The New York Times has finally concluded its great hunt for a journalist to cover conservative media for its new beat — and came up with this guy, according to TheBlaze:

The New York Times announced on August 18 that Ken Bensinger is joining its politics desk and will report on right-wing media for the section's so-called "democracy team." Bensinger previously worked for BuzzFeed, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

David Halbfinger, the Times' politics editor, suggested in the announcement that Bensinger is well prepared to report on right-wing media. His recent work on the Oath Keepers (an anti-statist militia group, some of whose members were present at the January 6, 2021, Capitol protests) and on the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case in Michigan were cited as evidence of the reporter's understanding of "the rising threat of armed militant groups," which Halbfinger intimated is relevant to the reporter's new beat.

In the announcement, Halbfinger omitted any mention of Bensinger's most impactful work.

Bensinger was the individual responsible for bringing the Steele dossier to BuzzFeed, which the organization released on January 10, 2017.

So his idea of "right-wing" is the Oath Keepers?  That's who the right wing is to him?  I'll wager he's got every "neo-Nazi" in America, all six of them, in his Rolodex, raring for new reports. 

You can imagine what the stories he's going to reporting are going be like about the "right wing."  We can tell what they'll be...even before he writes them.

The Times itself, though, lists Bensinger as a distinguished journalist, with many impressive scoops:

Ken comes to us from BuzzFeed News, where he was a charter member of its investigations team, reporting on campaign finance, the perils of Amazon's delivery network and political disinformation. Early in the pandemic, his reporting pushed the Food and Drug Administration to reverse itself and allow KN95 masks into the country. And he uncovered the story of a Silicon Valley engineer [who] paid $69 million for ventilators he never delivered.

Fine and dandy.  He's an exposé guy, a guy who knows how to do a good exposé.  Everything he writes is an exposé, so he'll soon get busy exposing "right-wing" media for the non-deplorables.

One important omission that they didn't want to bring up in this blurb about him is this:

At a 2016 Fusion GPS retreat in San Francisco, Bensinger met with former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson. Simpson, who had been hired in 2015 to dig up damaging information on former President Donald Trump, reportedly told Bensinger about a political opposition research report drafted by Christopher Steele.

The report, now referred to as the Steele dossier, had been funded both by Trump's GOP primary opponents and by Democrat entities. It contained innuendos about Trump and insinuations that the former president had been compromised by the Russian government. Bensinger took immediate interest.

Bensinger, granted the opportunity to photograph pages out of the dossier, later did so in the office of one of late Republican Senator John McCain's aides.

Even though Steele's allegations were unverified and his sources were anonymous, BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith decided to publish Bensinger's post, which was entitled "These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia."

Other reporters had the dossier, too, but couldn't verify anything in it, so, as per basic journalistic practice, opted not to publish it until they could verify it as accurate.  The fact that reporter after reporter didn't want to touch it is what prompted FBI director James Comey to hold his meeting with President-Elect Trump in Trump Tower in 2016, to supposedly inform him about the existence of the unverified dossier, which, it turns out, was pervy made up crap from the imaginations of drunken Russians linked to the Brookings Institution, simply making the "pee tape" stories about President Trump visiting Moscow hotel rooms and asking the local hookers to urinate on him for the movies, which were inventions that came natural to them.

Reporters knew that the file was skeevy, so many backed off, Jake Tapper saying only that the dossier had "compromising" information.

Not so Bensinger at BuzzFeed.  Unable to verify the skeevy contents, he went ahead and published them anyway, something not even Tapper would do, suggesting that he was a gullible guy who hated Trump so much that he just "knew" that the dossier had to be true, or if it was not true, that the damage would be done anyway, which is just as good.  Didn't matter to him.  Publish first, ask questions later.  And it turns out it wasn't true, leaving BuzzFeed with egg all over its face as other reporters harrumphed about their more skeptical and exacting journalistic standards.  

Now Bensinger has got his Times perch (alongside award-winning Russia hoax promoter Maggie Haberman), he's now going to be a nice guy here, as The Times notes:

That digging was terrific preparation for Ken's new beat, filled as it is with people who reject mainstream narratives and question the institutions that hold up our democracy. Understanding the way information is developed, circulated and absorbed on the right is vital at this precarious moment, and requires a healthy measure of patience, empathy and understanding along with investigative chops, skepticism and toughness..

Bensinger himself says he's all about "sensitivity" and "nuance":

I have a new job: covering conservative media and ideas for the @nytimes politics desk. I'm excited about this beat, which is important and complex and (I think) requires sensitivity and nuance at a critical time for this nation.

Please send me your ideas, tips, thoughts, etc! https://t.co/iDeW515HBy

— Ken Bensinger (@kenbensinger) August 18, 2022

Patience, empathy, and understanding?  Sensitivity and nuance?  Not this guy.  To him, conservatives and their media can be summed up as the Oath Keepers, and any scurrilous document thrown at him about pee or whatever, is printable, no confirmation necessary.

At best, he might be like Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, a leftist there assigned to cover conservatives, pretending to be friends with them in order to get a few gullibles to confide in him, and then getting caught speaking ill of them behind their backs.

More likely, he'll be on the job non-stop "exposing" Fox News, the New York Post, the Washington Times, and any outlet that does impressive real scoops the Times desperately tries to ignore.  He'll be their rearguard defense, trying to discredit these news organizations as a means of keeping them from reporting serious stories such as the border surge, the appeal of Donald Trump, the two-tier justice system, and the corruption revelations within the Hunter Biden laptop.

That's some choice they've made at the Times.  It's about par for their standards. 

Image: Twitter screen shot.