Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple made an astonishing admission last week: He was afraid to combat the liberal media narrative in 2020 that the New York Times erred in publishing Sen. Tom Cotton's op-ed on military force to quell violent uprisings in American cities.
Liberal Times staffers erupted over Cotton's op-ed in 2020 in a coordinated social media display, and editorial page editor James Bennet was forced to resign for running it after Times higher-ups folded to internal pressure. Bennet recently said the Times leadership hung him out to dry and his colleagues treated him like an "incompetent fascist." Wemple revisited the incident nearly two-and-a-half years later, expressing regret he didn't back up Bennet at the time, as many conservatives did.
Wemple also claimed the social media uproar by Times staffers was performative and manipulative.
"The Erik Wemple Blog has asked about 30 Times staffers whether they still believe their ‘danger’ tweets and whether there was any merit in Bennet’s retort. Not one of them replied with an on-the-record defense. Such was the depth of conviction behind a central argument in l’affaire Cotton," he wrote.
In an unusual display of self-criticism, he said his words were too little, too late.
"Although the hollowness of the internal uproar against Bennet was immediately apparent, we responded with an evenhanded critique of the Times's flip-flop, not the unapologetic defense of journalism that the situation required… Our posture was one of cowardice and midcareer risk management. With that, we pile one more regret onto a controversy littered with them," Wemple added.
Here are seven other major media narratives that legacy outlets have since acknowledged the press got wrong at first.
The Hunter Biden laptop was ‘Russian disinformation’
With less than a month to go before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post dropped a noteworthy story: Emails showing that Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, introduced a Ukrainian businessman to his powerful father, raising potential concerns of influence-peddling on the former vice president. The source was a laptop that Biden had apparently dropped off in a Delaware repair shop and never picked up.
But mainstream media outlets and Big Tech companies not only cast doubt on its provenance, they actively worked to suppress the story that appeared to benefit President Trump. It was widely dismissed as unreliable and even Russian disinformation by mainstream print and television outlets, especially MSNBC and CNN, and in an astonishing display of coordination, Twitter and Facebook blocked or limited sharing of the New York Post's article about Biden; Twitter even locked the New York Post out of its account for weeks.
MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson said it was "so obviously a Russian operation," and CNN's Brian Stelter hypothesized the emails could be "made up" and the story was simply the "right-wing media machine" in action. "60 Minutes" host Lesley Stahl told Trump in 2020 that the laptop couldn't be "verified," and NPR announced it wouldn't "waste our time" on "stories that are not really stories." Politico memorably ran a story citing "dozens of Intel officials," many of them Biden supporters, that the laptop was a Russian influence operation.
The Biden laptop has since been confirmed in multiple reports, in outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico. CNN and MSNBC, which repeatedly ran segments questioning its authenticity, have also reported on the investigation into Biden and the messages from the laptop. The president's son remains under federal investigation for his tax affairs and overseas business dealings.
"Federal investigation of Hunter Biden heats up," read a CNN headline from March 30. "Hunter Biden Paid Tax Bill, but Broad Federal Investigation Continues," the New York Times wrote on March 16. "Inside Hunter Biden’s multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company," the Washington Post reported on March 30.
It prompted yet another reckoning on bias issues in the press.
"We are not trusted because we are not entirely trustworthy. That is not the only thing that will have to be fixed to heal our epistemic divide. But it would make a very good start," Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle wrote ruefully this year.
The Wuhan lab-leak theory was ‘fringe’ and a ‘conspiracy theory’
For much of the COVID pandemic, it was considered taboo to suggest that the virus originated from a lab-leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than stemming directly from an animal or a wet market.
At the time, The Washington Post knocked Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., for suggesting the virus came from a lab, running the headline, "Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked."
The New York Times similarly ran with, "Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins."
It became routine for media outlets to accuse those who expressed the lab-leak theory of being "racist."
Security personnel gather near the entrance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology during a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan in China's Hubei province on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Fast-forward to 2021 when the Biden administration acknowledged the validity of the lab-leak theory that the media changed its tune.
The Washington Post revisited its 2020 hit piece on Cotton and issued a stunning correction.
"Earlier versions of this story and its headline inaccurately characterized comments by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) regarding the origins of the coronavirus," the June 2021 correction read. "The term 'debunked' and The Post’s use of ‘conspiracy theory’ have been removed because, then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus."
The headline was changed to "Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed."
The Washington Post's fact-checker even ran a piece declaring how the theory "suddenly" became credible last year. In 2020, fact-checker Glenn Kessler had taunted Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Twitter, saying "we deal in facts" after Cruz had criticized a Post piece that said the lab theory was highly unlikely.
Russian collusion/Steele dossier
Much of the Trump presidency was plagued by the Russia investigation and the narrative that the campaign had colluded with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. The Christopher Steele dossier played a key role in establishing the storyline before Trump even took office, and the fixation of the press on the Russian narrative was such that the dossier simply not being discredited made it a subject of immense fascination and speculation.
Funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, the 35-page intelligence report by the British ex-spy was later revealed to be heavily tainted by partisan actors and largely discredited in subsequent investigations.
Steele's sourcing has come under fire and been the subject of a media reckoning, following indictments in the John Durham probe into the Russia investigation's origins. Steele sub-source Igor Danchenko was accused of lying to the FBI, including about conversations he reportedly had with Hillary Clinton associate and Democratic spin doctor Charles Dolan. He was later acquitted.
Subsequent investigations by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Special Counsel Robert Mueller failed to back any of the dossier's key claims and in some cases specifically discredited them. Horowitz noted the limited information that was corroborated by the FBI was generally "publicly available information." The dossier was used by the FBI as part of its application for a secret warrant to surveil Page, and it was originally commissioned by a research firm hired by Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias.
The dossier's reputation is now shredded enough that the New York Times "The Daily" podcast called it "profoundly flawed," and Wemple of the Washington Post called it "pretty much a crock" and took figures like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow to task for heaping credibility on it.
Defaming Nicholas Sandmann and Covington Catholic
It caught on like wildfire in the liberal media: An image of a smirking, MAGA-hat wearing teenager, right in the face of Native American man Nathan Phillips, beating a drum and chanting. In January 2019, the images went viral, and it was the perfect narrative for the press.
But it was completely inaccurate. What really happened was a group of students from Kentucky's Covington Catholic High School, in town for the annual March for Life, were waiting for their bus on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before being taunted by a group of extremist Black Hebrew Israelites. The students responded by shouting their school's chants, which apparently offended a group of Native Americans who were also in the area for a different march; Phillips actually approached Sandmann, and the awkward standoff ensued.
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But the earlier clips that created the context for the situation didn't come out until later, and by then, Sandmann and his classmates had been vilified online. NBC News' José Díaz-Balart accused Sandmann of "harassing" Phillips. Then-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo alleged Sandmann made "a choice" of "turning it into a standoff." Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart declared, "Nothing justifies what the Covington students did." CNN legal analyst Bakari Sellers suggested Sandmann should be "punched in the face." Former CNN contributor Reza Aslan agreed, asking on Twitter, "Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?"
Footage of Nick Sandmann in front of Native American man Nathan Phillips went viral in 2019. (AP)
The initial New York Times headline for the story was "Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Mob Native Elder at Indigenous Peoples March." But a day later, as journalists finally sunk their teeth into the story, it was, "Fuller Picture Emerges of Viral Video of Native American Man and Catholic Students."
It was quickly regarded as a media screw-up. "The Media Botched the Covington Catholic Story," said a headline in The Atlantic, which added, "And the damage to their credibility will be lasting."
Weeks later, another claim related to MAGA hats would go viral.
Jussie Smollett incident
"Empire" actor Jussie Smollett, who is Black and gay, famously claimed in January 2019 he was attacked by Trump supporters on a freezing night alone in Chicago. He told detectives that the men, wearing "Make America Great Again" hats, used racist and homophobic slurs, wrapped a rope around his neck, poured an "unknown substance" on him and said he was in "MAGA country." The mainstream media quickly relayed his bizarre version of events and Smollett emerged a hero to the left.
"This is America in 2019," CNN host Brooke Baldwin said solemnly at the time, and numerous media personalities and Democratic politicians like future Vice President Kamala Harris declared the supposed assault a modern-day lynching. "Good Morning America" anchor Robin Roberts sat down with Smollett for his first interview following the alleged incident and did little to push back on his claims.
Actor Jussie Smollett arrives Monday, Nov. 29, 2021, at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse for jury selection at his trial in Chicago. Smollett is accused of lying to police when he reported he was the victim of a racist, anti-gay attack in downtown Chicago nearly three years ago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
However, as local media and police investigated further, Smollett’s story began to unravel, and he was charged with staging the hate crime and lying to cops. He was later found guilty on five charges related to the hate crime hoax. He has continued to proclaim his innocence, but his career and reputation has suffered.
While figures like CNN's Brian Stelter at the time wondered if the truth would ever come out, it's now widely agreed that Smollett perpetrated the outrageous incident.
Haitian migrants were ‘whipped’ at the border
In September 2021, amid the migrant crisis that has plagued the Biden administration, viral images showing Border Patrol agents on horseback attempting to corral a group of Haitians attempting to cross into Del Rio.
Liberal critics claimed the border agents were using "whips" on the migrants, causing President Biden to quickly condemn the agents, who were swiftly punished pending an investigation.
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In reality, they weren't using "whips" but rather reins to control the horses. The photographer whose took the viral images disputed the claim that the agents were whipping the migrants. The border agents were eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.
But that didn't stop the media from galloping ahead with the falsehood.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection mounted officers attempt to contain migrants as they cross the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, into Del Rio, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021. Agents involved in the incident are expected to face unspecified discipline. (PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images)
MSNBC host Joy Reid repeatedly accused the border agents of "whipping" the migrants, linking their alleged actions to the Fugitive Slave Act. She reacted to the photos on Twitter and reacted, "This is beyond repulsive. Are these images from 2021 or 1851?"
CNN's Victor Blackwell suggested there isn't a "distinction" between the agents using whips versus reins. Vice News ran the headline, "US Border Agents Are Removing Haitian Migrants Using Horses and Whips."
The New York Times accused the border agents of "using the reins of their horses to strike at running migrants." That report was later corrected, admitting it had "overstated" what was known at the time and that the paper had not seen "conclusive evidence" that proved the whipping took place. Most other outlets did not issue such corrections.
Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 leadership was worth of praise
In the early months of the COVID pandemic, the media showered then-Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo with praise, juxtaposing the "leadership" he put on display with his daily briefing with then-President Trump's.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace said Cuomo was "everything Trump isn't," calling him "honest, direct, brave." In a friendly interview with Joe Biden last year, Wallace called Cuomo "one of the heroes on the front lines." CNN commentator Carl Bernstein said Cuomo was providing "real leadership" that Trump could not provide.
"Maybe Trump is just a little bit mad that Governor Cuomo has become a kind of acting president," MSNBC host Joy Reid said at the time.
There were even rumors that Cuomo could replace then-candidate Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket amid the hype.
Then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference at New York's Yankee Stadium, on July 26, 2021. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
But what was left unmentioned by most of the legacy media in 2020 was the nursing home scandal that was brewing in the Empire State. Cuomo's order forcing assisted living facilities to take in COVID patients to prevent overwhelming hospitals in the first weeks of the pandemic is believed to be responsible for the deaths of thousands elderly New Yorkers.
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Despite the apparent coverup that took place as New York's nursing home body count drew scrutiny, it was Cuomo's behavior towards women that ultimately forced him out of office.