Patrick Howley (Screen shot from YouTube)
The writer is a former Detroit News business reporter and Deadline Detroit contributor.
By Eric Starkman
Patrick Howley (Photo: YouTube)
I never heard of Patrick Howley, a provocateur who founded a website called Big League Politics and previously worked at Breitbart and other far-right publications, until this past weekend. Howley had a scoop that even mainstream journalism publications couldn’t ignore: He’s the guy who broke the story about Virginia governor Ralph Northam posing in a racist photo on his medical graduation yearbook.
Howley seems to be on a roll: His latest scoop is that Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is the person referred to in a tweet by a California professor alleging that a former Democratic National Committee staffer who sexually assaulted her more than a decade ago is poised to get a big promotion. Fairfax would succeed Northam if, as many Democrats and Republicans are demanding, he resigns.
But another trending “scoop” on Howley’s site caught my eye and should interest Detroit-area residents. He stated that the Detroit media “erased information” from the internet that confirms Rep. Rashida Tlaib engaged in criminal activity. The allegation was on his site for several days and at the time of this posting.
Behind paywall, not deleted
The “erased information” was a March 11, 2010 feature by Deadline Detroit contributor Charlie LeDuff when he was a staff writer at The Detroit News. The story quoted Tlaib’s father as saying she didn’t live in the district she was first elected to serve. Here’s the damning paragraph:
Asked why he was tattling on his daughter, Harbi Elabed said it was a growing litany of transgressions that his daughter committed upon him -- culminating in a dispute about care of his aged mother, who suffers from dementia. According to Harbi, his daughter sided against him and in favor of his nephew in a battle of custody, a complete breach of family values.
It would be a significant news story if a major local publication scrubbed information that was damaging to a public official. So, I reached out to The News’ managing editor Gary Miles, who is surprisingly accessible and responsive even late on a Saturday night. Miles said the paper doesn’t delete stories from its website. It does, however, put older ones behind a paywall. LeDuff’s feature can be seen for $2.50 by going to The News’ archive page and searching “Charlie LeDuff and Rashida Tlaib’s father.”
I reached out on Saturday to Howley for comment about his Detroit News allegation but haven’t heard back. It’s comical that he recently told the Washington Post that people are “lazy” when he’s posting damning allegations that he could easily confirm are false.
I’m no expert on federal and Michigan election laws but neither is Howley. The allegations made by Tlaib’s father are nearly a decade old and the Congresswoman has been subjected to considerable scrutiny, including a recall effort by a well-financed opponent. If Howley was a credible journalist, he would have included a comment from Tlaib and posted or linked to the supposed evidence he sites. Sadly, it’s remarkably easy to circulate unverified allegations and make them stick. There’s a petition started by “Mrs. American Citizen” with more than 272,000 signatures to impeach Tlaib based almost entirely on questions about her residency.
Double standards elsewhere
Right-wing reporters aren’t the only ones spreading false news or applying double standards to their coverage.
A Washington Post reporter a few months ago published a story that said Georgetown Prep was advertising for a director of alumni relations to combat the negative publicity the school received because of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. In fact, the school first advertised the position in July well before the hearings and notified the reporter within eight minutes of her email inquiry asking about it. The reporter said she overlooked the information that Georgetown Prep provided her.
The Post also disclosed that it previously looked into sexual assault claims levied against Fairfax but said it didn’t publish the story because it couldn’t corroborate them. An admirable standard but one the Post didn’t apply in its coverage of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
It's the sad state of journalism today. Reporters no longer feel the need to check their facts and are so blinded by their ideological biases they instinctively make assumptions that reaffirms their views of the world. When CNN first reported Northam’s racist photo, the keeper of the chyron labeled him a Republican.
This famous Odd Couple segment below should be required viewing at journalism schools.
