There couldn’t possibly be a clearer example of media perfidy and dishonesty: back in May 2017, the Washington Post published a story about how President Trump supposedly urged Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers to deny that there was any evidence that he had colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. There was just one catch: the story was false, and Rogers said as much to the FBI as far back as June 2017. Yet not only did the Post not take the story down; it’s still up, eight years later and long after the Russian Collusion hoax has been definitively debunked.
The story was one of many in the Post about Trump’s much-publicized collusion with Russia that won the Post the Pulitzer Prize. And apparently that was all that mattered. Truth? Accuracy? Integrity? Come on, man!
The story, along with the rest about the alleged Russian Collusion, sold papers, and made the WaPo seem as if it was once again on the cutting edge of investigative journalism. The Post was even fearlessly taking on a president of the United States, recalling the heady days of Watergate when Woodward and Bernstein bearded the wily Tricky Dick, became Redford and Hoffman, and made the Post into one of the leading newspapers in the left’s constellation of propaganda organs.
The opportunity to relive the glory days was apparently too much for the Post, and overrode all other considerations. As Matt Margolis noted Sunday, “it’s unclear whether the Post knew Rogers disputed their report before publishing it, but Rogers made it clear to investigators shortly afterward that the story was false.”
Did Rogers, or the FBI, notify the Post also that the story was false? That is unclear, but the WaPo should have made it its business to know. It was, after all, a newspaper, and not just any newspaper, but one that was leading the covering of the allegations of collusion against the sitting president. Did the Post have no contact with Rogers despite the fact that its story was about him? Did it have no contacts in the FBI? Or was the story just too good, too damning of Trump, for the Post to be all that concerned about accuracy?
Worst of all, at least for the Post’s image as a news source, is the fact that the story is still up. You can find it here. To be sure, Just the News only published the revelation that Rogers had told the feds that the story was false on Thursday, and it’s based on Crossfire Hurricane documents that were just released. Maybe the WaPo will retract and apologize for the story this week.
It’s more likely, however, that the Post’s editors will not even notice the Just the News story, or act upon it if they do chance to see it. The institutional left has a habit of completely ignoring the “right-wing press,” except when it’s running a story about the dangers of “disinformation” and the need for censorship so that its voice is the only one that Americans are allowed to hear. The Post’s top dogs are not likely to acknowledge any of their stories are false based on a news source that doesn’t share its far-left worldview and isn’t dedicated, as the Post is, to manipulating and propagandizing the American people so that they reliably vote Democrat.
This is not, however, just about the Washington Post taking down one of its stories because a genuine news outlet showed it to be false. The Post has had eight years since it published this story and others about the Russian Collusion hoax to recognize that the whole affair was indeed a hoax. Trump has called upon the Pulitzer Prize the paper won for these stories to be revoked, and is now suing the Pulitzer committee for defamation over its refusal to take away the Post’s Prize.
Related: Trump Answers Nearly 20 TIMES More Media Questions Than Old Joe Biden Did in Four Years
Even though the whole world (except, of course, for the hardest of the hard left) now knows that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia to manipulate the 2016 election, the Post’s stories are still all up, it still has the Pulitzer Prize for them, and it is now busy turning out new stories in its ongoing efforts to destroy Trump.
This makes it clear: the Washington Post is not a news source. It hasn’t been for years. It’s a propaganda organ for the left. It should, in each and every case, be treated as such.
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