OPINION:
There’s a reason why American trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low.
On Jan. 9, The Washington Post reported then President Donald J. Trump asked a Georgia election official on a telephone call to “find the fraud,” in the state’s election outcome and told her she would be a “national hero,” if she did. The Post ran the headline: “‘Find the fraud’: Trump pressured a Georgia elections investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to obstruction.”
Last week, after an audio recording of the call was released, it was discovered President Trump said no such thing — and The Post had to run a whopper of a correction on its original, anonymous reporting:
“The recording revealed that the Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source,” the correction read. “Trump did not tell the investigator to ‘find the fraud,’ or say she would be ‘a national hero’ if she did so.
Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find “dishonesty” there. He also told her that she had ‘the most important job in the country right now,’” The Post wrote.
The Post’s original, false reporting spread like wildfire, with Vox, Rolling Stone, CNN, ABC News and NBC News all repeating the “find the fraud” claim.
The Post warns us “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” but apparently the truth dies in The Post’s newsroom. Entire narratives are derived from partisan, unnamed sources with the intent to be as explosive as possible.
The Post’s story helped shape how President Trump’s second impeachment was portrayed — and it led to calls by Georgia prosecutors for state election officials to preserve records as part of a potential criminal investigation of the former President.
Instead of a correction, The Post needed to retract their Jan. 9 story from the record. Yet it remains on their site. Their original source also needs to be revealed — the source clearly lied to the news organization with the aim of hurting then-President Trump and shouldn’t be granted such anonymity in the future. Yet the source remains comfortable in the darkness — and will likely be used again — because there is absolutely no accountability in these news organizations.
The mainstream media has been pulling this nonsense for years. No one was held accountable for spreading the Russian collusion hoax at The Washington Post and New York Times — heck, they were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for spreading the false narrative.
Unfortunately, basing entire stories on anonymous hack sources without any evidence to back it constitutes as “journalism” these days and it’s why 56% of Americans believe reporters are purposely trying to mislead, 58% think news organizations are more interested in ideology than facts and why less than half of all Americans say they trust traditional media outlets.
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