In another failed attack against The Libs of Tik Tok, the Washington Post devalues itself even more.
It's almost like the management is ignoring attempts to ensure integrity in journalism within The Washington Post. The appointment of the new Director of Operations Sally Buzbee was to bring an entirely new commitment to ethical practices however, too often, we've witnessed this newspaper slash its own standards in regards to its journalism practices as well as newsroom operation. This latest example is another attempt to burn the account Libs Of Tik Tok, and it just adds to the absurdity evident.
The most recent episode centers around the controversy over Boston Children's National Hospital, and its policies for trans operations for adolescents. The controversy started after the LOTT account shared videos made by the hospital that covered the procedures they offer for trans-identity-related issues in youth. LOTT has been blamed for “attacking” the hospital and risking the lives of hospital workers by posting videos which hospital employees had uploaded to social media.
An uproar ensued from this in which there were accusations that the account deceived people and sparked demonstrations and threats to be used against the hospital as well as the employees. The press was doing its job of condemning LOTT, making repeated assertions that the details contained in the videos weren't evidence that they had operated on patients who were younger than 18 years old for the procedures, this week LOTT revealed more issues.
The new report contained recorded audio files of the staff in the facility setting out the rules of these procedures and also stated that the hospital did offer these procedures to patients younger than 16 years of age. This sparked more anger in the media – mainly against LOTT for publishing this contradictory proof. Instead of pointing out the need to conduct a thorough investigation into the hospital, WaPo made the decision to state that LOTT was in breach of the law in accepting the statements of hospital staff as true. As part of cleaning up of the public relations, The Washington Post wanted to report on the specifics of the latest developments and, to its credit, sought out Chaya Raichik who manages the Libs of Tik Tok account.
The newspaper contacted her however, as we'll discover, there was no desire to actually speak with Raichik.
The reporter who wrote the piece is Peter Jamison, and he exhibits some troubling behavior when writing his piece which we're seeing more frequently. The first is the standard practice of contacting an actor in a piece but offering them a limited time to respond with an end date. This is the reason for the summary, “We reached out for answers, but received no response by press time.” The implied evasion of the person is well revealed.
This was an incident we witnessed in the famous 60 Minutes hit-piece on Ron DeSantis, where a very short amount of time, just one or two hours, was allocated for an official from the health department in the state to respond to questions and provide details. The request was made on a Thursday night, in preparation to be broadcast on Sunday. They were also advised that a time-based request for a Zoom call to get an answer would not be accepted even though the show showed that other people who made negative remarks about Ron DeSantis were allowed to make them via video conferencing.
In this latest example this is even more disturbing. Following the time that Jamison called Raichik to ask for a response or possibly an interview, something awry transpired. She responded to the request promptly. After saying to Jamison that she'd be willing to talk directly with him, and asking for the most effective method of communication, she did not receive an immediate reply. In the same afternoon, Raichik discovered the article on her had been published.
This occurred despite the fact that Raichik was able to respond to Jamison in under 15 minutes after Jamison's request. Raichik chose to show the events on Twitter and, thus, began the issues that are affecting The Post. Raichik displayed the screenshots in which she contacted Jamison immediately. Then within less than four hours, her article began to go live on Friday night.
After criticizing this deplorable decision, Jamison adjusted his piece in a way that explained how his Post “missed the response,” and then implied that a request from her behalf had led to delays prior to publication.
When she was asked to comment on this story, Raichik immediately offered to be interviewed subject to the condition that she would be permitted to film the interview. However, after discovering that The Post had missed that reply and then published the story prior to an interview being scheduled, she ceased communication to The Post and expressed outrage on Twitter. “That's not how this works,” she tweeted.
If there's anything to learn from Raichik as well as her Libs of Tik Tok account, she is prepared to engage in a fight whenever the media wants. She shared a part of Jamison's change in his piece, which led to further embarrassment for the newspaper. Similar to what we saw this last April as Taylor Lorenz worked on the scandalous slam dunking of Raichik for being the source of this particular account and the Post has been subjected to numerous changes after the fact or in the absence of any facts in the sense of.
After Jamison's edits, an update was added at the end of the article:
CLARIFICATION
The earlier edition of the story said that Raichik did not respond to a request for comments. The Post was unaware that she'd replied via Twitter prior to the time of publication.
This paper is trying to be cute with its excuse-making. The paper is trying to show Raichik's reply to the reporter went under the radar due to her decision to reply through Twitter Messenger. The screenshots show that she was contacted via Twitter messenger. Jamison requested an interview through a website which he later chose to not check anymore? This is not just absurd and doesn't make sense, but it's completely incompetent. He is either incompetent at basic follow-up or he did not intend to ever speak to Raichik.
This increased work ethic is similar to April's debacle in which numerous corrections to the article were required. This is also typical, as another article Lorenz published on influencers featured her claiming that she was not able to directly contact individuals in the piece, but it was revealed later the fact that Lorenz did not try to contact anyone until after the publication.
