Forbes: Journalists’ War on Sebastian Gorka Is Only Hurting Them

Writing at Forbes, Richard Miniter systematically debunks the media’s baseless attacks on President Trump’s senior advisor Dr. Sebastian Gorka, calling their efforts “a suicide dive into an empty pool.”

From Forbes:

Media attacks on Gorka are wide-ranging and, seemingly, coordinated. Some are straight-up character assassinations, such as trying to tie Gorka to anti-Semites by playing six-degrees-of-separation with Hungarian populists. Others contend that Gorka has an “extreme” view on Islam and seeks a war with its more than one billion followers—ignoring that he writes in his 2016 book Defeating Jihad: “We are not at war with Islam.” Then, there is the major media’s respectful coverage of a weird Twitter storm touched off by a self-described “terrorism expert,” who has virtually no credentials, who nevertheless contends that Gorka is “unqualified.” Finally, there are the attacks on Gorka’s 2007 dissertation for having too few footnotes, among other trifles.

All of these accusations are treated as news and amplified by theWashington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other major outlets. The aim? Bring down another Trump national security advisor, after National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and would-be National Security Council spokeswoman Monica Crowley. They want Gorka for their next scalp.

Let’s explore each accusation because, collectively, they reveal how the media is on a suicide dive into an empty pool. If there were serious and genuine concerns about Gorka, that would be one thing. But when Gorka’s antagonists know (and often admit) how baseless their allegations are, and yet traffic in them anyway, it tells us something new and disturbing about American journalism.

First, there is the strange allegation of anti-Semitism. Charges of anti-Semitism are like hand grenades thrown into backyard barbecues; even if they don’t go off, their arrival shocks everyone and irreversibly recasts the moment. Gorka’s foes know what they are doing when they make such shocking allegations, and they know how weak their claims are.

Read the rest here.