Philip Bump, a Washington Post columnist known for his attacks on conservatives, claimed Tuesday that Breitbart News provides “false” information — without providing a single example.
Bump was trying to explain the ongoing proliferation of conspiracy theories, such as those about the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). He contrasted such reporting to that of the Post — failing to mention its central role in false conspiracy theories such as “Russia collusion.”
Bump blamed “the fragmentation of communications systems,” i.e. the existence of alternative media in a free market, rather than an oligopoly dominated by the sanctioned editorial outlook of the left-of-center establishment. He also took shots at Twitter’s Elon Musk, who now competes with Post owner Jeff Bezos in media ownership as well as the race to expand private space travel.
Whatever Bump’s opinions about conspiracy theories, and the Post‘s innocence or guilt, he spread his own fake news in his opening (emphasis added):
An underrated component of Donald Trump’s success in the 2016 Republican primary was that he acted as a megaphone for the fringier elements of conservative media. Sites like Stephen K. Bannon’s Breitbart were elevating various far-right theories and stories, scooping up an audience that Fox News, then more constrained, was leaving on the table. Trump was a Breitbart reader and looped the site’s claims into his speeches and interviews. The right-wing fringe of the party — who also read Breitbart — responded by blanketing him with support.
Why? In part because they were frustrated that sitting elected officials and more mainstream outlets like Fox weren’t saying the things Breitbart was. There was an obvious reason for that: Much of what Breitbart offered was false or overheated or otherwise dishonest. And in the Republican establishment of 2015, when Trump announced, there was still a lingering belief that elected officials shouldn’t simply peddle conspiracy theories or misrepresent reality. That belief had eroded in the post-tea-party era, certainly, but it lingered.
Until Trump showed that abandoning it entirely offered a different set of rewards. In the same way that Breitbart and even fringier sites like Infowars gobbled up attention by appealing to people’s anti-institutional and conspiratorial sensibilities, candidates for office began doing the same. The nonsense trickled up and is now pervasive.
Most of Bump’s claims in the paragraphs above are simply his opinion; some observations, i.e. that Breitbart News has what could be called an “anti-institutional” bias, would hardly be disputed. But Bump’s claim that Breitbart News content is “false” is presented without evidence, because it is a claim he cannot actually support; it simply reflects his own bias and that of his intended audience.
In 2016, in the heat of the presidential campaign, Adam Gabbatt of the UK Guardian — one of the world’s foremost left-wing sites — decided to read Breitbart News — and only Breitbart News — for 48 hours to see what the fuss in establishment media was about.
He concluded:
But compared to the caps-lock screaming, the actual articles are quite benign. They could have been published on a liberal news site. Look at this one from Wednesday, reporting on the response of Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, to Bannon being hired by the Trump campaign.
“Mook: ‘Only Fitting For a Bully Like Trump To Hire a Bully To Run His Campaign’,” it reads.
Mook did say that. It’s true. The article itself is opinion-free. It could appear on the Guardian. It merely quotes Mook directly. A later article on the same subject quoted Mook more extensively, then included a response from Breitbart at the bottom. That’s essentially what any news site would have done.
That’s not to say Breitbart is objective. It just pushes its rightwing message with a surprising subtlety.
Gabbatt concluded Breitbart’s reporting was factual; the site’s bias emerged in headlines and story selection, not in its reporting.
Others who reviewed Breitbart News content at the time, amid intense scrutiny, came to similar conclusions. One exception was Yochai Benkler of Harvard, who told NPR about a single headline: “Jerry Brown Signs Bill Allowing Illegal Immigrants to Vote.” Benkler presented the headline as if it were intentional disinformation, since Brown had merely signed a “motor voter” law. But the headline was a simple error, and was changed at the time to read: “Jerry Brown Signs Bill That Could Let Illegal Aliens Vote.”
The “motor voter” bill did, in fact, result in thousands of thousands of people, including some non-citizens, being registered to vote at the California Department of Motor Vehicles ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. (Analysts later suggested that the “motor voter” law may have swung at lest one congressional seat toward Democrats, though they did not claim illegal voting was involved.)
Bump adds: “My writing this will be dismissed as ignorant of my own biases or as ignoring that, in their view, The Post similarly elevates false claims. But this simply isn’t true. The Post and other mainstream outlets hold ourselves to account for mistakes and strive to present information fairly and responsibly.”
The Post has made corrections — years later — to some “Russia collusion” stories, but has never held itself accountable for the overall narrative, which was false, though it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
In November 2016, the Post ran a story accusing several outlets, including the Drudge Report, of being part of a Russian propaganda operation. The paper later had to append an “Editor’s Note” disavowing its own article. A year later, Bump himself published another claim that the Drudge Report was linked to Russian propaganda, resulting in a rare public response by Drudge himself, mocking the idea. And then, of course, there was the defamation lawsuit that the Post settled with teenager Nick Sandmann, whom it smeared.
When it comes to “false or overheated or otherwise dishonest” reporting, the Post is a repeat offender, and its false reporting has seeded the establishment media with false narratives that have even been used to undermine the legitimacy of democratic elections.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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