By Ben Wetmore
August 10, 2021
-The Gateway Pundit
This article is cross-posted at the Gateway Pundit’s Fact Check Bureau: TGPFactCheck.com
- WashPost makes vaccine resistance out to be advancing the evil agenda of the violent militias that blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City
- Quotes one of the most discredited sources on domestic politics possible: the Southern Poverty Law Center
- No proof of violence except for events 25 years ago, but still tries to fearmonger about alleged militia’s fashion choices at a singalong in Buffalo
OUR RATING: Trash Journalism, aka the Daily Beast.
Indicted Outlet: Razzan Nakhlawi | Washington Post | Link | Archive | 8/7/21
If you hesitate on getting the vaccine, you’re basically Timothy McVeigh and likely to blow up federal buildings, according to the Washington Post.
This is what counts as news apparently these days: specious accusations of vague groups of people who are ‘getting together’ with one another. As long as its validated by a shameless extreme left-wing fundraising group noted for falsifying its data, it’s fit to print.
This WashPost reporter covers ‘National Security’ if you want another laugh. [1]
Major Violations:
- Creating False Connections
- Smearing
- Opinion as Fact
- Extreme View Slide
- Some people say
- Bad Sources
- Guilty Grouping
The Washington Post is filled with more staid left-wing opinion pieces these days and far less of what anyone would call ‘news’ – but this is in the news section. It’s supposed to be factual, objective, and providing readers with allegedly useful information.
Instead, Reporter Razzan Nakhlawi writes a polemic designed to malign those who resist the current vaccine mandates. She does so by trying to provide an almost non-existent link and connection to violent militia groups.
Since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, this has become part of Journalism 101 whenever referring to anything on the right: link it to the militias so you can link it to domestic terrorism.
The leader of a far-right “patriot” group in western New York stood on top of a truck trailer speaking to a crowd of about a hundred people in a quiet suburb of Buffalo. They had gathered in June to support a Buffalo Bills player who had refused to take the coronavirus vaccine, even at the cost of his career. Charles Pellien, head of the New York Watchmen, spoke proudly of a constellation of groups coalescing around their shared beliefs.
“We’re all coming together,” Pellien said. “That’s why this crowd is so big.”
Nakhlawi is presenting opinion as fact. She needs a way to group militias and anti-vaxxers together, so she takes one random person you’ve probably never heard of, and quotes him to establish this supposed fact. There is nothing to support this fact at this point in the story other than his opinion that “we’re all coming together.” Notice that his quote doesn’t even mention the various groups that she is trying to lump together. He just says the royal “we” and the reader is left to imply that must mean all the groups the Washington Post reporter is trying to denigrate.
