Image by Don Hinchcliffe via Flickr Creative Commons https://www.flickr.com/photos/dionhinchcliffe/ License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Today, Erick Erickson has an interesting article at TheResurgent headlined If Only the Washington Post Were As Noble and Virtuous As It Claims. He lays out specific instances where the Washington Post credulously or dishonestly ran with stories that were designed either to help Democrats or hurt Republicans.

The Washington Post repeatedly ignored the Kermit Gosnell story as a “local crime story” until shamed into covering it and even now works to minimize the comments from Virginia legislators with a “conservatives pounce” angle. … The Washington Post that hounded George Allen across Virginia for the “macaca” comment and portrayed Ed Gillespie as a Trump white nationalist couldn’t be bothered to even dig into Ralph Northam’s yearbook until another media outlet did it. The Washington Post was quick to get the Covington Catholic school story wrong because it conformed to the world view of its reporters. The Washington Post reported James Comey requested more resources to beef up his Russia investigation days before he was fired. The FBI and Department of Justice both denied that report, but the Washington Post never bothered to correct the story.

The point in Erick’s article that I think requires exploring is this one:

The Washington Post pursued the Christine Blasey Ford allegations against Brett Kavanaugh in the name of believing all women, but now that the Lt. Governor of Virginia is accused of sexual impropriety has decided there are too many red flags to believe all women.

According to the Washington Post, a woman, who is now a college professor in California, approached them after the 2017 election. The Post investigated. They established that a sexual encounter happened (I wouldn’t call forced oral sex a relationship, but, then again, I’m not a Virginia Democrat). They couldn’t determine if coercion took place and they just dropped the story.

Here's the Washington Post's story on the sexual assault allegation against Fairfax, which he denies, and the Post's rationale for not running the storyhttps://t.co/iV0CqJ8GaJ pic.twitter.com/zInxDou6Cd — Katherine Miller (@katherinemiller) February 4, 2019

Compare and contrast this with how they handled the spurious and nonsensical allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. Not just the ones from Christine Ford, but the way the parade of lies peddled by Michael Avenatti and whazzername were handled. They couldn’t find anyone else, anywhere, who made similar allegations against Kavanaugh and yet they relentlessly pursued them.

This is not to say the Post shouldn’t have covered Ford’s fabulism, it was news and they were bound to. But once they’d reached the point where her story didn’t even rise to the level of he-said-she-said, using the Fairfax rule they should have said, “nothing to see here folks.”

They didn’t. And there is a reason why. This is from one of their reporters, Ron Jeremy lookalike, Dave Weigel

Dave Weigel, right, talks with Politico’s Jake Shafer (left). (Politics and Prose/Youtube)

Something something reporters don’t root for a side something something. pic.twitter.com/x7tMSPTO4F — Courtney (@CShadegg) February 4, 2019

Seriously, a Washington Post reporter is asking if Fairfax could sue because he’s just being accused of forcing a young woman to treat him to oral sex? Where does he think he works? But it gives a glimpse and what is going on inside the Post’s newsroom as they are confronted with the incontrovertible fact that they consciously sandbagged credible allegations of sexual assault against Fairfax.

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