Reporter Behind New York Times Trump Attack Has a History of Failed Hatchet Jobs

Rowanne Brewer Lane MSNBC
Dustin Stockton

Michael Barbaro’s hit piece on Donald Trump in the New York Times Saturday started unraveling almost as soon as it was published. Even CNN anchors were astonished that Barbaro had no answer to charges of distortion from his story’s lead source. But for Barbaro this is just another embarrassing example of a failed attempt to take down a Republican.

Barbaro’s article — “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private” — includes several widely reported incidents that have been shown to be questionable, but the story really started to unravel when the woman featured most prominently in the article, Rowanne Brewer Lane, started publicly calling out the authors for misleading readers by twisting her words to paint Trump in a negative light.

After a brief romance with Trump decades ago, Rowanne Brewer Lane spent hours on the phone and did a photo shoot for the New York Times because she wanted to let people know “how well Trump treats women.” Instead, hours of interviews were whittled down to suggest that Donald Trump had somehow “debased” Brewer Lane, a claim she doesn’t support.

For someone who works for the New York Times and was educated at Yale, Michael Barbaro’s “reporting” routinely lacks even enough pretense of objectivity to be defended by people who share his politics, which is pretty amazing when you consider what New York Times and other mainstream media reporters are able to get away with.

Last June, Barbaro took aim at Florida Senator Marco Rubio, claiming that he had “splurged” on a “luxury speedboat” as part of a larger story about Rubio’s mismanagement of his personal finances. Even Politico ran an article debunking that whopper titled, “Rubio’s ‘Luxury Speedboat’ Is A Fishing Boat.” The Daily Show With Jon Stewart mocked the story at the time:

For Barbaro it’s not the first time he’s been called out by those on the left for a weak hatchet job on a Republican Presidential candidate. In 2012, Ari Melber—a columnist for The Nation, a hard leftwing magazine—blasted an article Barbaro had written about Mitt Romney during a segment on MSNBC. Speaking of Barbaro’s hit piece about Romney back then, Melber said: “I want to call bull on both the substance of the story and the way the New York Times dealt with it.”

A quick review of Barbaro’s Twitter account shows he’s hardly impartial when it comes to Donald Trump:

 

Dustin Stockton is a political reporter for Breitbart News, a community liaison for Gun Owners of America, and a political strategist. Follow him on Twitter @DustinStockton or Facebook

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