Jeryl Bier embarrasses the Washington Post's Philip Bump with his own newspaper

Brett T. | 5:22 PM on December 05, 2022

These tweets didn’t get a lot of attention, but we think they deserve a follow-up post. As Twitchy reported earlier, the Washington Post’s Philip Bump tried to call out Federalist senior editor David Harsanyi over the Post, along with a lot of other media outlets, not reporting the Hunter Biden laptop story. First of all, the Washington Post wasn’t given access to the hard drive data (which helps explain why CBS News wasn’t able to confirm the laptop story wasn’t Russian disinformation until last month). Why not report on the New York Post’s report? Because, stupid, you don’t report on something you haven’t confirmed yourself.

You didn't know that other outlets won't run a report on a Post scoop without confirming it themselves? You seem surprisingly underinformed about how actual journalism works, which I suppose isn't really a surprise.

— Philip Bump (@pbump) December 5, 2022

Pluribus editor Jeryl Bier decided to test that theory, running a search of the Washington Post’s archives for the phrase, “Washington Post has not independently confirmed.” The Post had no problem running with The Daily Beast’s story about Herschel Walker allegedly paying for his girlfriend’s abortion even though it wasn’t able to independently confirm it.

OK, but… "the Washington Post has not independently confirmed…" https://t.co/guDUKQb1aX pic.twitter.com/uFY6ZGgRxv

— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) December 5, 2022

And the New York Times apparently doesn’t know much about how journalism works either, seeing as it had no problem running with the Walker story or with sexual harassment allegations against Elon Musk. The Times had no problem running with stories by the Post and Buzzfeed without independently confirming them.