Earlier this year, veteran Post reporter Bob Woodward, who of course became famous for his Watergate coverage, blasted the media and the young reporters at his own paper for their falling for “Russiagate,” the hoax that President Donald Trump was working with the Russians. Woodward called the Steele dossier, the basis for that story, garbage, and told the Columbia Journalism Review that the media had to “walk down the painful road of introspection.” Woodward then said this: “To be honest, there was a lack of curiosity on the part of the people at the Post about what I had said, why I said this, and I accepted that and I didn’t force it on anyone.”
At the Post the problem is not as much a lack of curiosity as much as the desire to push a certain narrative. This is where my personal experience with the paper comes in.
On September 16, 2018, Washington Post writer Emma Brown reported that Christine Blasey Ford, a psychologist in California, accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Kavanaugh had been nominated for the Supreme Court and was about to be voted out of committee. Ford claimed that he had sexually assaulted her in high school in 1982.
Ford also claimed that I was in the room where the assault allegedly took place and that I witnessed everything before jumping in and breaking it up. As I wrote in my book, The Devil’s Triangle, the entire thing was a set-up. The Devil’s Triangle is written by me, someone whose family has been Washingtonians for more than 100 years, whose grandfather played for the Washington Nationals, whose father worked at National Geographic, a DC institution. I was at the center of one of the most amazing political battles in the last half-century. The Washington Post never reviewed my book or ever mentioned it.
That’s not a lack of curiosity. That’s the kind of willful ignorance that loses a paper $500 million. Ask yourself this: in identical circumstances say, thirty years ago, with Bob Woodward more actively involved, would the Post have reviewed The Devil’s Triangle?
Related: Obama staffer Ben Rhodes on reporters: “they literally know nothing”.
And:
It's long been clear that the scientists who first told Fauci they strongly believed COVID came from a lab leak – only to sign his letter *days later* calling anyone who believed that stupid and deranged — deliberately lied to and manipulated the public. It's a massive scandal: https://t.co/owFrdJAnNF
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 27, 2023