a remarkable exposé (free link) of a Republican congressman-elect from Long Island named George Santos. It seems that almost nothing he’s ever claimed about himself is true. For all I know, he may not even exist.

The details, though, are less important than the timing. If the article, by Grace Ashford and Michael Gold, had been published before the November election, it seems likely that Santos would have lost to his Democratic rival, Robert Zimmerman. Instead, the people of his district are almost surely stuck with him for the next two years. As I posted on Mastodon: “Not to play down the work involved, but it sure would have been nice for the NYT to publish this before the election — especially since this is the second time he’s run.”

Others soon piled on, including a few members of the conspiratorial left who asserted without evidence that the Times wanted Santos to win, so they waited until after the election. That, of course, makes zero sense.

What most likely happened is something I’ve seen during my own career: the media didn’t bother to vet Santos before the election because they believed he had no chance of winning, even though he’d run before. Now, before you get too outraged, let’s keep in mind that journalistic resources are limited, and not everything and everyone is going to receive the scrutiny that they perhaps they deserve. The political press is also dependent on opposition research as well. If Zimmerman didn’t think Santos warranted investigating then it’s difficult for the media to know that, of all the people running for office, Santos deserved a closer look. Josh Marshall put it this way:

So why didn’t Santos get more scrutiny? Basically because he was running in a fairly Democratic district and people didn’t think he had much of a shot. He ran against Rep. Tom Suozzi in 2020 and lost 56% to 44%. But Suozzi gave up his seat in what turned out to be a failed run for governor. This year Santos won 54% to 46% in what was now an open seat. These are generally Democratic districts. But they’re very different from districts in most of New York City where Republicans today have virtually no chance of winning. In New York state’s red wave, Santos won and by a significant margin.

It’s not pretty and, yes, it’s easy to say that the Times and other news outlets should have paid more attention to Santos and his apparently fake résumé before Election Day. But as the great poet Donald Rumsfeld once explained, there are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. The possibility that Santos might win, and that his record wouldn’t hold up to the most cursory examination, was an unknown unknown. The press can’t expose this sort of thing if it doesn’t know where to look.

This episode also says something about the local news crisis. Was there no community journalism outlet for whom this race would have been a top priority? Apparently not.