The Washington Post confessed to a very big lie By Andrea Widburg
On Monday, conservatives were outraged when the Washington Post, in a teeny little paragraph appended to a major story from January, admitted that the core of the story was a lie based upon false quotations. I find myself surprisingly unmoved. First, this is par for the course for the modern, Pravda media. Second, as long as there are no consequences, and there never are, it’s irrelevant that the Washington Post behaved in a morally corrupt, fraudulent way.
This example of moral turpitude from the Washington Post began on January 9. That was when the paper published an “exclusive” entitled, “‘Find the fraud’: Trump pressured a Georgia elections investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to obstruction.” The word “obstruction” is extremely important in that title because the Washington Post wrote this allegedly expose as the house was debating whether to impeach Trump for the events of January 6 – and of course, for daring to question the fact that doddering Joe, who barely emerged from his basement and had a vice presidential candidate even his own party couldn’t stand, got more votes than Trump did.
The allegations in the article were explosive. Amy Gardner alleged that, during a telephone call to a Georgia election investigator, President Trump pressured the investigator to make up fake evidence that would overthrow the results of the election in Georgia:
President Trump urged Georgia’s lead elections investigator to “find the fraud” in a lengthy December phone call, saying the official would be a “national hero,” according to an individual familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the conversation.
You noticed, of course, that this charge was based upon the media’s go-to person when reporting on Trump: Someone anonymous who is making an explosive allegation against the President of the United States but cannot be called to account for the honesty of the statement.
Later in the article, the Washington Post got even more hysterical about Trump allegedly having pressured the investigator to “find the fraud” in exchange for national honor:
Trump’s earlier call, to the chief investigator, could also carry serious criminal implications, according to several former prosecutors, who said that the president may have violated laws against bribery or interfering with an ongoing probe.
“Oh my god, of course that’s obstruction — any way you cut it,” said Nick Akerman, a former federal prosecutor in New York and a onetime member of the Watergate prosecution team, responding to a description of Trump’s conversation with the investigator.
Akerman said he would be “shocked” if Trump didn’t commit a crime of obstruction under the Georgia statutes. He said the fact that the president took the time to identify the investigator, obtain a phone number and then call “shows that he’s trying to influence the outcome of what’s going on.”
This charge against Trump was so explosive that, when the Senate finally tried the impeachment, the House managers raised the Washington Post article as evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing.
That is why it is so shocking that, on Monday, the Washington Post slipped in a little paragraph at the end of the January 9 article. It was an Emily Litella “never mind” paragraph, confessing that the central charge in the January 9 article was false:
If you can’t read the tweet, it says:
Correction: two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator. The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. 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 quote the most important job in the country right now.” A story about the recording can be found here. The headline and text of the story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump.
In a just world, the Washington Post would have placed on the front page an entire article confessing its major violation of journalistic ethics and responsibility. But this is not a just world. For that reason, the Washington Post’s sly little confession of major wrongdoing is pretty much irrelevant.
Neither Washington Post nor Amy Gardner will suffer any consequences for their wrongdoing. They will not lose money, they will not be subject to criminal charges, Gardner will not lose her job, they will not experience humiliation within their community, no one is going to sue, and it’s doubtful that anyone at the Post believes that these grotesque lies will see their being called to account before their God for having defamed the President of the United States. The very worst that will happen to them has already happened, which is that Republicans are angry and disgusted. And as to that, they don’t care.
Republicans and other conservatives in America must figure out how to make the media feel pain for its devotion to the Democrat party line, and its repeated willingness to abandon any ethical considerations to defame those who dare to stand up to the Democrats. Until then, conservative outrage, while showing us to be moral people, is useless.
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