A New York Times False Flag Operation

The newspaper of record fails to rely on its own contemporaneous reporting for its Alito flag "scoops."

Generated with AI ∙ May 27, 2024 at 8:37 PM

On May 16th, the New York Times published a story by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jodi Kantor headlined, “At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display,” declaring that “During Mr. Trump’s quest to win, and then subvert, the 2020 election, the [inverted American flag] gesture took off as never before, becoming ‘really established as a symbol of the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign[.]’” 

The following day, the Times published a Michael Levenson story, “How Election Deniers Claimed the Upside-Down Flag,” seeking to reinforce the narrative. Kantor (with two co-authors) was back five days later with the news that “Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home.” The story claimed that “On Jan. 6, the “Appeal to Heaven” [Pine Tree] flag was prominent[.]” 

By the time the third story hit the word had gone out to Times allies and left-of-center media that the flags were A Big Deal. One needn’t be a conspiracy theorist or think the effort was planned and plotted in every last detail to see that a legitimacy-conferring institution like the Times can have powerful signaling and coordinating effects. Look no further than Wikipedia, where as the Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr pointed out, the Appeal to Heaven flag had gone from noncontroversial to a symbol of Christian nationalism and right-wing extremism in a matter of hours.

But if Kantor and company had used their own newspaper’s contemporaneous reporting to fact-check the new narrative, they’d have come up empty.

To wit, a week after the Jan.6 Capitol riot, the Times published a “Visual Investigation” titled “Decoding the Far-Right Symbols at the Capitol Riot.” Neither the inverted American flag nor the Appeal to Heaven/Pine Tree flag were mentioned in the article–the latter despite a brief appearance in a video clip accompanying the article. 

The follow day, as part of the Times’s Learning Network, a suggested lesson for high school students was posted that promised “[i]n this lesson, students will learn about the people who participated in the violence at the Capitol as well as the flags, clothing and hand gestures they displayed and what they represent.” Neither the inverted US flag, a supposed “‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol”, nor the “provocative” Appeal to Heaven flag were mentioned in the lesson. They were apparently not worth including in the “dizzying array of symbols, slogans and images” the linked article discussed.

The more detailed Visual Investigation was preceded by an article that ran on Jan. 6 itself entitled “Stunning Images as a Mob Storms the U.S. Capitol”. It included no images of either of the purported far-right symbols either. Instead, the article included this paragraph:

Some waved banners announcing their loyalties as they entered the Capitol, including giant yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, popular among Libertarians and supporters of limited government. Others paraded through the halls waving American flags covered with pro-Trump messages (technically, a violation of how the government says the American flag should be treated). Several people brandished the battle flag of the Confederacy.

Note that the descriptions of these value-laden and in some cases loaded symbols are themselves neutral, perhaps even slightly charitable to the Jan. 6 rioters. Defaced flags are just “technical” violations of government guidelines and the “Stars and Bars” do not come in for special condemnation. And, again, the two flags later associated with Alito garner no mention at all.

In fact, from election day 2020 to the day the Times published the Alito “provocative” Appeal to Heaven flag story, there is not a single mention of the flag in the Times, much less one tying it to Trump’s bogus election claims. 

The Times’s archives reveal one mention connecting an upside-down American flag to election protests, although the item in question quotes one of the five Oregon protesters involved as saying, “We always end up losing rights, whoever’s in office.” [emphasis added] 

Other New York Times mentions of the inverted flag in news articles in the interim include at least two references to its use in George Floyd protests and rioting, but nothing else related to the January 6 or Stop the Steal.

Despite the certainty in the headline of Jodi Kantor’s initial Alito story (“a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display”,) the article nevertheless goes on to include the following paragraphs explaining the long and varied history of the inverted US flag:

Turning the American flag upside down is a symbol of emergency and distress, first used as a military S.O.S., historians said in interviews. In recent decades, it has increasingly been used as a political protest symbol — a controversial one, because the flag code and military tradition require the paramount symbol of the United States to be treated with respect.

Over the years, upside-down flags have been displayed by both the right and the left as an outcry over a range of issues, including the Vietnam War, gun violence, the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to abortion and, in particular, election results. In 2012, Tea Party followers inverted flags at their homes to signal disgust at the re-election of President Barack Obama. Four years later, some liberals advised doing the same after Mr. Trump was elected.

Close readers will recognize the common tactic of adding nuance paragraphs deep in the body of a story–sometimes called “to be sure” paragraphs–that give plausible deniability to the overreach of the headline and lede. But in this case the unequivocal framing and headline are also undermined by the explanation Justice Alito himself provided to the Times:

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” 

In fact, about a week after the Times article, the Washington Post revealed that its reporters had the Alito inverted flag story in 2021, but chose not to run it:

The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors, a Post spokeswoman said. It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics, the spokeswoman said.

It doesn’t seem the Times had any similar reservations about its own reporting.