In an op-ed published Wednesday, Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin expressed her support for the Biden administration to fact-check the White House press corps.
“The lesson here for the administration is to debunk and rebut a false Republican-driven narrative quickly. As they do with Covid-19 hearings, showering reporters with data rather than debating an issue on Republican terms generally works better,” Rubin writes.
“It is now also incumbent on the media to review its coverage and come clean with viewers and readers. When its breathless coverage turns out to be deeply misleading, it should explain how and why they got it wrong,” she added.
Rubin’s insinuation that the government ought to be the arbiter of truth is very much representative of how the left views the relationship between media and those in power.
A month ago, House Democrats sent letters to Big Tech CEOs and 12 cable news outlets demanding that the companies cease all business activities with right-leaning organizations. The Energy and Commerce Committee hosted a hearing on “disinformation and extremism” that week.
Rubin was specifically referring to the ongoing border crisis. Regardless of the fact that politicians on both sides of the aisle have voiced concern over the surge of migrants, Rubin put forth that “there has been no surge of arrivals outside the normal fluctuation of migration.”
“We’re only in March, and the border usually peaks for illegal crossings in April and May,” Federalist Political Editor John Davidson said on Wednesday. “So we’re already seeing record numbers of unaccompanied minors in federal custody right now, some 17,000 in just March. We’re going to see this increase day over day, week over week, and probably peak in late May.”
The declaration by The Washington Post writer comes a week after the left-wing outlet corrected its erroneous article on a phone call between then-President Donald Trump and Georgia secretary of state chief investigator Francis Watson. WaPo writer Michelle Boorstein also misquoted an excerpt from scholar Ryan T. Anderson’s book “When Harry Became Sally” last week.
Rubin and The Washington Post are free to editorialize and tweet with false information, while, in her view, the conservative media ought to face death by a thousand cuts.
If Rubin seeks to have the government fact-check the media, there is no doubt the Washington Post should be the first outlet in line for thorough vetting.
Alas, it is not the job of the government to fact-check the media. It’s the job of the media to fact-check the government, and hold those in power accountable. Rubin misses the whole point completely.
