Sunday, April 03, 2022

Washington Post: We done screwed up

Finally - finally - the mainstream media is awakening to the fact that they have a credibility problem and part of it traces back to their suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story: "Washington Post editorial board admits Hunter Biden story is a 'reckoning' for media."
"For now, what’s more compelling than the assorted accusations about the Bidens’ behavior is this question: Why is confirmation of a story that first surfaced in the fall of 2020 emerging only now? When the New York Post published its blockbuster exclusive on the contents of a laptop said to have been abandoned at a Delaware repair shop by Hunter Biden, mainstream media organizations balked at running with the same narrative. Social media sites displayed even greater caution," the editorial board wrote.
"Greater caution" meant that Twitter completely threw the NY Post off their platform.
"This series of events has prompted allegations of a coverup, or at best a double standard in the treatment of conservative and liberal politicians by mainstream media and social media sites," it wrote.
Here comes the great awakening where the mainstream media asks "Are we the baddies?"

Yes, yes you are, and you've squandered the public's trust in pursuit of your preferred narrative. 

I'm reminded of this quote from the 2003 movie "Shattered Glass" about when the magazine The New Republic discovered that one of their reporters had just invented stories out of thin air:
Chuck Lane: "Caitlin, when this thing blows, there isn't going to be a magazine anymore. If you want to make this about Mike, make it about Mike. I don't give a shit. You can resent me, you can hate me, but come Monday morning, we're all going to have to answer for what we let happen here. We're all going to have an apology to make! Jesus Christ! Don't you have any idea how much shit we're about to eat? Every competitor we ever took a shot at, they're going to pounce. And they should. Because we blew it, Caitlin. He handed us fiction after fiction and we printed them all as fact. Just because... we found him "entertaining." It's indefensible. Don't you know that?"
The mainstream media blew it.  But will they be able to repair the breach?  Somehow I think it's going to require razing the whole structure to the ground and rebuilding from the ground up.

2 comments:

Paul Sand said...

Anyone here old enough to remember Janet Cooke? Over 40 years ago now. But it's way too late for the WaPo to say "we promise we'll be good in the future."

Tito Puraw said...

Jimmy's World. Remember it well. Lived in the DC area at the time. WAPO hasn't changed a bit.