Early in September, Bloomberg Law columnist Ben Penn wrote an article about Department of Labor official Leif Olson’s “anti-Semitic” Facebook post. Olson lost his job over it. The thing was, Olson’s post was actually mocking anti-Semites like Paul Nehlen. Anyone who isn’t a thoroughly dishonest hack could see that, so, naturally, Penn (with Bloomberg’s blessing) pressed on. Many people accused Penn of carrying out a politically motivated hit job on Olson — and based on lawyer and Olson’s friend Ted Frank’s findings, those people would appear to have been correct:
? ? ?@blaw refused to answer my questions about their abusive journalism fail on the Leif Olson story, so we FOIA’ed Penn’s emails to DOL to see how it happened. As you can see, this was a total hit job, @benjaminPenn truncated & mischaracterized the Facebook posts. pic.twitter.com/CzTsMKWUBN
— tedfrank (@tedfrank) October 3, 2019
From my September 3 thread, here’s the original Facebook post, plainly meant to be sarcastic. https://t.co/TUItsf2j8d
— tedfrank (@tedfrank) October 3, 2019
As I noted September 3, Penn shaded his story by asking innocuous questions from Olson’s friends while allowing opponents to smear his litigation work. https://t.co/xzqZaK2g6O
— tedfrank (@tedfrank) October 3, 2019
It’s all there in black and white.
.@tedfrank FOIA'd DOL to find the email from @benjaminpenn. @BLaw still has not added any sort of disclaimer on its hitjob about Leif Olson. https://t.co/IPI3SWQ6y8
— Josh Blackman (@JoshMBlackman) October 3, 2019
.@FrankBednarz compiled a partial list of the factual errors in the story—coincidentally every single one of them makes Olson look worse than reality. It’s 30 days later, and @blaw and @ChrisOpfer still haven’t corrected them. https://t.co/g3kDAUmadD
— tedfrank (@tedfrank) October 3, 2019
Don’t be surprised if they continue to stand by Penn in light of this. It would certainly be in line with their brand journalistic integrity.
"Does the Labor Department find comments that are disparaging to Jews acceptable for a senior appointee?"
Seriously, @blaw, this is not journalism, right? https://t.co/797n2TJt84
— S D Winkler (@sdwinkler) October 3, 2019
This looks veeeeeery bad for Bloomberg Law. https://t.co/oHlnjwpn0N
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) October 3, 2019
I had assumed this all came about because of a vague and sloppy email to Labor. Instead looks a lot like a planned hit job indeed.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) October 3, 2019
Please explain to me again why @benjaminpenn is still employed as a journalist. The FOIA is damning. https://t.co/xdDyocJxdD
— Esoteric Jeff (@EsotericCD) October 3, 2019
Good work. This was the shabbiest of shabby "journalism."
— Sir Humphrey (@bdquinn) October 3, 2019
Drag Him.
— Mr. Nuclear Cocaine (@MrNukemCocaine) October 3, 2019
Editor’s note: This post has been updated with additional tweets.
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