WELL AT LEAST IT WASN'T USA TODAY A MORE POPULIST PAPER
Josephine Harvey
Wed, October 27, 2021
The Wall Street Journal faced backlash Wednesday for publishing a letter to the editor from former President Donald Trump filled with demonstrably false claims about the 2020 election.
Responding to a Sunday Wall Street Journal editorial titled “The Election for Pennsylvania’s High Court,” the former president wrote, “Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out.”
He then provided a bulleted list of “examples” of voter fraud in Pennsylvania to support his claims, relying repeatedly on data from Audit the Vote PA, an organization that has no real experience in assessing elections and has promoted unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
Multiple audits into the state’s 2020 election results affirmed the vote count, and numerous lawsuits challenging the results failed in court. There is no evidence of widespread fraud in Pennsylvania or any other state’s election.
The Wall Street Journal published Trump’s letter without noting these facts. The former president was deplatformed from Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites earlier this year after spreading disinformation about the election for months and inciting a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol to try and overturn the results.
Since then, Trump has resorted to campaign-style rallies and tweet-like statements released through his spokesperson to spread his lies.
Media critics, journalists and political commentators slammed the Journal Wednesday for giving Trump another platform for disinformation and for passing off his false claims as “opinion.”
“Trump couldn’t post this on Facebook but the editors at the WSJ collectively decided to put it on their platform. Think about that. And they think they can distance themselves from it by doing it as an LTE. As of that magically absolves them from pushing the lies,” tweeted Amanda Carpenter, political columnist for The Bulwark.
Jordan Fischer, an investigative reporter for Washington, D.C., channel WUSA9, called it a “new low” for the Journal’s opinion section.
“Today they printed a litany of election falsehoods from former President Trump – without even a single mention of the fact that their own editorial side has thoroughly debunked these claims,” he tweeted.
Washington Post national correspondent Philip Bump made 14 observations about the letter’s veracity and observed that “the Journal would have been better served had it explained why it chose to run the letter without contextualizing it, since that might have at least offered some clarity on the otherwise inexplicable decision.” He noted that the paper had so far declined to comment on its rationale.
The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
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