It should come as no surprise that the establishment media routinely pushes the left’s agenda through biased stories, but it’s ridiculous how far away from truth some alleged news outlets have wandered. Recently, Liberty Nation’s Kit Perez warmly welcomed CNN to the world of fiction and Graham Noble couldn’t help but notice that the Washington Post was dabbling in satire.
In a story published April 3, the Washington Post claimed that Blackwater founder and apparent unofficial ambassador to Russia Erik Prince worked to establish a back-channel communication link between Moscow and President Trump. The claim makes an interesting – if not particularly well developed – bit of spy fiction, but it lacks the credibility required to be called news. The article not only claims that a meeting took place without offering any evidence that it did, but also assumes a slew of connections between Mr. Prince and the Trump administration and makes some potentially damning assumptions about what must have been discussed at the alleged meeting. How do the WaPo writers substantiate these claims? They cite unnamed officials from various governments – who must have been present at the meeting to know what was said – as their sources. The problem, of course, is that the writers don’t give any actual evidence to prove their claims. What they do give, however, is a quote from White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and another from someone they refer to as a Prince spokesperson:
“We are not aware of any meetings, and Erik Prince had no role in the transition,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary.
A Prince spokesman said in a statement: “Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete fabrication. The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?”
Despite their experience in the political fiction genre, Washington Post writers haven’t quite figured out how to keep their plot going with supporting evidence. Perhaps we should cut them some slack, as getting a work of fiction published through traditional means is not easy. On the other hand, perhaps the Washington Post should reconsider their goals as a news outlet. The American people don’t just need unbiased news coverage on all relevant topics; they need it to cover actual topics. The Washington Post needs to leave the fiction to real fiction writers and focus instead on shedding light on actual news.
Ironically WaPo’s new tagline, Democracy dies in darkness, does carry somewhat of a fictional ring to it. No wonder the folks over at the Wall Street Journal couldn’t resist poking fun at it. Perhaps, the Post needs a sequel: “Democracy dies in darkness when all stories are based on unnamed sources.” Now that might be a good one to wrap their masthead around.
