THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:
Several major newsrooms owe their readers a retraction.
Media outlets fell over each other this year to promote a study purportedly showing that counties that hosted Trump 2016 campaign rallies later experienced a 226% increase in hate crimes.
The study has been thoroughly debunked this week, leaving several news organizations with egg on their face. As it turns out, uncritically parroting the findings of an unpublished study that conforms perfectly to specific political biases is apparently a dangerous gamble for ostensibly serious news organizations.
“Assaults Increased When Cities Hosted Trump Rallies, Study Finds,” the New York Times reported on March 16.
A March 22 Washington Post analysis article written by the study’s authors claimed in its headline, “Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes.”
Later, after a gunman on Aug. 3 murdered 22 people in El Paso, Texas, some newsrooms sought to blame the mass casualty event on the president, citing specifically the hate crime study.
“Why Trump can’t lead the war against white supremacy,” read the headline to a CNN article that cited the Post’s March 22 report.
