Laura Italiano Wrote Fabricated Kamala Book Tale; Trolls Are Out in Full Force. But Are They Wrong?
Here's a story you won't read in the New York Post, about how veteran scribe Laura Italiano was "ordered" to write a whopper of a tall tale about how taxpayers funded gave undocumented children copies of Kamala Harris's book and that Italiano resigned in protest after the fact.
The Kamala Harris story -- an incorrect story I was ordered to write and which I failed to push back hard enough against -- was my breaking point.
— Laura Italiano (@Italiano_Laura) April 27, 2021
Actually, you can read about it in the Post, though the Washington Post, where the story by Paul Farhi was at the top of the charts this morning.
Unsurprisingly, the Twitter trolls had little sympathy for Italiano. The few "thank you for your integrity tweets were outflanked by missives like this:
You wrote the incorrect story, and then resigned??? That says a lot about your moral character.... or LACK there of.
— kennygallegos (@slvnative) April 28, 2021
If the story was incorrect and you knowingly went ahead helping create it - and took a paycheck for doing so - the word you’re looking for is “complicit”.
— Safe Spaces | Commentary+ (@real_safespaces) April 28, 2021
Italiano is no journalistic fawn who got caught in a no-win situation. She's been at the Post since the 1990s, knew who she was looking for and how it operates. Inevitably, no matter how dedicated or skilled a journalist, she knows that the hard-right agenda fomented by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch inevitably colors the news report a dark red.
Given that, if quitting was in Italiano's mind, the end result, wouldn't it have been better to outright refuse to write the story, take her chances with disciplinary proceedings and possibly benefit from all the publicity? As she tweeted, she failed to "push back hard enough." Meaning, if you take that to its literal conclusion, she knew the story she was writing was verifiably false. Yet, she wrote it anyway, even though the debunkers came at it fast and furious.
The N.Y. Post belatedly took down the story after sheepishly admitting in an editor's note at the bottom of a story that its report that thousands of kids had been given Harris's book was wrong.
The original version of this article said migrant kids were getting Harris’ book in a welcome kit, but has been updated to note that only one known copy of the book was given to a child.
But that mea culpa is at the very bottom of a rewrite of an April 23 Italiano story now re-headlined: Kamal isn't at the southern border -- but at least one migrant kid got Veep's book
So, sorry, not sorry.
And, as Farhi points out, it's not even clear any child actually got that copy. It was contained in a toy and clothing drive sponsored by the city of Long Beach, Calif.
In the end, I'm sorry Italiano was put in this position. But she's had a birds-eye view of the underbelly of New York City politics, courts and cop shops long enough to know when a story stinks to high heaven. She spent her professional life writing nonfiction. That she chose otherwise with the Harris book nothingburger and quit in disgust after she had reached a "breaking point," then good for her. But it's not really good enough.
Meanwhile, the Kamala beat marches on at the Post. The vice president has been mentioned prominently in articles on nypost.com no less than seven times in the last three days alone. Doubtful Mike Pence ever got that much attention. But when his boss gleefully sucked up all the right-wing media oxygen, it's easy to understand why. And no newspaper made more sure of that than the New York Post.
