How the Washington Post lost its Pulitzer Prize by faking the news

Wednesday, November 30, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Washington Post, fake news, Pulitzer Prize

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(NaturalNews) It's been a rough couple of weeks for the Washington Post following the election loss of their chosen presidential pick, Hillary Clinton. Her "potential to be an excellent president of the United States" – despite her blatant disregard for U.S. transparency laws and national security – vanished when she was bested by billionaire businessman Donald J. Trump, who also bested 16 other Republican candidates to win his party's nomination.

Something happened to the Post's managing editors and reporters after this historic loss, which was Clinton's second: They've gone off the deep end, among other things accusing hundreds of alternative media rivals of being under the control of Russian propaganda efforts aimed at knocking Clinton out of the White House in favor of Trump (Natural News is on the list, by the way).

Talk about your tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.

But the Post has also joined a chorus of other Left-wing "mainstream media" in blaming Clinton's loss on so-called "fake news" given us by the Kremlin, who in turn also fed it to WikiLeaks, little green men from Inner Earth and who knows who else.

'Jimmy's World' was nothing but BS and forced the Post to hand a Pulitzer Prize back to the awarding committee

"Fake news" to the Post and the rest of the lunatic Leftist media is, of course – as The Washington Times describes it – "real news purposely not covered by the mainstream media." In other words, if a media organization disagrees with the Left, then it can't be real, and has to be generating "fake" news.

If there is a true purveyor of phony news stories, however, it's the Post – even having been forced to give back a Pulitzer Prize because its reporter faked a story.

Enter Janet Cooke, a young African-American reporter who was forced to admit that her award-winning story about an alleged 8-year-old heroin addict in Washington, D.C., was all a fabrication.

As noted by The Hoax Project at the University of Maryland, her story, "Jimmy's World," was said to be based on interviews with the boy, his mother and his mother's boyfriend. But after several aspects of her story began to collapse under scrutiny, she had to acknowledge that she never met or interviewed anyone like that, "and that she made up the story of Jimmy based on a composite of information about heroin addiction in Washington" gleaned from various sources.

The admission came after other revelations that key statements she had given in an autobiographical report to Pulitzer officials were also false. Cooke told the committee she graduated magna cum laude from Vasser College and held a master's degree from the University of Toledo. But she only attended Vasser for a year, and graduated from the University of Toledo with a bachelor of arts.

The Post desperately wanted to elevate a young, black reporter to star status, and in doing so disregarded all journalistic integrity.

Eventually, she resigned from the Post and the paper had to return the prize.

The mainstream media has a history of reporting fake, false 'news'

She's not the first mainstream media reporter to fake a story, nor is the Post the only establishment media outlet to publish phony news:

-- Former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair committed "frequent acts of journalistic fraud" as he made up reports from other cities while writing from his Brooklyn apartment. Times officials confirmed that Blair made up quotes, described scenery from published photos and lifted materials from other news organizations. Blair, also a young African-American "reporter," was rapidly promoted up through the ranks by Times managing editors – from intern to the national desk, despite having a history of sloppy reporting, corrections to his stories and lectures from editors.

-- In 2014, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a reporter for Rolling Stone, penned a story, "A Rape on Campus," in which she claimed an anonymous female student named "Jackie" described to her a brutal gang rap on the campus of the University of Virginia. In the article, Erdely claimed that after the rape Jackie faced callous indifference from college officials, including former Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo. The magazine was forced to retract the story after other media outlets noted that there were troubling inconsistencies (lies). It turned out that the entire story – and the "culture of rape on American college campuses" that the piece insinuated – was false. Eramo sued and won.

-- Most of the mainstream media jumped on a story about how three white males belonging to the Duke University lacrosse team allegedly gang-raped an exotic dancer the team hired for a party. Turns out that story was false as well, but because everyone in the establishment press wanted to believe it, the story went viral.

And so on.

Retraction demanded – or legal action will follow

As for the Post, its ridiculous and false story citing an equally ridiculous (and shady) organization of "experts" who named us and about 200 other news and media sites as being nothing but propaganda organs for Russian intelligence operatives trying to "disrupt American democracy," should be retracted immediately. In fact, Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, has already demanded that retraction, failing which, the Post may face legal action.

"We are giving the Post an opportunity to take this action in avoidance of a coordinated, multi-party defamation lawsuit that will be served against the Washington Post if a retraction and public apology are not forthcoming," Adams wrote Sunday. "There is no excuse for the Post's complete fabrication of their blatantly false story. They must either retract their false story or forfeit any claim to legitimate journalism."

Sources:

WashingtonPost.com

WashingtonTimes.com

JClass.UMD.edu

CNN.com

ABCNews.go.com

TheFederalist.com

NaturalNews.com