The Washington Post has found themselves in yet another embarrassing situation, what with having to issue a “correction” to a story that dominated the election season news cycle:
This kind of mistake is beyond serious. There's zero accountability in major corporate media anymore, yet they continually insist they're the ones holding the line on the truth. And always remember what should scare you about the media is what *doesn't get exposed." pic.twitter.com/ceBaApCZQ8
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) March 15, 2021
The Washington Post’s false narrative was picked up and amplified by multiple major MSM outlets. But in all likelihood, no one will have to answer for it.
Nobody at WaPo will be held accountable for reporting fake quotes from anonymous sources attributed to the president of the United States that were completely made up because corporate media is a blatantly corrupt enterprise https://t.co/1wKEaihB0C
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 15, 2021
Well, apparently some people out there don’t seem to think it’s worth holding WaPo accountable for their egregious journalistic malpractice.
For what it’s worth, Mary Katharine Ham disagrees, and for what it’s worth, she’s exactly right:
For those in my timeline asking me if it really matters bc Trump bad anyway, YES, IT REALLY MATTERS! Quotes being correct matters A LOT. Don’t you see that’s the issue? If a reporter is so dead sure, that “Trump bad anyway,” he is less inclined to question or vet his own stories
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 15, 2021
If the entirety of the structure in a reporter’s industry is super duper sure that “Trump bad anyway,” it can lead to really bad incentives and bad reporting, as illustrated here!
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 15, 2021
No one likes the skunk at the garden party, but I’ll be damned if journalism doesn’t need far, far more of them to stink up the joint with their skepticism.
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 15, 2021
If this reads like a self-serving advertisement for ideological skunks, then you can call me Le Pew. ?
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 15, 2021
And don’t give me the “corrections are an example of the system working” stuff. Sometimes they are! Here, they’re coming in 3 mos later when they were outed by a recording & the correction & new story are designed to downplay as much as possible, not blare as loudly as original.
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 15, 2021
The story didn’t just need to be corrected; it needed to be retracted. If the Washington Post were serious about journalism, they’d retract it very, very publicly.
Of course, if the Washington Post were serious about journalism, they never would’ve published the story in the first place.
It’s amazing to me how many people don’t care about accuracy and truth anymore. pic.twitter.com/wOtijbayxP
— CCP IS ASSHOE (@noahsmom7) March 15, 2021