The Washington Post fails to learn from past experience.
Yesterday The Washington Post published their article Trump taps Kushner to lead a SWAT team to fix government with business ideas, and it’s another confabulation. They got an exclusive announcement, which is fine, but they used the glossy descriptions in it as if the pretty words were their own reporting.
What do I mean? Take the second paragraph from the article:
The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.
‘Nimble’? An office that doesn’t exist yet can’t be nimble. That’s a quote, not a fact. Even assuming that ‘nimble’ is their intention requires the assumption they don’t have ulterior motives. None of this is the same as ‘true’, and it’s a long slog away from reporting.
My favorite is that the office “…is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.” Really? They didn’t publish the announcement itself, so I can’t compare descriptions, but it seems unlikely that phrase was something the Post determined through reporting.
Past a point it moves from laziness to plagiarism. Or advocacy. But it’s not reporting. They’re perfectly free to quote all they want, but only if they acknowledge it.
The Post spent the entire Trump candidacy breathlessly and extensively transcribing the campaign’s quotes, leaks and press releases, filling out the top of every ridiculous story with that day’s unfounded and bogus claims. Their own reporting and fact-checking would be pushed down eight or ten paragraphs. I wondered if someone got extra points for driving the real reporting past the jump. Unless you followed stories far past most people’s patience, all you read in the Post was an uncritical rehash of Trump’s words, day after day.
I get that Trump is colorful, but this should be basic journalistic ethics. And there are real-world consequences to those choices. Just look at who’s President.
The Post talked about their mistakes after the election, and swore they had learned their lesson. Clearly not.
