Ann Althouse Summary:
“Eric Adams Advisor Winnie Greco Handed a CITY Reporter Cash Stuffed in a Bag of Potato Chips/THE CITY reported the incident to law enforcement and was promptly contacted by the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office”? That came out on the evening of August 20th. (Here‘s my blog post about it from midday yesterday.)
Was everyone tolerating this practice until the City reporter openly objected to it? Why was the City reporter’s envelope delivered inside a potato chip back if it was not understood to be wrong? The NYT writes, “No established American news organization permits its reporters to accept cash payments for covering events” and “The Times’s ethical guidelines explicitly prohibit receipt of such gifts.” And the NYT reporters seem to have witnessed the open delivery of red envelopes, without snack-food camouflage. Perhaps The City was viewed as in the gray zone between “established American news organization” and news organizations that had already been initiated into a system of paying for news coverage.
The NYT doesn’t explain its waiting to publish. Perhaps it was working on a more detailed story explaining pervasive corruption and it just got scooped.