WaPo Slammed For Blatantly Unethical Journalism, Decides To Address Twitter Joke Instead

Once upon a time, The Washington Post was a credible news and investigative journalism organization. In fact, they broke the Watergate story back in the day. But they are no longer a credible news and investigative journalism organization. Now, they are simply partisan propaganda hacks who prioritize agenda and narrative over truth and objectivity. And the last few days have been a barrage of firsthand anecdotal evidence of this fact, with numerous people laying out the evidence of WaPo’s complete lack of journalistic ethics and morals. Blatant lies, carefully manipulated and edited information, insufficient corrections, stealthy edits after publication, and so much more. And as The Washington Post is at the center of a number of stories on the subject of their amorality and unethical journalism, how do they respond? By very publicly reprimanding and suspending a reporter who retweeted a joke they deemed to be “sexist” about how “Every girl is bi, you just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

Ladies and gentlemen, The Washington Post’s priorities. Horrifying breaches of journalistic integrity, ethics, and morals are no big thing, but how dare you retweet a joke about women, sexuality, and mental health! Here’s a quick rundown of how it’s been for The Washington Post the last couple of days.

On June 4th, Glenn Greenwald posted a Twitter thread about how “The Washington Post has now been caught publishing multiple lies as part of the Lorenz article.” Here is the thread from Greenwald for reference. It’s well worth a read.

WPost has now been caught publishing multiple lies as part of the Lorenz article. I don’t mean reckless errors: there were many. I mean blatant lies.

But because Lorenz is a symbol of media liberalism, reporters will rank-close to defend her, then wonder why nobody trusts them. https://t.co/ea6cGPPmBa

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 4, 2022

Remember, Taylor Lorenz is the reporter who doxxed and harassed the popular anonymous conservative Twitter account Libs of TikTok. Ultimately, it was discovered that her “journalistic investigation” to uncover the identity of the person behind the popular account and harass her family was funded by Germany. Weird, right? The article to which Glenn is referring in this Twitter thread is about how much money certain individuals made off of their social media coverage of the Amber Heard, Johnny Depp trial. Lorenz blatantly lies in the article, saying she reached out to two specific YouTubers for comment and to confirm details of her story. But she never did that. She published the article without contacting them. When she was called out for blatantly lying about one of the most fundamental tenets of investigative journalism, she took to Twitter to shift blame from herself, saying that the blatant lies were simply a “miscommunication with an editor” and that she “did not write the line and was not aware it was inserted.” She then added that, “After the story went live, I reached out to both YouTubers mentioned in that sentence.” Predictably, The Washington Post added a “correction” to the story in which they said that she contacted the YouTubers via Instagram before the story was published. Again, that was a lie. The correction of her lies contained yet another lie. And before WaPo issued these formal corrections, they stealthily edited the problematic content in the article after publication without any comment or acknowledgement that the deleted content was actually blatant lies, which is so shady and unethical in terms of journalism. Ultimately, Greenwald said,

“Lorenz is one of the most inept, reckless and unethical reporters ever at a major paper. But this framework prevails: criticizing her means you’re a misogynistic bully; defending her is how liberal male journalists prove they’re Good Allies.”

The next day, Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, posted a Twitter thread explaining that “The Taylor Lorenz/Washington Post correction scandal isn’t the isolated incident apologists claim.” He then detailed his personal experience with Lorenz and WaPo fabricating information, publishing blatant lies, and denying him the opportunity to comment on the story or include his side. He explained that when he left Facebook and Oculus, she did not verify basic aspects of the story with him, but rather took the word of those on the other side of the issue: Facebook Executives. Additionally, she fabricated information about a potential shell corporation in order to smear him in the article, and “didn’t reach out to me until 5:53 AM, seven minutes before print.” At least this time she can technically say she contacted him for comment, although she clearly did so in the most deceptive and sneaky way possible, knowing that he would likely be asleep before 6 AM and have no time to respond sufficiently in the 7 minutes before publication. After a battle to have the fabricated and inaccurate information corrected, WaPo then “deleted everything with no disclosure.” No public acknowledgement or wrongdoing or of the necessary corrections. They simply pretended like they never happened and hoped no one would notice. Here’s his thread, also worth a read.

Thread

The Taylor Lorenz/Washington Post correction scandal isn’t the isolated incident apologists claim. When I was fired, her story said I had announced I was leaving Oculus. This was false – it wasn’t my choice nor my announcement. Her only source: Facebook PR. WaPo later

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) June 6, 2022

Then Chris Rufo, who has done great work exposing Critical Race Theory in schools, as well as other partisan social agendas being pushed in politics, made his own thread likewise explaining that “Taylor Lorenz is the rule, not the exception, at the Washington Post.” Here’s that thread, also worth a read.

Taylor Lorenz is the rule, not the exception, at the Washington Post.

Last year, the paper ran a hit piece against me and had to retract or add six full paragraphs, admit to fabricating a timeline, and reverse a key accusation, which I proved was false.https://t.co/DnziR085Q5

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 6, 2022

He linked to a New York Post article he wrote explaining how WaPo “ran a hit piece” about his work fighting Critical Race Theory and was later forced to “retract or add six full paragraphs, admit to fabricating a timeline, and reverse a key accusation, which I proved was false.”

WINNING: The Washington Post’s hitpiece against me has collapsed.

They have admitted to fabricating a timeline, retracted or added six full paragraphs, reversed a key claim, and failed to produce evidence of a falsified quotation.

Democracy dies when the media lies. pic.twitter.com/gfKdpy4sal

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 22, 2021

At the same time, Christina Pushaw, press secretary for FL Governor Ron DeSantis, called out The Washington Post for writing an article with multiple factual errors which were easily verifiable, and for their blatant partisan framing of certain aspects of the story. She is great about posting everything online so the public can see what is happening behind the scenes even when the media tries to be sneaky, so she did a whole Twitter thread with email screenshots and specific information, which I’be included below. She did later update her thread to include the fact that WaPo “added a correction addressing two falsehoods in the original story,” while ignoring two additional “factual inaccuracies.” She questions what journalists are even for if they get even the most basic and easily verifiable information wrong in major articles.

In addition to the obviously biased framing here, @washingtonpost AGAIN made a factual error that is easily checked. The FY 22-23 budget recently signed by @GovRonDeSantis is NOT $101.5 billion. It’s easy to find the actual number. 30 seconds on Google. What are reporters for? pic.twitter.com/YeZJ4QQOVT

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) June 6, 2022

These are just a few of the accusations made against The Washington Post. In fact, I have one of my own. One of the reasons I do what I do, which is to write conservative content, is because WaPo posted a blatantly false article about a phone call of Trump supposedly instructing people to find or fabricate evidence of election fraud to support his narrative. This mainstream national news organization wrote a completely false story (including manipulatively edited information) that shaped the post-election narrative, undermined election integrity efforts, and discredited all who distrusted the liberal narrative. But it was a lie, so they quietly added a little correction to the false story and suffered no consequences at all, despite the fact that their lies literally influenced democracy in this nation for years to come. And it made me sick.

The Washington Post has spent the week being hammered by evidence of their unethical and immoral journalistic behavior, and instead of taking a moment to reflect on their incredible lack of ethical journalism or, heaven forbid, publicly acknowledging these issues that are most certainly contributing to the public’s distrust in mainstream legacy media, they decide to take issue with a reporter who retweeted a joke on Twitter. Priorities.

🤣🤣 because, priorities. @washingtonpost is being swamped with evidence of their amoral and unethical journalism, blatant lies, fabricated stories, crafty edits, manipulated corrections…
But how dare an employee retweet RT a joke about girls either being bisexual or bipolar. https://t.co/toDvZmIbhA

— Natalie Argyle (@NatalieArgyle) June 7, 2022