The impulse among establishment media to dismiss every concern about election security as a conspiracy theory ignores the fact that fraud and other problems do exist, and it leads to some awkward reporting corrections.
Stuart Thompson of the New York Times learned this the hard way. On Oct. 3, Thompson wrote a piece headlined “How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target.” Thompson, who covers “misinformation and disinformation” as a reporter on NYT’s technology desk, detailed the conspiracy theory that software company Konnech had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and gave the Chinese government access to the personal data of two million U.S. poll workers.
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“The attacks on Konnech demonstrate how far-right election deniers are also giving more attention to new and more secondary companies and groups,” Thompson claimed. He reported that Konnech claimed that all data on American customers were stored in the U.S. but that “the claims have had consequences for the firm” already.
And then, the other shoe dropped.
Just one day later, Thompson reported on a new bit of information about Konnech. The company’s founder and chief executive, Eugene Yu, had been arrested by Los Angeles County officials. Investigators from District Attorney George Gascon’s office found that data were indeed being stored in China, and the office said it had “cause to believe that personal information on election workers was ‘criminally mishandled,’” according to Thompson’s reporting.
Does this vindicate the secret election denier conference that Thompson breathlessly reported on in his original piece? No. Does it prove that the election was stolen from Donald Trump? Of course not. Does it prove that journalists authoritatively branding everything election-related as a conspiracy theory is embarrassing and the opposite of ethical journalism? You bet it does.
By so quickly blaring the “misinformation” siren in an effort to promote more online censorship (which is all “misinformation” reporters like Thompson are employed to do), the New York Times only emboldened more conspiracy theorists. Whether all the (seemingly) conspiratorial claims about Konnech are true or not, the company is now being accused by a Democratic district attorney of storing data in China, a breach of its contract and a massive red flag for user data and election integrity. Dismissing that story out of hand torches the outlet’s credibility (more than it already has) and invites conspiracy theories rather than dispelling them.
Perhaps if the media’s misinformation reporters cared more about reporting on things that matter instead of hounding online forums for the latest chatter from anonymous nobodies — chatter they breathlessly present as a threat to the public — this story could have been reported correctly from the beginning. Instead, the New York Times ended up with egg on its face, while media reporters will be left to wonder how it is possible that media trust is at an all-time low.
