To hear the Washington Post tell the tale, they did not scrub previous content that proved to be unflattering to Vice President Kamala Harris, they simply “repurposed and updated” the information.
And still, the legacy media insists that it’s a pillar of integrity — despite being one of the least trusted institutions in society.
Reason Magazine’s Eric Boehm wrote a piece titled, “The Washington Post Memory-Holed Kamala Harris’ Bad Joke About Inmates Begging for Food and Water,” focused on a 2019 profile of Harris and her sister Maya the newspaper did.
In tweeting his article, Boehm said the Post effort “contained an incredibly cringe-worthy scene in which Harris seemed to mock inmates and compared the difficulties of campaigning to life in prison. It was awful. And now it’s gone.”
The Washington Post’s 2019 profile of Kamala Harris and her sister Maya contained an incredibly cringe-worthy scene in which Harris seemed to mock inmates and compared the difficulties of campaigning to life in prison.
It was awful.
And now it’s gone.https://t.co/F8LioFu3WM
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 22, 2021
Boehner noted in his article the 2019 campaign trail feature about then-presidential hopeful Kamala Harris’ close relationship with her sister “opened with a memorable anecdote in which Harris bizarrely compared the rigors of the campaign trail to…life behind bars.”
“And then proceeded to laugh — at the idea of an inmate begging for a sip of water,” he wrote. “It was an extremely cringeworthy moment, even by the high standards set by Harris’ failed presidential campaign. But now that Harris is vice president, that awful moment has seemingly vanished from the Post’s website after the paper ‘updated’ the piece earlier this month.”
In a follow-up tweet, Boehm characterized the now missing scene as “a brilliant bit of reporting and writing.”
“It was a mask-slipping moment that seemed to perfectly capture Harris’ warped sense of justice and lack of basic human dignity — all in just a few hundred words. And now it’s gone,” he added.
The scene was a brilliant bit of reporting and writing. It was a mask-slipping moment that seemed to perfectly capture Harris’ warped sense of justice and lack of basic human dignity—all in just a few hundred words.
And now it’s gone. https://t.co/F8LioFu3WM
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 22, 2021
Of course, there could be a perfectly good excuse for this, and like a good journalist, Boehm inquired with the Post as to why the incriminating quotes were mow MIA.
The paper replied: “We repurposed and updated some of our strong biographical pieces about both political figures….The original story remains available in print.”
I asked the Post why the Harris feature was updated to remove quotes that showed the VP in an unflattering light.
The answer? “We repurposed and updated some of our strong biographical pieces about both political figures….The original story remains available in print.”
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 22, 2021
Getting serious, Boehm laid out a good case for why so few trust the media today.
“The Post, of course, can do whatever it pleases with its own content,” he said. “It can update or rearrange or delete any detail in any story at any time. But would it have ‘updated’ a months-old feature to remove an inartful comment from Mike Pence? I doubt it. And that’s the problem.”
“Legacy media has a trust problem right now — lots of Americans seem to believe that ‘the media’ is playing for one political team, he continued. “Editorial decisions like this one, even if unintentional, feed into that perception.”
Legacy media has a trust problem right now — lots of Americans seem to believe that “the media” is playing for one political team. Editorial decisions like this one, even if unintentional, feed into that perception.https://t.co/F8LioFu3WM
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 22, 2021
Social media users had fun with the Washington Post’s slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
Here’s a sampling of responses to the story from Twitter:
Democracy dies in memory-holing inconvenient reporting about now-favored politicians.
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) January 22, 2021
“Now where’d I put that Maya Harris profile?” pic.twitter.com/FrTBXxyUw6
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) January 22, 2021
I can’t imagine a justification for a newspaper deleting parts of old stories. Adding to them surreptitiously is also dubious, but not as bad. https://t.co/LC6puEqx09
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) January 22, 2021
Legacy media has a should-have-stopped-existing-years-ago problem.
— Stephen Spurling Is… @Drangula (@Drangula) January 22, 2021
The blatant disregard for any semblance of bipartisanship is now gone. Most of the press operates as a propaganda arm for one of the two main political parties.
The complete capitulation of the press will only further lead us into extremes. #wapo
— whiteSquirrelFinance (@decentralizeMi) January 22, 2021
The Washington Post’s new team on their way to update the print versions. pic.twitter.com/Sgeuilq5Fy
— Noam D. Gare (@5imulacrum_) January 22, 2021
It is blatantly obvious. They don’t even feel the need to hide it anymore.
— Uhtred Ragnarson™ (@CopyOfOne) January 22, 2021
Democracy dies in darkness?
— Chris Baylor (@ChrisBaylor5) January 22, 2021
It looks like the backlash made an impact as WaPo ended up adding a link to the originally reported version:
The @washingtonpost has now added a link (on "earlier published version") to the original 2019 Kamala Harris profile in its updated version of the profile that removed an embarrassing anecdote. Link to archived version included here:https://t.co/bLwvSo6Adc pic.twitter.com/WDZ7ugVpCG
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) January 22, 2021
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