WashPost Redefines Words to Avoid Calling Biden a Liar

  • WashPost says “Bipartisan” means voters, not elected officials, to justify Joe Biden saying he has ‘bipartisan’ support for bills that have zero GOP votes
  • Prior Fact-Checks on the same concept have given completely different definitions
  • WashPost quotes a long-time left-wing media consultant and quotes her as a ‘Biden official’ in order to cover her financial conflict of interest

OUR RATING: Trash Journalism, aka the Daily Beast.

Indicted Outlet: Ashley Parker | The Washington Post | Link | Archive

Ashley Parker in the Washington Post, a corporate media outlet owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos who receives billions from the government in no-bid contracts, wrote a news article that said President Biden’s claims of ‘bipartisan support’ for his agenda was true because it included support from Republican voters, even though there wasn’t a single Republican member of the Senate or House who supported his legislation.

This is wordplay meant to avoid calling President Biden a liar, which he clearly is on this matter. And by providing this semantic defense, Parker is showing her partisan bias.

Major Violations:

  • Partisan
  • Opinion as Fact
  • Misuing a word
  • Unbalanced

As seems to often be the case, the journalistic left prefers to redefine words rather than admit anything that might politically harm the left-wing agenda. Here, the question is over the definition of the word “bipartisan” as used by President Biden when he claims that his COVID relief plan and infrastructure bills.

If you were to look at the definition for bipartisan, you would find that it generally says support from both parties. [2]

marked by or involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties

This generally tracks what Parker quotes from left-wing Anita Dunn:

“If you looked up ‘bipartisan’ in the dictionary, I think it would say support from Republicans and Democrats,” said Anita Dunn, a senior Biden adviser. “It doesn’t say the Republicans have to be in Congress.”

But we aren’t talking about some political science concept known as “bipartisanship” we are, instead, asking whether the COVID relief package and the infrastructure legislation enjoyed bipartisan support. And in that analysis, of course the actual composition of the legislators involved is important and critical to that analysis. 

The quote of Anita Dunn effectively presents her opinion as fact. Dunn is quoted as an advisor to the President, neglecting to provide the context that she has been a prominent figure in SKDK for many years, operating as a communications consultant and spin doctor to left-wing politicians for decades. [3] The firm was referred to as a public relations powerhouse by Breitbart [4] and their left-wing clients read as a prominent roster of powerful interests. [5]

This quote would be very out-of-place if Dunn and her experience had been identified properly. Instead of just a “senior Biden adviser” it would have been a bit gauche to quote a left-wing, hired gun media communications expert to give her opinion on how her client, and the elected official who will make her millions of dollars, of course isn’t a liar and we should instead reinterpret and redefine a basic word in order to accommodate that thesis.

If something makes an obvious and significant difference to the financial interests of a quoted subject, and a reporter hides the basis of that financial interest, they are committing a serious journalistic crime to their readers. Obscuring those connections denies their readers the ability to understand why the source might be motivated to lie, or in this case to extremely stretch credibility on the meaning of words.

This may seem like semantics but this is a major issue, considering that the vast majority of readers of a story will not take the time to discover the extended biography of a quoted source.

It would be extremely dishonest and deceptive if a news outlet were to call a party-line vote on legislation a ‘bipartisan’ act because one voter from the opposition party, somewhere, voiced support. That interpretation would make the word have no meaning, it would render the concept of those two terms: bipartisan and partisan, as essentially meaningless. Of course there are going to be people from both parties who go against the majority of their elected officials on any topic.

In December 2019 FactCheck.org declared a claim to “Bipartisan bills” by Nancy Pelosi ‘false’ not because it had zero from the opposing party like Biden’s proposals, but they were rated false because they had some but not a majority of votes from the opposing party. [6]

Certainly if the phrase “bipartisan bills” means nearing a majority from both parties in 2019, the same phrase should mean more than zero in 2021. 

And really this is also a way to make an extremely partisan argument in a subtle way: that elected Republicans do not represent their voters in any way. It is to assume the absolute illegitimacy of the party not in power, and total lack of representation. Either an elected official represents the constituents who put them into power, or they do not. According to the Washington Post, by Biden having effective bipartisan support, it also means that the elected Republicans properly represent no one.

That’s an argument you expect from left-wing zealots and hardened campaign hacks, not from journalists as they twist and weave their narrative agendas into their news pieces.

Notably the only two Republicans Parker found to buttress her story was Senator Mitt Romney, who blasted the concept, and the Republican Mayor of Mesa, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. The story is unbalanced because it assumes an advocacy role throughout: it is clearly seeking to validate the political claims of the Biden camp by advancing the thesis that ‘bipartisan’ need not include any elected Republicans, a claim that is silly on its face.

Ashley Parker is making an unserious point using unserious people in this piece, it’s neither news or opinion, it’s trash and she should be ashamed of herself.

OUR RATING: Trash Journalism, aka the Daily Beast.

Bibliography:

1 ] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-bipartisan/2021/04/11/65b29ad8-96f0-11eb-b28d-bfa7bb5cb2a5_story.html

2 ] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bipartisan 

3 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKDK 

4 ] https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/12/02/rose-mcgowan-times-up-a-vile-pr-stunt-front-for-human-traffickers-shame-on-the-actresses-involved/ 

5 ] https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/skdknickerbocker/ 

6 ] https://www.factcheck.org/2019/12/pelosis-bipartisanship-boast/ 



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