It is time that the Washington Post was given a new name. Why? Because they have consistently misrepresented facts under the guise of “news” which savages the Romney campaign, then retracted the story when bloggers or websites uncover the truth.
The latest lie was propounded by WaPo reporter Tom Hamburger on June 21. He wrote:
During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
These same claims were used in an Obama campaign ad. But in a transparent attempt to make it look as though the Post cared about the truth, WaPo “fact checker” Glenn Kessler acknowledged that the facts were wrong in the ad, but didn’t acknowledge the Post‘s complicity. First, he “chastised” the Obama campaign:
Regarding the outsourcing claims, we have frowned on these before. The Obama campaign rests its case on three examples of Bain-controlled companies sending jobs overseas. But only one of the examples — involving Holson Burns Group — took place when Romney was actively managing Bain Capital.
Regarding the other claims, concerning Canadian electronics maker SMTC Manufacturing and customer service firm Modus Media, the Obama campaign tries to take advantage of a gray area in which Romney had stepped down from Bain — to manage the Salt Lake City Olympics — but had not sold his shares in the firm. We had previously given the Obama campaign Three Pinocchios for such tactics.
The Modus Media case is also not an example of shipping jobs overseas. The company closed one plant in California and transferred the jobs to North Carolina, Washington and Utah. At the same time, it opened an unrelated plant in Mexico. The Obama campaign once trumpeted the fact that we had dinged a conservative Super PAC for making the same leap in logic.
And then Kessler absolves the Post:
Tom Hamburger of The Washington Post reported Friday that some Bain companies earned money in part by helping other companies subcontract work overseas. That is an interesting area of inquiry but not the same as saying [Romney] was a corporate raider who ‘shipped jobs to China and Mexico.’
So now getting the facts wrong is called an “interesting area of inquiry?”
It only requires a simple change in the Post‘s name to clarify their hamhanded attempts to besmirch Romney or other Republicans: they shall, to this writer, henceforth be referred to as the Washington Post-Hoc.
After all, if they must always explain their nefarious efforts after the deed has been done, the name seems singularly appropriate.
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