The Washington Post’s Philip Bump warned readers on Wednesday not to do their own research … because trusting the “authorities” and the media is more than sufficient.
Bump believes “there is an outsize appetite for derogatory, counterintuitive or anti-institutional assessments of the world around us.”
“This is in part because alleged scandals are interesting and in part because Americans like to view themselves as independent analysts of the world around us,” Bump writes.
“Americans who have little trust in the system can easily find something to reinforce their skepticism,” he continues. “They often do.”
Americans are innately skeptical of the government — we’re bred to question encroachments of any kind. The media can no longer say the same. They’ve become a weaponized arm of the government, losing their appetite for accountability in exchange for access to top advisors or legislators to get a scoop here or there and maybe a pat on the back by an editor who forgot what the role of their organization should be.
The Washington Post, which tried to downplay the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian disinformation,” which called the lab leak a “fringe theory,” is now going to try to lecture Americans – who only knew the aforementioned were true because they didn’t listen to what the authoritative media said – about misinformation?
That’s rich.
Bump goes on to cite a report by Nieman’s Lab’s Josh Benton who said people who do their own research often “gain more confidence in untrue information.”
The report claims that people who search “about misinformation” are then exposed to “lower-quality information” compared to individuals who “search about true news” and are less likely to believe so-called misinformation.
Bump then (of course) brings up QAnon, who he says believe a “secret cabal controls the world, with the media, entertainment and political elites conspiring.”
Let’s take a walk down memory lane and look at just some of the times the Washington Post has flat out lied and then maybe we can ask Bump why he thinks his outlet, or any other major outlet, should be trusted over someone’s own research.
How could you possibly forget that the Washington Post ran an article containing a fabricated Trump quote that was sourced anonymously saying the then-president asked Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the Georgia Secretary of State, to “find the fraud.”
An actual recording of the phone call showed Trump said nothing of the sort, leading to a correction from the Post. Who could forget the firestorm this fabrication caused?
The Washington Post can because they can’t bear to bear the burden of accountability!
Onto the next.
The pinnacle of truth at The Post, Glenn Kessler, analyzed the COVID lab-leak theory’s transformation from an alleged conspiracy to a real possibility. In fact, Kessler once tweeted at Republican Sen. Ted Cruz that it was “virtually impossible” for the virus to have came from a lab, a fact he knew because he had “many interviews with actual scientists.”
Clowns. 🤡🤡🤡🤡 pic.twitter.com/hpDEyxrdm2
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 25, 2021
“We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves,” he posted.
Yeah, the viewers did, that’s why they cast a shadow of doubt on your “scientists,” who later turned out to be dead wrong.
But the lab-leak theory was always credible if you had an iota of skepticism about your government, who tried desperately to lock you in your home, take away your businesses and arrest you if you dared go to church. I thought journalists were supposed to always have more questions?
But remember, the real reason they lied to you wasn’t because they’re oh-so-faithful to science. (RELATED: Washington Post Edits 15-Month-Old Headline That Claimed COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory Was ‘Already Debunked’)
It was because they seethed at anything Trump said. But don’t take it from me, take it from the Post’s Aaron Blake, who said corporate media largely ignored the lab-leak theory because Trump talked about it too much.
We all are well aware of the Hunter Biden laptop saga, but you know who probably wasn’t for a long time? Washington Post readers! Because the esteemed Washington Post, with all their resources and a loaded Mr. Bezos dumping millions into the outlet, couldn’t – as one could only assume – spare the resources needed to verify the laptop until an entire year-and-a-half later.
Womp womp.
The Daily Caller News Foundation, with a small but mighty staff, managed to verify the contents of the laptop nearly immediately after the New York Post first broke the story.
Meanwhile, The Post previously downplayed the contents of the laptop, running a story in Oct. 2020 claiming that the New York Post’s reporting “did not markedly advance what is already known about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.”
Opinion columnist Max Boot dismissed the laptop archive as “false” and “possibly part of a Russian disinformation campaign,” while his colleague David Ignatius called it a “non-scandal.”
But why stop there! The Washington Post distorted key details of Trump’s clashes with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley in a farewell article.
Trump reacted to Milley’s departure with a Truth Social post saying it “will be a time for all citizens of the USA to celebrate!”
“This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States,” Trump posted.
The Washington Post, however, said Trump “falsely stated that phone calls, authorized by Trump administration officials at the time, in which Milley sought to reassure Chinese officials that the United States was stable during the presidential transition were a ‘treasonous act.'”
But what really happened was (as Milley admitted to Congress) that he told his Chinese counterpart that he would warn him ahead of time if the U.S. planned on attacking China.
The article went on to falsely claim that Trump marched to St. John’s Church on Lafayette Square “in a show of force” after protesters were “abruptly and aggressively cleared.” An Inspector General report found that officers planned to clear the park because they wanted to build a fence to protect the officers who were under mob attack.
Yet Bump wonders why Americans are skeptical and do in fact have to do their own research!