The Washington Post made a massive correction this week to a January report about a phone call between then-President Donald Trump and a Georgia elections investigator, as the liberal paper admitted multiple quotes attributed to Trump based on an anonymous source were inaccurate.
The NY Post reports the corrected story was a hot topic on cable news and talk shows that helped spread the Post’s flawed report and media watchdogs feel it points to larger problems with agenda-driven anonymous sources and liberal outlets that rush to “confirm” them.
“This ‘correction’ is more than a correction, it calls into question the pervasive reliance of the liberal media on anonymous sources in order to attack and undermine Republicans,” Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News.
The Hill media columnist and Fox News contributor Joe Concha feels anonymous sources do exist but are often simply political operatives looking to push their preferred narrative regardless of facts.
The Post initially reported Trump had told an official working in Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to “find the fraud” in the state, which he lost narrowly to Joe Biden, and that she would be a “national hero” if she did.
Trump says Washington Post misquoting of his call with Ga. official was ‘media travesty’
However, a newly emerged recording of the Dec. 23 call found he didn’t use those words. Instead, Trump said she would be “praised” when the “right answer comes out” and encouraged her to closely examine mail-in ballots in heavily blue Fulton County.
Concha added the original story typically gets significantly more coverage than the correction. Grabien Media founder Tom Elliott put together a montage of media outlets promoting the Post’s now-debunked “find the fraud” tidbit.
CNN even boasted on air that its own reporter “confirmed” the bogus details of the call.
“Will any of these ‘reporters’ offer corrections? If not, are they ‘reporters,’ or activists? Yes, these questions are rhetorical,” Elliott wrote.
Washington Examiner columnist Becket Adams wrote the “real scandal” is so many news organizations claimed to confirm the phony story with their own anonymous sources. CNN wasn’t alone in confirming the Post’s since-corrected bombshell, as Vox, NBC News, ABC News and USA Today were among the other mainstream outlets to do so.
DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall feels the Post’s correction “is the kind of media malpractice that causes so much of the citizenry to distrust the media” at large.
McCall feels the Post should consider revealing the identity of the source who provided inaccurate information.
Glenn Greenwald blasts liberal media for 'deceitful playbook' of 'corroborating' false storieshttps://t.co/j3t4rgzniJ
— John Weant (@Marine0141) March 17, 2021
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