This week the Washington Post published what can only be described as a complete slime job and what Paul McLeary at the Columbia Journalism Review described as a smear of Senator Barack Obama.
We’ve seen this kind of smear time and again. Under the guise of reporting allegations about Obama's supposed links to Islam, the Post goes about furthering the allegations instead of demonstrating that the evidence that Obama is secretly a practicing Muslim simply does not exist. Journalistic integrity? Hardly.
This is the second time in a week the Post has managed print
excellent examples of extraordinarily sloppy journalism. Last weekend, the Post published a
commentary Lib*er*tar*ian [sic] by Reason Magazine writers, Editor-in-Chief
Nick Gillespie and staff writer Matt Welch on the rise of Representative Ron
Paul. In the course of the piece, they
write:
When
conservatives feel comfortable mocking victims gunned down by
Clinton-era
attorney General Janet Reno’s FBI in Waco, Tex. In 1993,
it suggests
that a complacent and increasingly authoritarian establishment
feels
threatened.
Apparently desperate to attract readers, they make the ridiculous statement that slipped by the fact checkers at the Washington Post. Keep in mind, this was written by two, count them, two writers from Reason. “Increasingly?” When did conservatives become any more “authoritarian” or “establishment” than they’ve been for decades?
Now for the whopper. Exactly where is the evidence that the FBI gunned down anybody in Waco in 1993? It’s never been demonstrated by anyone despite the best attempts to push this conspiracy theory falsehood pushed by among others Dan Gifford in his “documentary” Waco: The Rules of Engagement. That particular piece of film-flam was later hyped by Michelle Malkin, generally known for her no-facts-needed- brand-of-journalism as pointed out here and of course by none other than, Reason Magazine in 1999.
In an attempt to discern where Gillespie and Welch found their information I placed a call to Gillespie. The call was not returned.
Keith Jeffreys
Cross posted at Docu-commentary and Keith Jeffreys.com
