ProPublica often practices what you might call Potemkin journalism — which entails dressing up partisan non-stories with neutral-sounding reporting verbiage and lots of graphs and pictures that at first glance make them seem important, but in actuality tell us very little.
One of the best examples of the practice can be found in today’s smearing of Clarence Thomas — a hobbyhorse for leftists since 1991. In it we learn that the Supreme Court justice has a super-rich friend. And that super-rich friend, GOP donor Harlan Crow, invites Thomas on “luxury” vacations from time to time at his “private resort,” “sprawling ranch,” “all-male retreat,” and on his “superyacht.” As all the adjectives strongly suggest, all of it is very upscale. Most of the luxury vacations that happen “virtually every year,” it seems, have Clarence and Ginni Thomas spending “about a week” during the summer as guests at one of Crow’s resorts in the Adirondacks.
Here is a little taste of the pretend journalism:
There’s evidence Thomas has taken even more trips on the superyacht. Crow often gave his guests custom polo shirts commemorating their vacations, according to staff. ProPublica found photographs of Thomas wearing at least two of those shirts. In one, he wears a blue polo shirt embroidered with the Michaela Rose’s logo and the words “March 2007” and “Greek Islands.”
There are, indeed, lots of incriminating pictures in the piece — even a shot of a signed book! — because people who do furtive, illegal, corrupt stuff
