In October 2022, Rolling Stone broke the story of ABC News national security producer James Meek’s apartment getting raided by the FBI under very mysterious circumstances.
Outside ABC News’ James Gordon Meek's apartment, a surreal scene was unfolding, and his storied career was about to come crashing down. https://t.co/5pcvGeVer5
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 19, 2022
Multiple sources familiar with the matter say the Emmy-winning producer was the target of an FBI raid. https://t.co/JUFHulFFxZ
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 19, 2022
None of his neighbors with whom Rolling Stone spoke have seen him since. https://t.co/96Plc1ZCG6 pic.twitter.com/pLwSLhssCT
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 19, 2022
An ABC representative tells Rolling Stone, “He resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months.” https://t.co/JUFHulFFxZ
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 19, 2022
It is unclear what story, if any, would have put Meek in the FBI’s crosshairs. https://t.co/96Plc1ZCG6 pic.twitter.com/BZL9T7Ptnr
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 19, 2022
Meek has been charged with no crime. But independent observers believe the raid is among the first — and quite possibly, the first — to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration. https://t.co/JUFHulFFxZ
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 19, 2022
We’ll get back to those last two tweets in a minute.
Rolling Stone editor in chief Noah Shachtman tweeted about the story as well:
EXCLUSIVE: FBI raided the home of a star ABC News producer. His colleagues say they haven't seen him since.https://t.co/AdN20xIVGt
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) October 19, 2022
Talk about a crazy story, right? Did we ever find out what actually happened?
any update on this?
— Jonathon Snyder (@JonathonSnyder) March 21, 2023
As a matter of fact, there is an update to this story. And it’s a pretty major one:
Rolling Stone broke the story of an FBI raid on the home of national security journalist James Gordon Meek. As edited, the story left out a key detail originally included: why Meek had been targeted. https://t.co/d501z01zgS
— NPR (@NPR) March 21, 2023
Normally we’re not huge fans of NPR’s reporting, but we have to make an exception in this case because it’s nothing short of damning for Rolling Stone. Remember those last two tweets in the Rolling Stone thread, the ones suggesting that it wasn’t clear why the FBI would raid Meek’s house because Meek didn’t appear to have committed a crime? Yeah, well …
Why did Rolling Stone only report part of this story?
Absolutely damning NPR story here: https://t.co/DtbpXmA0rW https://t.co/46JIqdVxp5 pic.twitter.com/lDfZ2udAeW
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) March 21, 2023
Once you get into NPR’s article, it should become clear pretty quickly why Rolling Stone left out the details they left out:
When Rolling Stone reported that ABC producer James Meek had gone missing, Editor-in-Chief @NoahShachtman (formerly of the Daily Beast) deliberately edited out of the story that he was under investigation for child sex abuse because he was friends with him. pic.twitter.com/qFt96fs6DZ
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 21, 2023
James Meek ended up being indicted on several counts of child porn, including allegedly sharing the video of an infant being raped.
I shared this story at the time bc they made it seem like a guy just vanished but it turns out Noah edited that part out.https://t.co/yHxNulkfc3
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 21, 2023
And believe it or not, it gets even worse. Noah Shachtman edited out the sex abuse allegations from his reporter's story while she was pulled away because her mother was on her death bed. She ended up dying two days after the story was published.https://t.co/BXGPeaMCMi
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 21, 2023
It should have been a coup. Instead, acrimony inside the newsroom over how that scoop was edited led to accusations that the magazine’s brash leader pulled punches in overseeing coverage of someone he knew. The reporter who wrote the story, enraged, accepted a position at a sister publication two months later. And her complaints prompted a senior attorney for the magazine’s parent company to review what happened.
…
In the hours leading up to publication, Shachtman changed [article author Tatiana Siegel’s] draft to remove all suggestions that the investigation was not related to Meek’s reporting. He left in the finding that federal agents had allegedly found “classified information” on Meek’s devices.
The article left many readers with the distinct impression that the investigation was linked to Meek’s reporting — which could lead to a clash of the government and the press. Rolling Stone‘s official Twitter account promoted the story this way: “Exclusive: Emmy-winning ABC News producer James Gordon Meek had his home raided by the FBI. His colleagues say they haven’t seen him since.” The tweet’s thrust was echoed by WikiLeaks, Glenn Beck and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which wrote, “If this was related to his work, as this @RollingStone report suggests it might be, it is a gross press freedom violation.”
It sounds like Rolling Stone’s editor in chief deliberately buried the truth about the sex abuse allegations against Meek because the two of them were friendly. Meek looks really bad, obviously. But so does Noah Shachtman. And so does Rolling Stone. And it’s not like Rolling Stone has a whole lot of credibility to spare.
They “updated” their article last month 🥴 4 months later… https://t.co/z1PQU0PH9D pic.twitter.com/FZl1nEntL6
— ⚔️ 🌹ScepticRabbit🌹⚔️🛡🔮 (@theicyscorpion) March 21, 2023
Yeah … that’s what scientists like to call “too little, too late.” And not having anything in the update about James Gordon Meek being chummy with Rolling Stone’s editor in chief makes it seem like Rolling Stone is still trying to keep the truth from readers.
Oh… Talk about the corrupt corporate media and their disgusting protection racket: pic.twitter.com/oVo0mnKvfD
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) March 21, 2023
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