From The Free Press
By Joe Conason

While finance and technology are rapidly reshaping our media, undermining printed words and exalting digital screens, the nation’s major newspapers continue to exercise enormous political influence. Their news reports and editorial opinions still shape the ideas and themes behind every night’s television coverage.

But the great power of the dailies isn’t always used wisely, especially because “liberal” newspapers have so often proved easy prey for right-wing manipulation, as they were during the Clinton era and most of the Bush era.

Unfortunately, we can expect such manipulations to be repeated — as The New York Times illustrated on page 1 of its Feb. 19 edition, with an article headlined “As Clinton Runs, Some Old Foes Stay on Sideline.”

According to that report, the snarling perpetrators of what Hillary Clinton so famously called “this vast right-wing conspiracy” have been housebroken.

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