Washington Post Actually Tweets the Truth, Quickly Deletes It – Opinion

We’ve covered the Washington Post’s fails regularly in the last few months, mostly because they just keep making fools out of themselves. Taylor Lorenz, a reporter, was caught lying to the founder of Libs of Tik Tok and then didxx Taylor Lorenz. Felicia Sonmez the reporter was involved in a bizarre saga. She aggressively called out Dave Weigel’s colleague for what turned out to be a rather mild joke. The WaPo of course suspended Weigel for his temerity, but that wasn’t enough for Sonmez, who screamed about it on social media to the point where the Post finally had to fire her. Sister Toljdah said that in August the paper politized the funeral of a congresswoman who died in an unfortunate car accident.

Whew. The Post is the gift that never stops giving.

And true to form, they did so again Wednesday, tweeting out about the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid but then quickly deleting it after complaints. Democracies die without courage or some other form of leadership. The original tweet contained the headline: “Garland vowed to depoliticize Justice. Then the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago.” This headline is entirely accurate. Garland actually promised to depoliticize Justice Department and Mar-a-Lago was raided by the FBI.

It’s not true. Can’t criticize the Biden Administration. Evidently, editors realized that the headline might be construed as critical so they changed it to: “FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago lands Merrick Garland in a political firestorm.” The original:

And the “update”:

“Erupts in a political firestorm.” That’s the kind of wordsmithing liberal outlets are commonly using these days to imply no wrongdoing was done by their favored people. Another technique is to instead of reporting on a story of what someone did, use the go-to “Republicans Pounce” headline. Don’t write, “Paul Pelosi Was Caught Driving Drunk,” write something like, “Right Wing Websites Erupt Over Speaker’s Husband’s Driving Incident.” See how it works?

They removed the original headline. Critics apparently thought it wasn’t anti-Trump enough. “No, he’s in the middle of unraveling a crime spree committed by the former president of the United States,” one userResponded to the original. “There…fixed it for you.” NYU journalism teacher Jay Rosen, meanwhile said the original headline This was “painfully under-thought” and “seemed to say that Garland was shifting course and unduly politicizing DOJ.” Well, yes, Garland wasShifting course, politicizing DOJ in an unduly political manner is what CNN and other left-leaning outlets are discussing.

Trust in the media has dropped to an all-time low in recent years, and it’s antics like these that erode our confidence in their willingness to tell the truth. My colleague Joe Cunningham reported on a Gallup poll in June that shows it’s mostly Republicans who have lost the faith:

Just 5% of Republicans said they had “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” in newspapers, compared to 35% of Democrats.

Only 8% of Republicans said they had “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” in TV news, compared to 20% of Democrats.

Cunningham writes: “…the media is the second least-trusted institution in America. The only institution with less trust from the American people is (understandably) Congress.” Although this Washington Post headline change is just one story, it’s part of a much larger pattern of outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC continually hiding or shading the truth from the people. If you ever talk to someone who relies on only those types of sources, you’ll find that not only are their opinions very different than yours, they often don’t know half the news that’s out there.

“Hunter Biden laptop? Never heard of it,” they’ll say. If they don’t get any news from such places they will never know.

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