Washington Post

MRC president L. Brent Bozell III had his Letter to the Editor published in Saturday's Washington Post. He objected to liberal Post columnist E.J. Dionne trying to make a mountain out of the molehill of one liberal bishop granting an interview to one liberal Catholic magazine. Dionne did not note that this same bishop, so nervous about the bishops being used by political partisans "far to the right," delighted liberals by attacking the Paul Ryan budget.

Dionne wrote the conservative bishops who are "eagerly picking fights with President Obama....have angered more progressive Catholics and led to talk among the disgruntled faithful of the need for a 'Catholic spring' to challenge the hierarchy’s shift to the right." So now the Catholic hierarchy is like Arab dictators? Brent wrote in reply:

In a May 25 front-page story headlined "Romney's outreach meets hostile reception," Washington Post staff writers Nia-Malika Henderson and Philip Rucker passed off a political activist by the name of Madaline G. Dunn as simply being a 78-year-old "protester" who has lived in West Philadelphia for 50 years and was "personally offended" by the fact that "Romney would visit her neighborhood."

"It's not appreciated here.... It's absolutely denigrating for him to come in here and speak his garbage," Henderson and Rucker quoted Dunn. Yet what the Post staff writers left out is that Dunn is no otherwise-apolitical resident who happened to be on hand to react to Romney's campaign swing. She's a seasoned political activist, having served as the legislative committee chair for the Philadelphia Congress of the National Congress of Black Women (PCNCBW).

White House spokesman Jay Carney on Wednesday lectured journalists to not believe the "BS" that Barack Obama is a reckless spender. Rather than investigate Carney's assertions, or the sketchy basis for them, reporters have either embraced the talking points or allowed them to go unchallenged.

Chris Matthews on Wednesday repeated the "fact" that federal spending "is rising at the slowest rate" in 60 years. The network evening and morning shows have failed to investigate this highly questionable assertion from MarketWatch's Rex Nutting. The Washington Post, however, gave this claim "three Pinocchios" and chided Carney, "The data in the article are flawed, and the analysis lacks context."

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney during the previous day's press gaggle cited a bogus MarketWatch report hysterically claiming "Obama Spending Binge Never Happened."

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler looked at Carney's comments as well as Rex Nutting's article Friday and gave their assertions three Pinocchios:

"A House committee chairman charged Wednesday that the CIA and Defense Department jeopardized national security by cooperating too closely with filmmakers producing a movie on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden," reported Larry Margasak of the Associated Press yesterday. "[Rep. Peter] King [R-N.Y.] referred to documents obtained by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act request. He said the filmmakers received 'extremely close, unprecedented and potentially dangerous collaboration' from the Obama administration."

Margasak's story on Rep. Peter King's hearing investigating the matter was printed in today's Washington Post, but editors buried the item on page C4, deep in the heart of the Style section, which typically reports on fashion, music, and the entertainment industry. Noted Margasak:

In her May 22 "Singles File" -- described as "A weekly playlist for the listener with a one-track mind" -- Washington Post music critic Allison Stewart suggested readers might want to download the new single "Reagan" by rap artist Killer Mike.

"The Obama years haven't been fruitful ones for sociopolitically minded rappers, at least until now," Stewart gushed, noting that the Atlanta musician "dusts off some late '80s ghosts on this unblinking and brutal track from his newest [album] 'R.A.P. Music.'" But when you check out the lyrics of the track, and read his May 21 interview with HipHopDX.com, what really becomes clear is Killer Mike's "unblinking" apology for the late terror-sponsoring Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

Somehow, The Washington Post always picks Sundays for articles on how God makes mistakes. Screaming at the top of Sunday’s paper was a picture of a little girl getting her head buzzed with the headline “TRANSGENDER AT FIVE,” and “She first declared she was a boy when she was 2 years old. Her parents brushed it off by slowly concluded this wasn’t just a phase." This wasn't news. It was propaganda, and if you don't like it, they dare you to cancel your subscription.

The article, by liberal Post columnist (and former reporter) Petula Dvorak, naturally referred to how everyone has grown to know “transgenders” from Chaz Bono on “Dancing with the Stars.” It also repeatedly rejected scientific fact in referring to this troubled girl in male terms like “he” and “his” – including the “instructional” video the Post put online.

Three NATO protesters were in court Saturday facing terrorism charges for allegedly planning to bomb Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house.

The Washington Post published an article about this Saturday and mysteriously waited until the third paragraph to inform readers the trio were Occupy activists:

We all know that the radical left has no sense of humor, but does the Washington Post have to encourage them by devoting stories that legitimize their absurd petitions? The Saturday Post's Style front-page devoted 22 paragraphs to two Occupy D.C. protesters who ginned up a petition effort against, of all things, Fojol Brothers, a popular D.C. street food truck whose employees don turbans and wear fake mustaches as they serve up ethnic cuisine.

At time of the article's publication, the petition -- which objected to an "Orientalist and racist appropriation of South Asian and East African cultures" -- had a paltry 950-some signatures on Change.org, a left-wing petition site. What's more, Post staffer Tim Carman waited until paragraph 14 to disclose that petition author Arturo J. Viscarra's comrade-in-arms/roommate Drew Franklin "is the son of the Post’s Travel editor Zofia Smardz." 

When it comes to opposition research, there is often only one difference between a candidate’s vicious negative ad and an “investigative” news report: the undeserved patina of media “objectivity” and respectability.

Take the Washington Post’s Jason Horowitz 5,400-word “expose” on how Mitt Romney may have pinned a boy down and cut his hair, in 1965. 1965. That’s almost a half-century ago. Even if every detail were accurate – and they weren’t – a journalist could pull a muscle in the hyper-aggressive attempt to make it somehow relevant to the present moment, or even the recent past.

"I’ve never understood the opposition to gay marriage." That's the confession with which Sally Quinn -- the agnostic, liberal editor of the Washington Post's "On Faith" religion section-- began her May 11 column. But rather than humbly seek an understanding of the religious faith that informs the beliefs of millions of American Christians, Quinn launched into an attack on them by comparing them to opponents of the racial integration of the nation's public schools.

History, Quinn insists, is on the side of the eventual societal and legal acceptance of same-sex marriage, and those who stand in the way will one day be haunted by it, living their lives knowing how wretched they were to oppose progress in the first place:

Fox News's Bill O'Reilly on Friday lambasted the Washington Post for its pathetic hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

"If while Governor of Massachusetts, Romney shaved Barney Frank's head, then you might have a story. But a prep school prank?" incredulously asked O'Reilly. "The Romney story means nothing, period" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

Thursday's CBS Evening News and Friday's CBS This Morning spotlighted the Washington Post's reporting on the accusation that Mitt Romney supposedly bullied a high school classmate almost 50 years ago. Evening News anchor Scott Pelley trumpeted how "what [Romney] said about it today made it relevant again." Political director John Dickerson touted how "the reporting of the story seems pretty solid."

Correspondent Jan Crawford reported on the Romney issue on the evening and morning newscasts. During the Thursday report, Crawford highlighted how one former classmate of Romney's labeled the alleged incident an "assault and battery." The following morning, she did contrast the allegation with President Obama's admitted drug use during his high school years and President Clinton claiming he tried marijuana, but "didn't inhale."

If you doubted where many journalists stand on gay marriage, don’t. The Newspaper Guild, which is part of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), joined with other unions, such as the AFL-CIO, in expressing its support for Obama on homosexual marriage. President Larry Cohen of the CWA stated: 

 "The Communications Workers of America stands with the President and those who support equality and human rights.”

Friday's off-lead New York Times story by Mark Landler and Jeff Zeleny portrayed a triumphant Obama and his likely November opponent Mitt Romney on the defensive after Obama's announcement that he now supports gay marriage: "Obama Campaign Pushes the Issue Of Gay Marriage – Romney Avoids Subject – Biden Said to Apologize Over Comment That Hastened Action."

As the president traveled to the West Coast on Thursday, where in Seattle he said Americans should have the chance to succeed “no matter who you love,” his presumptive challenger, Mitt Romney, and Republican leaders in Congress, tried, with limited success, to steer the focus of the presidential campaign back to the nation’s sluggish economy.

At the end of a full report on Friday's NBC Today, based on a Washington Post hit piece that accused Mitt Romney of bullying of a gay high school classmate, correspondent Peter Alexander admitted the story may be false: "NBC News isn't naming the student who was allegedly bullied....Late last night, his sister told NBC News that his portrayal in the Washington Post story is 'factually incorrect'..."

Despite that important detail, the network morning show still decided to promote the accusations. At the top of the show, co-host Ann Curry teased: "Prep school bully? Mitt Romney responds to a report that as a teenager he led a bullying incident of a classmate who later came out as gay....Could an incident that happened nearly 50 years ago impact the presidential race?"

It is customary when a newspaper makes an after-publication correction or change to an article for it to notify readers that an alteration has taken place.

Some time after the Washington Post published a 5000-word hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney Thursday, a key edit was made to the article without such a notification.

The original piece mentioned the following:

For months, the Obama-loving media have been carping and whining about all the money going to conservative Super PACs in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling back in 2010.

Yet as you can see from the following segment on MSNBC's Martin Bashir show Thursday, the press are giddy over the prospect the president will raise up to $15 million at actor George Clooney's campaign event later this evening (video follows with transcript and commentary):

If the people who run the Washington Post Company need an archetypal example of why their newspaper publishing segment is in so much financial trouble (as found here: a $22.6 million first-quarter 2012 loss following on the heels of an $18.2 million loss for all of 2011) and is bleeding customers (per the Audit Board of Circulations, the paper's daily and Sunday circulation dropped by 7.8% and 15.7%, respectively, during the year ended March 31), they only need wonder why the paper's editors tasked Jason Horowitz, with help from Julie Tate, to produce what turned into a 5,400-word writeup ("Mitt Romney’s prep school classmates recall pranks, but also troubling incidents") on Mitt Romney's high school years in the mid-1960s which appeared Thursday.

One can tell by the headline alone that it's an attempt at a hit piece. Horowitz led with the most damning incident he could find, and somehow gave it anti-homosexual overtones:

Yesterday morning, the Washington Post published a drawing by Tom Toles in which the liberal cartoonist depicts a minister marrying two men, with the speech bubble reading, "If anyone here objects to the marriage of these two men, speak up now because opponents are aging and dying off and soon won't matter anymore..."

In his trademark depiction of himself in the corner reacting to the graphic, Toles depicts himself asking "Is it okay to yell 'Hurry Up'?" So to borrow from the former Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson (Fla.),  does Tom Toles want same-sex marriage opponents to "die quickly"? [Cartoon depicted below page break]

The Obama Palace Guard is waging a losing battle to suppress the truth in a new ad from Americans for Prosperity, which explains how more than $2 billion in “stimulus” money went to foreign companies.

The “Wasteful Spending” ad, airing in 8 states with a media buy of $6.1 million, has also drawn criticism from the self-styled arbiters of political truth at the Washington Post.

You can imagine why: Obama promised the “stimulus” would “create or save” millions of American jobs, but with election day now less than six months away and millions more Americans jobless than before Obama took office, an ad questioning why Obama sent tax dollars to foreign companies really undermines the  campaign's efforts to distract people.

Imagine President Barack Obama leaning hard into Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, pressing him to support a piece of legislation or, say, introduce a budget bill that has been MIA for the past three years. Obama is a real go getter and has been burning up the phone lines until late at night to convince legislators to support him. He even invites a number of people from Capitol Hill to join him for rounds of golf where he continues the art of persuasion.

Hard to believe that fantasy? Well, that is what the Washington Post opinion writer Richard Cohen is fervently wishing for. Cohen's magic genie wish, inspired by the newly published Robert Caro book, The Passage of Power, is that Obama will do a complete U-turn on his introverted, hands-off personality and become like Lyndon B. Johnson. Here is Cohen going into flights of fantasy on this topic in his latest column with the somewhat less than ringing endorsement title, What Obama doesn’t know about being president:

Yesterday I noted how two Washington Post reporters, Andrew Higgins and Keith Richburg, studiously refused to tag Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng as a "human rights activist." Curious about whether the Post has ever described him as such in its reporting, I did a Nexis search.

What I found was that at no time in the past few weeks has Chen -- whose work included shedding a spotlight on forced abortions in China -- ever been described by a Post reporter as a "human rights activist" or "human rights advocate." Curiously, however, the Post editorial board has directly and indirectly labeled Chen as one:

Last August, Politico revealed that the Obama campaign intended to make Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney "a sort of political Gordon Gekko" if he won the nomination.

Right out of that playbook, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Monday compared Romney to the financial villain of the '80s movie classic "Wall Street" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Fifty-six percent of Virginians approve of Republican Bob McDonnell's job as governor and 49 percent believe the Old Dominion is on the right track. That contrasts with a 47 percent average approval rating for President Obama and an average of 32.7 percent of Americans who believe the country is on the "right track."

Yet the Washington Post chose to spin the polling numbers as a negative, noticing a downward trend from previous numbers and attributing the shift to "a contentious legislative session that drew large protests and national ridicule to the state Capitol."

On Monday’s front page, The Washington Post promoted “liberal hero” Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat looking to retake the “Ted Kennedy seat” in the Senate. “Stakes high as liberal hero tries to unseat GOP senator,” read the headline. On Sunday, the Post’s Chris Cillizza said Warren had the “Worst Week in Washington” for her muddled answers to claiming she was of Native American heritage in professor jobs for a decade.

But it wasn’t the “worst week” in the Post – they ran no news story on the controversy until Monday, but in this Karen Tumulty story, it was completely buried until paragraph twenty:

"Russia's top military officer told a conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials that Russia would mount a preemptive strike on U.S.-led NATO missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe if Washington goes ahead with its plan to build a missile shield," the Associated Press has reported.

The Washington Post carried the 5-paragraph story, but buried it on page A6 of the May 4 paper under the headline, "Military ups the ante on missile defense."