The WaPo: Fake News

That story that Trump has instituted a list of “banned words” at the CDC?

The one the WaPo reported on?

You might as well be reading Buzzfeed.

The terms are “fetus,” “transgender,” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “evidence-based” and “science-based,” according to a story first reported on Friday in The Washington Post.

But Fitzgerald said in a series of tweets on Sunday said [Note to correspondents at PBS:  check your work.  Sic. Ed] there are “no banned words,” while emphasizing the agency’s commitment to data-driven science.

Oh, there was substitution suggested…:

A group of the agency’s policy analysts said senior officials at the CDC informed them about the banned words on Thursday, according to the Post’s report. In some cases, the analysts were reportedly given replacement phrases to use instead.

But in follow-up reporting, The New York Times cited “a few” CDC officials who suggested the move was not meant as an outright ban, but rather, a technique to help secure Republican approval of the 2019 budget by eliminating certain words and phrases.

In other words, it was internal PR.

I know a few reporters. I know they try hard to get facts, even partisan facts – sometimes even partisan facts that jostle their own partisanship – correct.

But people who believe the mainstream legacy media doesn’t operate from systematic political bias are starting to rank down there with moon landing deniers.

11 thoughts on “The WaPo: Fake News

  1. I’ve read that this “banned words” story came about from a non-serious discussion at a meeting at the CDC. An exaggerated version of the discussion was dutifully leaked to the press, where the “fake news” operation turned it into fake news. The MSM write about topics they do not understand and routinely violate the rules of journalism when it comes to slamming Trump. You can not believe anything they write on the Trump administration.

  2. Now, the WaPo doesn’t employ journalists. I know this because, if a journaist was told to write on this topic, he would have said to himself “Hmmm . . . The GOP has held congress since 2010. This means that Obama appointees at the CDC must have discussed the proper language to use when seeking appropriations from a GOP congress, just like Trump. That means I can compare what Obama’s people at the CDC did with what Trump’s people at the CDC did & give my readers actual information that they can use to make an informed judgment!”
    Nothing like this was attempted at the WaPo, thus reinforcing the idea that they are a “fake new” outlet.

  3. Not only fake news, but within hours after the story was first reported, I started seeing t-shirts with the “banned words” for sale on social media. I recommend wearing such t-shirts on snipe hunts.

  4. I think if I called up a random person at WaPo & told them Donald Trump shot J.R., The next day I would see the story in 96 point type on the WaPo’s front page. Democrats would unanimously demand Trump’s impeachment, citing the WaPo story & the impeccable reputation of the Washington Post.*
    N.B. in 1973 &74, the WaPo played patsy to an FBI administrator who wanted Nixon thrown out of office because he was denied a promotion.

  5. As they were saying on bumper stickers as far back as 1987, “Impeach Rather!” Glad that the veil is being lifted on the lamestream media.

  6. Gina Barecca, op-ed columnist for the Hartford Courant, has written an article on this, lambasting the Trump administration for causing social damage by banning these words while acknowledging that the Trump admin says they did no such thing. How can you deal with this level of idiocy? An paraphrased unnamed source versus a named source, and you accept the paraphrased unnamed source as the gold standard.
    Gina Barecca, idiot, is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut. That’s right, she teaches undergrads and grad students critical thinking and analytical skills.

  7. MP, it’s like the declaration that the tax cut is (hugely) unpopular. Preceded/Followed by an admission of all the good things that are in the bill.

  8. So it’s a style guide, like the one used by all journalists. Words aren’t ‘banned,’ they’re just not used unless absolutely necessary (which is why you never see the race of a minority criminal suspect stated, but the media will go to extremes to invent new classes such as White-Hispanic when essential to the narrative).

    https://writingexplained.org/ap-style/ap-style-race

  9. Back to the original point, it’s pretty crazy that CDC researchers apparently lived in such a bubble that their superiors felt the need to inform them that there were certain words that would set conservatives off and deny them funding. And being in the same bubble, it’s simultaneously hilarious that the Post didn’t catch on.

    Or appalling that they wouldn’t catch on.

    Love the reference to Cleveland, too. Of course, you couldn’t refer to them as the “Cleveland AL baseball team” or something. That would make too much sense.

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