All tagged political journalism

Debunking Covid origins: a pre-emptive strike

Debunking Covid origins: a pre-emptive strike

Tatiana Prophet
National Security

Ever since the novel coronavirus entered our head space, the collective nightmare has become even more surreal with the breathless pre-emptive debunkings of “dangerous theories” by the mainstream media. Things have gotten so bizarre that the pre-denials by those in charge were reminiscent of soccer players falling down in agony when someone breathes on them. Instead of useful information and solutions, we got a million media prat falls.

The novel coronavirus had barely reached the United States when the barrage began.

On January 29, 2020, Washington Post writer Adam Taylor debunked the “fringe” theory that the virus was linked to weapons research while confirming in the same article that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was specifically studying bat-derived coronaviruses. And it wasn’t even labeled opinion.

Georgia phone call: Washington Post admits their Trump quotes were wrong

Georgia phone call: Washington Post admits their Trump quotes were wrong

Tatiana Prophet
Anonymous Sources

Some of our readers who have followed this site from the beginning already know that we have discussed anonymous sources extensively — the right way and the wrong way to use them. When we say “right” and “wrong,” we mean “how not to look like an idiot eventually.”

In fact, The New York Times and Washington Post’s own guidelines caution against using unnamed sources more than very rarely. One of the biggest no-no’s is directly quoting the anonymous source, or further, using direct quotes allegedly by another person that were conveyed by a third party in the article because doing so could involve some embellishment or other distortion that may reflect someone’s vendetta.