23 October 2020 — FAIR
Bolivia’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party won a decisive victory in the country’s presidential elections on Sunday, with its candidate Luis Arce apparently winning by a large enough margin to avoid a runoff, likely achieving an absolute majority. The leading opposing candidate, neoliberal Carlos Mesa, and the right-wing unelected President Jeanine Áñez congratulated Arce on his victory. Continue reading
2 July 2020 — Children’s Health Defense
By Jeremy R. Hammond and the Children’s Health Defense Team
In November 2019, the Washington Post and other major news media accused Children’s Health Defense (CHD) of using Facebook advertisements to spread “misinformation” about vaccines. The basis for these accusations, which have since continued, is a study published in the prestigious medical journal Vaccine that named CHD as a top buyer of vaccine-related Facebook ads. What the media failed to inform the public, however, is that the government-funded authors of this study failed to identify even a single example of a Facebook ad from CHD that contained any misinformation.
5 March 2020 — FAIR
The Washington Post editorial board (11/11/19) stated as fact that Bolivian President Evo Morales “moved to falsify the results of the October 20 vote so as to hand him a first-round victory.”
President Evo Morales won re-election in Bolivia’s presidential election last October 20, as pre-election polls predicted. He received 47% of the vote in an election with 88% turnout. He beat his nearest rival by just over 10 percentage points, which meant a second round was not required.
24 August 2019 — Strategic Culture Foundation
Jeff Bezos is the owner of the daily newspaper in Washington DC, the Washington Post, which leads America’s news-media and their almost 100% support of (and promotions for) neoconservatism — American imperialism, or wars. This includes sanctions, coups, and military invasions, against countries that America’s billionaires want to control but don’t yet control — such as Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, Libya, and China.
7 April 2018 — FAIR
The White House made clear that Trump’s talk of pulling out of Syria was just talk (Independent, 4/4/18)–but not before numerous media figures expressed alarm that the illegal occupation might end.
At a rally in Cleveland last week, President Donald Trump said that the US will get out of Syria “very soon.” It is now clear that the 4,000 US troops currently occupying Syria (Washington Post, 10/31/17) will in fact stay in Syria (Independent, 4/4/18), even though keeping troops in another country in defiance of that country’s government is a violation of international law. Yet the very possibility of US withdrawal from Syria rendered apoplectic journalists who are convinced of the legitimacy of Washington’s domination of the country—international law be damned.
24 January 2018 — FAIR
The Washington Post (10/2/17) maintains that is unfair to compare the wealth of its owner with that of ordinary people.
The vaunted Washington Post fact-checking team (10/2/17) took a look at this assertion:
Bernie Sanders Claims the World’s Six Wealthiest People Have as Much Wealth as Half the Global Population
6 June 2017 — FAIR
The Washington Post (3/8/17) quoted former Ambassador Gerald Feierstein on the wisdom of selling Raytheon weapons to Saudi Arabia–without noting that Feierstein’s Middle East Institute is funded by both Saudi Arabia and Raytheon. (image: Middle East Institute)
In a piece for the Just Security blog (6/5/17) about the impact of weapons industry contributions on a Saudi arms vote, Ryan Goodman notes that “money also pollutes other policy spaces that influence congressional votes”—including the news media:
In March of this year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee invited former ambassador Gerald Feierstein—director of the Center for Gulf Affairs at the Middle East Institute—to speak about the situation in Yemen and about his views on the sale of US arms to the Saudis. As one might have anticipated from his interview in the Washington Post, Feierstein told the committee, “Accusations of war crimes leveled against Saudi and Coalition armed forces and threats to end arms sales to the Saudis have the potential to inflict long-lasting damage to these relationships.”
25 May 2017 — FAIR
Washington Post editorial (9/16/16)
For the third time in a year, the Washington Post has promoted the prosecution of Washington Post sources.
Last September, the Post controversially published “No Pardon for Edward Snowden” (9/16/16), an editorial calling for prosecution of the whistleblower who helped the paper win a Pulitzer Prize in 2014.
In the past weeks, two Post columnists have joined the Post editorial board in calling for Post sources to be jailed—this time in regard to the Post’s major scoop (5/16/17) about President Donald Trump leaking classified intelligence to Russian diplomats.
11 January 2017 — FAIR
The Washington Post (1/5/17) “factchecks” Julian Assange’s claims without either proving or disproving them.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Fox News, 1/3/17) again denied that the leaked e-mails he published during the election came from Russia—an assertion contradicted by many anonymous US intelligence officials. “We can say, we have said repeatedly over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government, and it is not a state party,” Assange told Sean Hannity.
9 December 2016 — FAIR
As the Hillary Clinton campaign slogged toward victory in the long primary campaign against Sen. Bernie Sanders, word came from WikiLeaks that it had scored a trove of hacked emails to and from the Democratic National Committee. Among other things, they proved that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, along with their organizations, had been working hand-in-glove to skew the primaries in Clinton’s favor.
5 December 2016 — Media Lens
In the wake of Brexit and Trump, ‘mainstream’ media have done the formerly unthinkable by focusing on media bias. The intensity of focus has been such that the Oxford Dictionaries have announced that ‘post-truth’ is their ‘Word of the Year 2016’.
‘Post-truth’ refers to ‘circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. Continue reading
15 August 2016 — FAIR
The Washington Post (8/10/16) published what has to be one of the most naked examples of projection ever displayed by a major American paper. The Post’s editorial board, in another effort to bash Russia, lumped its President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s increasingly autocratic ruler President Recep Tayyip Erdogan into a generic “strongman” category, and warned of their paranoia:
