LIES THE WASHINGTON POST TOLD ME
Cartoon courtesy Kevin Barrett, Ph.D.
Basic Lie: The paper’s code of ethics devised by its one-time owner:
The Seven Principles for the Conduct of a Newspaper
· The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.
· The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.
· As a disseminator of the news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.
· What it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as for the old.
· The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.
· In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.
· The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.
Eugene Meyer, March 5, 1935
Let’s see how Gene Meyer’s Principles stack up in the real (or, maybe, unreal), world of the Washington Post. Here are samples of just a few days’ worth of Post reportage.
It Ain’t So, Gene!
Russia. On May 10, 2022, one of the subheads in an article about Russian President Putin’s May 9 speech commemorating the end of World War II ran: “False claims permeate his Victory Day address.” (Not one word of substantiation followed.) On May 24, Petulant Petula Dvorak, one of its many biased columnists, wrote about the “great honor” accorded retiring D.C. City Councilman Mary Cheh. Russia had banned the professional politician for renaming a block in front of its embassy on Wisconsin Avenue N.W. after a supposed dissident, Boris Nemtsov.
Missing Background. For the next day and the following one, the paper devoted most of its first section to the mentally disturbed Uvalde, Texas mass murderer. However, for all its self-justified outage, the Post never followed through on any sort of investigation of the crank Salvador Ramos. Was he a citizen? Was he an illegal alien? Where did he get the money to pay for the two rifles from Daniel Defense? That company’s products start at about $2,000 each and go higher. Ramos was a high school dropout, presumably unemployed. That disturbed individual, according to the paper, wore eye shadow. Yet, there was not one word about Facebook pictures of him wearing a dress. A French source also depicted him wearing women’s clothing.
Sources of the problem? Additionally, the Post can’t seem to tie the spate of violent crimes in the past few years to extreme government control of the population, terrifying them and locking them down as a way of dealing with an unexplained virus, widely believed to be tied to American government chemical and biological warfare, dating back to the end of World War II.
The journal, Washington, D.C.’s “paper of record”, hasn’t yet realized that giving murderers weeks of notoriety (in great detail), rather than Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, only fuels copycat criminals who want their place in the press.
(The Post’s lack of information about gun crimes in Washington, D.C. demonstrates a singular inability to investigate them or, perhaps, is designed to avoid any criticism of the city’s corrupt, incompetent, illegitimate, and racist “government”. Nearly every day, the paper prints small box items about people getting shot in less than salubrious parts of town. Since D.C., like New York City and Chicago, Illinois, greatly restricts the citizen’s ability to possess firearms, despite the U.S. Bill of Rights and several U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the broadsheet’s news blackout on how the miscreants acquire their guns is singularly curious.)
Turnabout. On May 26, the journal ostensibly reversed its long-standing opposition to having police in schools (because it might offend particular minorities). It printed a six-columned positive piece about educational institutions ramping up safety with “school security guards”.
That same day, the Post turned from firearms to another hobbyhorse, rightwing “terrorists” seeking control of local school boards. This time, it was a Community Center election in McLean, Va. (a D.C. suburb). Candidates strenuously opposed a “Drag Storybook Hour”—for preschoolers. The event was tied to “Gay Pride Month” and “featured performers in drag reading aloud stories about gender fluidity to a group of children…” The paper works hard at thought control.
Belatedly learning about the police failing to take action after Ramos’ shooting of his grandmother and stealing her truck, the May 26 edition of the Post decided the police (whom it normally supports) in Uvalde, Texas had made mistakes. That same day, in the first section, below the fold, the paper waxed wroth that a Florida lesbian had to give up teaching. It cited State restrictions limiting in-school discussion of matters dealing with LGBTQ+ the rest of the alphabet. This was yet another example of the newspaper’s efforts to reshape reality.
The Blame Game. May 27’s first section (especially its editorial pages) was devoted to the Uvalde, Texas shooting. However, the paper then made forays into blaming the Republican half of the Great American Behind as being driven by gun rights. The Post also alleged that “The NRA is in decline”. Plenty of opinion but not much fact.
The next day, the Post, continuing its unsubstantiated tirade against the Bill of Rights, presented a story headlined “One Nation Under Fire”, with the subhead “In a land where guns outnumber people, thoughts and prayers once again supplant hopes and dreams”. Well, if there really are more firearms in the U.S. than its 330 million inhabitants, it would seem that guns are not the problem. Something else is—but the journalists at the Post evidently don’t have a clue as to its nature.
May 29’s front page has six columns headlined “90 minutes of terror, then a broken trust”. It recounted the failed police response to students, using their cell phones, repeatedly calling 911 for help. This was followed by a psychological piece captioned “What school shootings do to the kids who survive them.” Implicit in the paper’s normal “news” is that only the police and the armed forces should possess firearms. And when the police don’t use their weapons? Or when the police use them on the wrong people? What then?
Fake Solutions and a Glaring Bit of Fact. Baltimore, Maryland, a crime-ridden city with a corrupt government, is singled out for praise on June 1. The city is suing a manufacturer of “ghost guns”, another phrase used to distract attention away from reality. The Post wrote that “untraceable firearms have added to violence.” According to the paper’s invincible ignorance, “ghost guns” are really home-made handheld weapons, apparently easily assembled in your basement with a hammer and a pair of pliers. They are decried as “untraceable” because they have no serial numbers. Well, if they did have serial numbers, how would that stop a crime from being committed using them? When the crime is committed, doesn’t the criminal usually disappear, taking his weapons with him? Serial numbers lack ESP.
Elsewhere in the paper that day was a six-columned article noting that “…Schools struggle to meet rising mental health needs.” It said 76% of public schools have “expressed concerns about depression, anxiety, and trauma since the start of the pandemic.” Continuing, “the paper of record” noted “Yet only about half of all schools said they were able to effectively provide needed services.” Are some of the 1,000 journalists at the Post getting close to the answer to school shootings?
Conclusion. Eugene Meyer’s Basic Lie, his supposed code of ethics for his paper, seems to have been a failure. Successive owners—Philip and Katherine Graham (Meyer’s daughter), then Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame—appear to have had great difficulty with the broadsheet:
· Telling the truth
· Telling all the truth
· Being dutiful to its readers, not its owners
· Avoiding alliances with special interests
· Being fair and free in its outlook on public affairs
Why employ 1,000 journalists (Post-supplied figure) if they can’t investigate major issues dispassionately? Or provide proper background and depth to them? As noted, the paper has hobby horses it rides to death, principally firearms, race issues, and gender matters. It is often seen as the mouthpiece of the federal government, particularly on subjects dealing with the intelligence services and the so-called pandemic. It parrots Anthony Fauci’s views on the Covid-19 virus and its “vaccines”.
Within living memory, the U.S. capital had a plethora of newspapers. The Washington Post and Times-Herald in the morning as well as The Evening Star and the Daily News in the evening. Unlike the Post, these journals kept their opinions on the editorial page, not the front page. Now, there are only two large dailies in the city, the Post with a circulation of more than 350,000 copies, and the Washington Times, publishing more than 50,000 issues each day.
Gilad Atzmon, the noted musician and political writer, said it all, most apropos of the Post: “We read the news to learn what is not happening.” Does he mean that the paper’s staff have bats in the
