Charlie LeDuff And The Perversion of Journalism

Yet Another Case Of Fool Me Once...You Know The Rest

Charlie LeDuff is a poser. Lets get that out of the way straight on. He has no business being in journalism, just like former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle. Both are plagiarizers of the first order, sensationalists and have zero business calling themselves journalists.

How both are still relevant today is beyond belief. Barnicle is a regular commentator on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and LeDuff is still…somewhere on the intershits.

Because old Charlie isn’t at The Detroit News anymore. He was fired last weekend after posting on X (Twitter) last Friday to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, “CU next Tuesday.”

The ‘CU’ is a backronym for a derogatory insult towards women, in the same way that Citizens United’s original full name was.

LeDuff was fired after his October 17th column where he alleged Nessel sideswiped an investigation into a friend, Traci Kornack, a Grand Rapids-based personal injury attorney and Michigan Democratic Party treasurer who was accused of bilking an insurance company out of $50,000 using the account of an infirm, incapacitated elderly woman. Nessel strongly denied any quashing of the investigation, through the AG’s acting chief legal council, Linus Banghart-Linn and accused LeDuff of “sloppy and sensationalist journalism.

“The opinion piece published yesterday not only fails to achieve any public good or ‘sunshine’ on the work of government, but irresponsibly twists half-understood and fully fabricated notions of the Department to the detriment of public trust in their State government,” Banghart-Linn’s letter read.

In a letter to readers this morning News editor Gary Miles wrote, “Last week, I defended the work of freelance columnist Charlie LeDuff on the attorney general's breach of an isolation wall in the investigation of her friend.

I cannot and would not defend, however, his deplorable and unrepentant use of a coded misogynistic slur to refer to the Attorney General on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) later that Friday afternoon.

The tweet outraged many, including me. It caused significant pain and embarrassment for a Detroit News staff that works hard not just to report and tell the news, but to do so in a professional way. I have especially felt the anger of the women on our staff, who have pointed out that use of such terms, even thinly veiled, prompt others to do the same and can make the work of female public officials, as well as female journalists, even more challenging. It escalated the name-calling and viciousness in our public and political discourse that we have long decried on our editorial pages. And it threatened to overshadow, and maybe it did overshadow, the very important story that Charlie had illuminated about the state's highest elected law enforcement official.

We can cover public officials without denigrating them. That's why we decided to end his regular Wednesday column, even as we stand by Charlie's previous work for The News.

I reached out to the attorney general to apologize for having that term directed at her on a social media platform by someone associated with The News; I have not heard back. If I do, I also will assure her, as I do you, that this will not deter us from our obligation to aggressively cover her office, and those of all public officials, moving forward.”

It has been a rough few months for Miles. After noting a celebrating the News’ 150th anniversary in August, which featured a piece by retired sports columnist and contributing baseball writer Lynn Henning, the Detroit Free Press’ contributing editorial writer Darren A. Nichols wrote a scathing piece in Deadline Detroit about Henning’s failure to mention any Black sportswriters or columnists like Terry Foster, Luther Keith, the late Bryan Burwell and Rob Parker. The News recently named Rod Beard sports editor.

Back to the subject of LeDuff, who has a Pulitzer Prize but is also an admitted plagiarizer while at The New York Times. He calls himself “a man of the people,” yet he was a drug addict, pusher and homeless.

He told the weekly Detroit tabloid Metro Times, “I’m not apologizing. I have nothing to apologize for. … I stand by it,” LeDuff says. “I said something clever on my own space because I am fucking pissed.”

Despite ascribing to many right-leaning talking points, he hates being called a “conservative,” but, “I like conservative people, [like] my grandparents,” LeDuff said Tuesday on ML’s Soul of Detroit, a podcast hosted by investigative reporter ML Elrick. “All of a sudden I’m some right-wing dude. What are you talking about? I don’t like war. I don’t like old people getting abused. I don’t like cheaters. I don’t like bad public policy. I don’t like corruption. I’m not afraid.”

Over the past two years, LeDuff has been accused of lurching to the right to attract a conservative fanbase. On his podcast, No Bullshit News Hour, LeDuff has focused much of his attention on airing grievances about Democrats, immigration, COVID-19 nursing home deaths, Hamas, Hunter Biden, Ukraine, the “deep state,” the media, and defunding the police.

Among his recent guests were conservatives such as former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, presidential candidate Perry Johnson, and Breitbart writer Poncho Ortiz, whom LeDuff called “the baddest reporter on the border.” LeDuff also interviewed Robert F. Kennedy, whose long-shot bid for president as an independent has drawn more support from Republicans than Democrats.

LeDuff’s page on X, formerly known as Twitter, is riddled with sensational and unflattering images of Democrats, and he uses brash adjectives to describe left-leaning politicians. He’s referred to President Joe Biden as “bumbling,” “stumbling,” and a “beach blanket.” He’s also called U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, a “cheater, thief, and scam artist.” On Aug. 15, LeDuff suggested Hillary Clinton, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election, per the Metro Times.

No, Charlie, you’re a kook. A guy who took one too many hits from whatever you were smoking at Churchill High School 40 years ago. He’s just another yellow journalist in a long history of yellow journalists like Joseph Pulitzer. Yes, that Pulitzer.

Controversy seems to follow him wherever he goes. In addition to admitting to be a member of the Mike Barnicle Plagiarising Fraternity, he seems to lie a lot.

This wasn’t his first rodeo at The News either. After winning a Pulitzer in 2001, he returned to Detroit and made a claim that he’d found a body encased in ice, but the police never responded. Later, in 2011, after he left the News and was at Fox 2, he got sued for a story he wrote about the reputed, but never proven party at Manoogian Mansion by Kwame Kilpatrick, the then-mayor of Detroit that a police officer was moonlighting as a stripper (never mind that a known stripper, Tamara Greene, was found dead shortly after rumored party happened or that Kilpatrick was thrown out of office and ended up in Club Fed for a stretch, until the former guy* pardoned him on his way out). The lawsuit was dismissed.

LeDuff admits he is his own worst enemy. “Yes, there is some rage inside me,” LeDuff said. “I try to keep it out of the newspaper and be nice and sober and do my work. And then I go to my social media and fuck myself up.”

Strange. Sounds like the Libidinous Defendant.

Even though he is unrepentant about his column from ten days ago, he did apologize to Miles and Editorial Page Director Nolan Finley, saying “I regret the stress and the decision they had to make. I admire them. I think of them as mentors and colleagues. I regret any ignominy or shade or stress on them. That’s who I apologize to and nobody else.”

But, Elrick told him, “The c-word, man. You can’t use that on anybody.”

Sources: https://www.metrotimes.com/news/detroit-news-fires-charlie-leduff-over-c-word-insult-34447196

https://www.metrotimes.com/news/charlie-leduff-says-hes-no-partisan-hack-34462161