George Santos story broken by local newspaper months ago | Hacker News Reader

George Santos story broken by local newspaper months ago

theleaderonline.com

113 pointsgeox65 comments

The Washington Post had a good article about the North Shore Leader's original reporting and the failure of any larger newspapers to pick it up and do something with it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/29/north-shore-...

google cached (no paywall): https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7hqO5L...

Funny how the comments are pointing blame at all sorts of media outlets and Democrats but none at Republicans for fielding Santos as a candidate. Really says a lot about the Rs.

Do you see the irony in writing such a partisan comment which is criticizing partisan comments?

Is the question really that partisan?

I think most of us take it for granted that organizations will do some basic vetting of those who will be representing them in public.

I too find it strange the Republican party has largely been given a pass.

The Democratic party and the media definitely dropped the ball on this as well, but let's be honest: would it have made a difference if either group released this story during election season? We could argue whether or to what degree it is deserved, but I don't expect many (if any) people who voted for Santos would have taken an exposé from either group seriously.

FYI, the "oppo research" done by the DCCC's Research Department is public. Brings images of mad bureaucracy from the 1995 dystopian movie "Brazil":

https://dccc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/George-Santos-Re...

Readership of 20k. Hard to imagine how they stay in business but good on them for doing some real reporting. You'd think they'd do some more outreach to get the story in the public eye when it was fresh and crow about their scoop.

A friend of mine's dad just started working for a local newspaper. I have no idea the circulation, but the pay is $18K/year with the expectation of an additional $1K/month in bonuses.

better link to original: https://www.theleaderonline.com/single-post/the-leader-told-...

Ok, changed from https://www.longisland.com/news/12-30-22/george-santos-story.... Thanks!

Is this guy rich or poor? Funding sourced are dubious. It seems like he may have been gifted real estate in Brazil by a foreign country if the disclosures are true.

"Santos Filings Now Claim Net Worth of $11 Million" (<=Nov 3)

https://web.archive.org/web/20221103221400/https://www.thele...

"Endorsement: Robert Zimmerman for US Congress (NY3)" (<=Oct 22)

https://web.archive.org/web/20221022081106/https://www.thele...

So he lied and still got elected. Color me surprised. I would be surprised if someone got elected by being honest.

The Pete Buttigieg oppo research that ended his presidential campaign was also done by a local journalist months before it got picked up by the national media. I don't think this is especially uncommon.

Care to remind us what that oppo research was?

I thought Oppo made DVD players like 20 years ago. They were cool because they could play various AVI formats, too.

And region free too, which is why I had one. But in 2006 or so.

Yes, I might have the years wrong . What a great product they had.

Didn't mean to correct you, just that I didn't get one until 2008 (checked my email).

And yes, they were great. Region free and HD up-conversion to full 1080p built in, along with digital 5.1 audio as well.

Was a really nice DVD player, and from what I remember, pretty good value at the time too.

What story are you referring to? I don't see something like this on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Buttigieg_2020_presidenti...

There wasn't any specific story or scandal, just an overall sense that many of his accomplishments were actually less impressive one might otherwise assume given the political context the town where he was the mayor.

what context?

Like? Do you have a source?

If there wasn't a specific story, just an 'overall sense', I don't see how this is something that you can credit to a specific journalist?

Unless you're saying that this local journalist had a series of articles which had this effect, in which case perhaps you could link some?

There was no oppo, he lost because he couldn’t win South Carolina or second in Nevada. He still beat one of the most famous senators in the country in Iowa though.

Really quite the failure by the NYT.

How is their fault? There's no indication they ever saw the original scoop since apparently nobody did. Newsday is the main paper for Long Island and they didn't pick it up either.

I was going to say, Newsday might as well shut down after this. This is not the NYT’s beat.

> This is not the NYT’s beat.

The beat of the “All the News That's Fit to Print” New York Times does not include Long Island? NEW YORK Times? Are we talking about the same publication?

NY times is New York City. They do cover the whole metro region and obviously the whole world, but I don't think they have a dedicated Long Island desk or anything like that. They also don't routinely cover anything north or west of Westchester.

The Times doesn't do local coverage for Long Island. They cover news there, in essence, the same way they do news from anywhere. When there's a big story (like Santos is now), they'll put reporters on it. But they don't have people digging everywhere in the world for local details.

In this case, it was a house race. There are 435 such races. It would surely be great if the Times would vet all 870 major party candidate for us, but in practice that's not feasible given their revenue structure. We need to rely on local journalism like the linked coverage of the North Shore Leader.

And as it happened, they did their jobs. But none of us were listening because, collectively, no one gave much thought to a house race in a left-leaning district in a deep blue state. The whole thing blew up only because Santos (somewhat surprisingly) won his race.

Long Island is almost 3 million people—-about the size of the St Louis metro area.

It has a local paper, not the North Shore Leader, but Newsday. Newsday has a weekly circulation of 1 million and has won numerous Pulitzers.

The massive failure here is on them and it should prompt some real soul searching.

Doesn't seem to keep them from printing the faintest damns they can come up with vis-a-vis Santos: "George Santos Is in a Class of His Own. But Other Politicians Have Embellished Their Resumes, Too." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/us/politics/george-santos...

Newsday is a fairly right wing paper nowadays, I wonder if they were being silent deliberately

This paper is evidently a bit right-wing. They said they wanted to endorse a republican but couldn't when they did diligence on this guy. Newsday is still pretty middle-right and apparently endorsed Santos' opponent.

Digging up news is literally their job, and the NYT is one of the best-resourced media outlets in the world. This was right in their backyard, even though it was outside NYC.

Having said that, even Santos' opponent did a terrible job of campaigning against him, despite the fact that he's president of a PR firm. He was on Twitter the other day trying to look tough and demanding a rematch until being shamed into silence by his own increasingly-former supporters.

My politically active friends in California are like WTF is wrong with the Democratic party in New York.

It is all over the United States. Used to the Democratic party stood for some actual values, but the right shifted so far to the extreme now people just vote Democrat because they are less worse than the alternative. That is the only reason Biden got elected.

Do you realize how silly it sounds to the average person to hear the characterization of the party who collectively nominated one of the more boring centrists in history as “extreme”?

Things are changing quick. Parts of Obama's 2008 platform would be considered extreme right-wing today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_2008_United_...

And? Obama’s 2008 platform was 15 years ago.. the country’s norms and social mores change over time.. are you honestly arguing that it’s “extreme” to unequivocally support gay marriage in 2022 when something like 75% of the country agrees now?

https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro...

> are you honestly arguing [...]

No, there's nothing like what you assert in my comment. Kindly respond to what I actually say, not the third order implications of what you think I might be trying to insinuate.

> the country’s norms and social mores change over time

THAT is what I said. Things change quick.

You are misreading the GP. It claims that the Republicans shifted to the extreme right, not that Democrats shifted extreme left. (But see the sibling comment by LarryMullins - the Democrats did shift, though maybe you could argue that they shifted with society.)

Yeah that’s a fair critique of my read.. though “not being extremists” is often an okay platform to stand for when you’re trying to be a big tent party and win national elections.

Biden won the most votes of any American in history. Second or third in the world excepting Indonesia. This is not something the “least of all evils” get elected.

US population has grown, and 2020 turnout was high compared to other recent elections. Trump got more votes in 2020 than Obama did in 2008. 20 million more votes than Reagan's 1984 landslide victory. So would you claim that Trump is more popular than Obama and Reagan?

Democrats kept chanting "vote blue no matter who" before the election, then they turn around afterward and claim Biden won because he was so personally popular (a claim never supported by opinion polls), which makes one wonder why they needed to chant "vote blue no matter who" in the first place...

You’re confusing a handful of Twitter leftists that had to be coaxed into voting for Biden with the fact that Biden assembled a larger coalition than Obama did in 2012.

Biden is and has always been popular among Democrats and he won independents in 2020.

> Biden assembled a larger coalition than Obama did in 2012.

So your answer to my question is yes, you are claiming that Trump is more popular than Obama and Reagan?

> Biden is and has always been popular among Democrats and he won independents in 2020.

Is that why Biden lost the Democratic nomination 2 times before, in 1988 and 2008?

The eligible voting population was 26 million higher in 2020 than in 2008. Moreover, voting by mail rules during the pandemic and a close race (Biden won Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin by a combined 43 thousand votes) helped to elevate voter turnout in 2020.

7 states had a margin of victory less than 3%, and Biden won 6 of those. 2020 was an extremely close election. Biden got 7 million more votes than Trump, but that entire margin is accounted for by California and New York, where Biden won 63% and 61% of the vote.

I am saying yes, Trump was less popular than Romney in 2012.

I don’t know what you’re getting at for the rest. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still a remarkably accomplished president for someone that has been underestimated time and time again.

> I am saying yes, Trump was less popular than Romney in 2012.

Huh?

> I don’t know what you’re getting at for the rest.

Obviously.

In 1984, Ronald Reagan got 54,455,075 votes. In 2020, Trump got 74,223,975 votes, 20 million more than Reagan (and 13 million more than Mitt Romney). By a measure of raw votes, Trump is much more popular than Reagan.

But of course that's highly misleading, because the US population was smaller in 1984, and the voter turnout was smaller. Reagan won a landslide reelection of 49 states (except Minnesota, home state of his opponent Walter Mondale) and 59% of the vote, whereas Trump got only 47% of the vote and lost.

So when you say "Biden won the most votes of any American in history", that's not meaningful by itself, because the US population is larger now than ever, and the 2020 election turnout was unusually high. Biden only got 51% of the vote, which was much smaller than Reagan and also smaller than Obama in 2008, not to mention smaller that George Bush in 1988.

Most votes in history is not a meaningful measure of popularity. How many votes did George Washington get? FDR? You can't compare raw vote totals when the population itself changes.

Simple: the Democratic party is more terrified of another AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) taking their seat than they are of any Republican taking their seat.

If an AOC-type takes their seat, the seat is lost to corporatocrats for 30 years. If a Republican takes their seat, they can probably get it back next election.

This is an unnecessarily conspiratorial take on reality in a one-party setting. In much of New York, the primary is the race. It makes sense to ignore the Republican because they will never win. Staten Island is actually a competitive district by New York City standards.

> friends in California are like WTF is wrong with the Democratic party in New York

Ha! Hmm. Here:

New York is close to a one-party state. New York City, properly one party. That means the action happens in primaries. Yet in a city of 8.5mm, something like 3mm are registered Democrats [1]. And they don’t vote [2]. So the name of the game is turnout. Not debate. Not oppo. I’m not a power player, and I’ve swung elections by hosting voting parties near public housing polling sites.

We still have a patronage political system. Community boards, which decide matters like local liquor license approvals, are appointed by the Borough President [3]. A partisan position.

New York City is politically inverted: the rich and educated are bluer and more classically progressive. The poor focus quality of life. (This is how Black, poor voters elected a former cop for mayor [4].)

[1] https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2021/02/04/vot...

[2] https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2021/12/01/nyc...

[3] https://www.nyc.gov/site/cau/community-boards/about-commmuni...

[4] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-nyc-mayoral-analysis...

arguably quite the failure of his opponent.

His opponent, the Democratic Party, HuffPo, the NYT, CNN, MSNBC...

If it really was a failure of the NYT then how do you explain how they ignored these egregious lies?

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?category=&ruling...

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