What’s a fake news outlet like the Washington Post supposed to do when they get busted for sticking with a horrific headline about a deadly airstrike that never happened, almost a full day after it was debunked?
A decent paper would retract the story and apologize. I’ve done just that a number of times over the two decades I’ve been writing as VodkaPundit. It’s embarrassing, it sucks — but it has to be done. But the Washington Post, as I’m sure readers here already know, is not a decent paper. In fact, readers everywhere must know it because the money-losing progressive propaganda outlet just announced layoffs of another 240 employees.
But to today’s point, at 9 p.m. Eastern last night, the Washington Post ran with this:
Here’s the link to the actual report.
What we’ve known since at least early yesterday is that a Hamas rocket misfired in a parking lot, killing a few unfortunate civilians. But there was no Israeli missile strike, no blown-up hospital, and no 500 dead civilians.
As of this 9 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, WaPo has yet to retract or correct Adam Taylor’s story.
Even Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib — two noted Hamas apologists — have been smart enough to keep their mouths shut in the hours since Hamas’s original claims were debunked. It makes you wonder how some young WaPo reporter, still filled with ideals about reporting the truth at any cost, must feel about their employer. It makes you wonder if young reporters like that still exist.
WaPo’s predilection for propaganda is costing them readers, too. “Yeah, I just canceled my WaPo subscription. No walk back,” Steve Tipp tweeted.
But I promised to answer the question, “What would a decent paper do after getting raked over the coals for blowing such an important story?”
Instead of retracting the report, two hours and 19 minutes later they reframed it as an Israel-Says/Hamas-Says piece. Taylor’s new headline reads, “Everything we know about the Gaza hospital strike.” The revised Twitter slug reads, “The U.S. and Israel have both denied Israel’s involvement in the hospital strike, saying the blast came from a failed rocket launch by a terrorist group in Gaza. As Palestinian and Israeli officials continue to trade blame, anguish is deepening over the prospect of more civilian deaths.”
Or as I like to think of it: “There may or may not have been this horrific Israeli airstrike that created all this suffering and death. It’s just impossible to know, even though everybody else seems to.”
Oh! A new tactic in play in place of an apology. "trade blame". And of course no apology for rabidly claiming it was an Israeli air strike. Not to mention the resulting chaos. Pathetic.
— Dr René MD ⚕️🩺 (@Dr_ReneMD) October 19, 2023
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point your attention to the photo caption that failed to get the Ye Olde Stealthe Edit treatment. It still reads, “An area of al-Ahli Hospital where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast in Gaza City.” Oops. That seems like a pretty big miss for whoever was in charge of stealth editing the report.
The lede still says, “In a conflict already freighted with allegations of war crimes, a strike on a Gaza City hospital on Tuesday has divided opinion.” What happened on the weekend of October 7, when 1,400 Israelis — nearly all of them civilians and some of them children and babies — were slaughtered… those are mere “allegations of war crimes.”
Muddy the waters much, WaPo? Murdering democracy with darkness?
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