Back in 2019, the Washington Post published a story about Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Reason’s Eric Boehm writes:
When The Washington Post published a 2019 campaign trail feature about then-presidential hopeful Kamala Harris’ close relationship with her sister, it opened with a memorable anecdote in which Harris bizarrely compared the rigors of the campaign trail to…life behind bars.
And then proceeded to laugh—at the idea of an inmate begging for a sip of water.
Boehm’s article has the full exchange.
Which is helpful, because if you search the Washington Post for it, you’ll come up empty:
The Washington Post's 2019 profile of Kamala Harris and her sister Maya contained an incredibly cringe-worthy scene in which Harris seemed to mock inmates and compared the difficulties of campaigning to life in prison.
It was awful.
And now it's gone.https://t.co/F8LioFu3WM
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 22, 2021
The scene was a brilliant bit of reporting and writing. It was a mask-slipping moment that seemed to perfectly capture Harris' warped sense of justice and lack of basic human dignity—all in just a few hundred words.
And now it's gone. https://t.co/F8LioFu3WM
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 22, 2021
No wonder honest journalism is so hard to come by these days. When someone accidentally does it, it gets flushed down the memory hole.
I asked the Post why the Harris feature was updated to remove quotes that showed the VP in an unflattering light.
The answer? "We repurposed and updated some of our strong biographical pieces about both political figures….The original story remains available in print."
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 22, 2021
The Post, of course, can do whatever it pleases with its own content. It can update or rearrange or delete any detail in any story at any time.
But would it have "updated" a months-old feature to remove an inartful comment from Mike Pence? I doubt it. And that's the problem.
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 22, 2021
Recommended
Legacy media has a trust problem right now — lots of Americans seem to believe that "the media" is playing for one political team. Editorial decisions like this one, even if unintentional, feed into that perception.https://t.co/F8LioFu3WM
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 22, 2021
Well, for what it’s worth, there was nothing unintentional about this.
Wait so WaPo purged a *two-year-old story* of an unflattering anecdote, and their response is "the original story remains available in print"? https://t.co/VXhskzMYMK
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) January 22, 2021
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) January 22, 2021
"Now where'd I put that Maya Harris profile?" pic.twitter.com/FrTBXxyUw6
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) January 22, 2021
So this is journalism, huh?
When exactly did WaPo rewrite its Harris story to memory-hole the joke she told about prisoners? https://t.co/1Pwxp3a21J
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) January 22, 2021
I can’t imagine a justification for a newspaper deleting parts of old stories. Adding to them surreptitiously is also dubious, but not as bad. https://t.co/LC6puEqx09
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) January 22, 2021
Pathetic, WaPo. But then, that’s just how you guys roll, isn’t it?
Democracy dies in memory-holing inconvenient reporting about now-favored politicians.
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) January 22, 2021
***
Update:
The @washingtonpost has now added a link (on "earlier published version") to the original 2019 Kamala Harris profile in its updated version of the profile that removed an embarrassing anecdote. Link to archived version included here:https://t.co/bLwvSo6Adc pic.twitter.com/WDZ7ugVpCG
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) January 22, 2021
I'm not calling for anyone to be fired but I will say that if I ran a newspaper, this would be a fireable offense. https://t.co/B84ONctpCB
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) January 22, 2021
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