Washington Post caught in its own mousetrap

This is an example of the press putting its thumb on the scale.

This photo shows a Washington Post story as carried in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The story is what’s called a sidebar, or an auxiliary story that supports the main story, which was Donald J. Trump’s campaign event at the southern border a few days ago.

To me, the story was commissioned partly on merit, but also to embarrass Trump, as it talks about the wall built by Barack Obama, which came to an end when Trump was elected. The implication was that the wall’s ending was Trump’s failure.

The first thing that struck me was this: Since the wall is broadly condemned as “racist” by many on the Left, does this mean Obama was a racist for building this part of the wall? (The answer is “no,” for a surprising and embarrassing reason for the Post. We will get to that in a moment.)

Not mentioned in the story is this fact: In 2018, Congress refused Trump’s request for $18 billion to complete the wall. Blame (or praise, if you feel that way) for the wall not being finished does not fall on Trump. That was the doing of Congress. (And, of course, Trump failed to get Mexico to pay for wall construction.) 

Getting back to the Post story: It was wrong.

That part of the wall was not built by Obama, the Post acknowledged in a later correction.

I give the Post credit for doing that, which is what legitimate news outlets do.

I suspect the mistake happened because the three (!) reporters on the story might have been a little too anxious to mousetrap Trump.

Instead, they mousetrapped themselves.

The above being my opinion, based on many decades of experience in print journalism. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.