And, of course, a “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” masterpiece.
For shame.
Here is the headline:
Trump keeps claiming the most dangerous cities in America are run by Democrats. They aren’t.
To be fair, the writer of the piece, apparently insane Post reporter Philip Bump, focuses on the President’s statement that the top twenty most dangerous cities are run by Democrats. Gotcha! Bump triumphantly produces this stunning graph to prove that, once again, Trump has lied, the bastard:
Ah HA! See???
Bump writes, just ahead of the arrival of the men in the white coats to take him to his new home, “Trump would no doubt shrug at that detail, decrying as “fake news” the revelation that his assertion was only slightly wrong.” Then Bump spends the rest of his scoop trying to rationalize why big cities tend to be Democrat-dominated.
Nonetheless, if Trump called the headline fake news, he’d be 100% right: the headline doesn’t say anything about “top 20,” it says “most dangerous.” The top ten most dangerous cities are all run by Democrats. And if Bump thinks a single Republican mayor out of the top 20 is a rebuttal of Trump’s point worth a feature…well, I hope he likes basket-weaving.
Was Bump assigned this hopeless cause? Is he in the final throes of crippling Trump Derangement Syndrome? If you are going to call the President of the United States a liar, aren’t you ethically obligated to have more than nit-picking as support for that assertion? It may be worthy of a treatise to examine why urban dwellers keep electing Democrats even though they appear to be incapable of keeping their citizens safe from violent crime, but the fact that Democratic mayors fail and the reasons their constituencies keep voting for them are two different issues. Baltimore’s black voters have elected one crooked and incompetent Democratic mayor after another. They could have elected Republicans; they chose not to. Bill De Blasio is a spectacular failure whose policies have caused an increase in crime and recently resulted in a surge in murders, all after two Republican mayors had kept crime down. Explaining why voters in a city would be so foolish and irresponsible as to elect someone like De Blasio–twice!—doesn’t excuse him from rank incompetence and ideological madness.
What this episode demonstrates, and all it demonstrates, is that the Washington Post has lost all credibility and rationality in reporting on President Trump’s words and actions. The Post is so biased against the President that it decides to criticize in print automatically, and then figures out what the basis of the criticism will be. In this instance, it couldn’t come up with a valid reason for its attack, and went ahead anyway. The story had special appeal because it gave the Post a chance to advocate for its client, the Democratic Party. Now, a responsible and objective newspaper would approach this issue by starting with the President’s assertion and stating, “The President has facts on his side. Why can’t Democrats control urban crime? Why do cities keep electing them”?
The Post isn’t an objective and rational paper, however. It’s an anti-Trump, Democratic Party-promoting rag. If it weren’t, Bump’s trash would have never made it to print.
You know, every day I read the biased coverage in the New York Times, and wonder, “Wait, why am I paying $80 a month for this rag instead of my local paper?”
Then the Post does something like this, and I remember.
Ethics Alarms 
This reminds me of the airport scene in Rain Man:
Charlie: Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another, that doesn’t mean that they are not safe.
Raymond: QANTAS. QANTAS never crashed.
Charlie: QANTAS?
Raymond: Never crashed.
Charlie: Oh, that’s gonna do me a lot of good, because QANTAS doesn’t fly to Los Angeles out of Cincinnati. You have to get to Melbourne! Melbourne, Australia in order to get the plane that flies to Los Angeles!
Trump: The most dangerous cities are run by Democrats.
Raymond: JACKSONVILLE.
Tasty Rum Drink shooting out nose. Nicely played.
PM me and I’ll send you the Venmo data where you can pay for the new monitor and keyboard.
Excellent comp.
In his attempt to show that crime is not a function of poor leadership in Democrat run cities, Bump implied two things in his analysis of the statistics: Democrats commit more crime per 10,000 residents and most of those crimes were committed by non-whites because the urban counties surveyed are populated by non-whites. He is obviously a racist and an idiot.
Good Letter-to-the-Editor, Chris
Jack. You subscribe to the NYT? 80 dollars a month? Don’t you feel complicit in what they’re doing?
No, they are complicit in what I’m doing.
Ha, ha! Research of course.
Can’t criticize them if I can’t catch them at what they do.
After a while, paying a research fee become nothing more than support. Same goes for the “sharing of information”. After a while, pushing the ravings of democrat controlled articles is no longer “oppo research”. The people getting paid to produce it don’t care why you’re using it…..as long as they’re getting paid while you’re sharing it.
Brilliant, well reasoned and wise response. Same goes for using fakebook, giggle or twits. Don’t use them because if you do you are supporting them and their evil by proxy if nothing else. Thanks!
The thing is, Philip Bump is guaranteed a Pulitzer Prize for the deep research and insight that he put into creating this important and worthy analysis deserving of significant further research.
And, he may even be up for consideration for a Nobel Peace Prize if Sleepy Senile Joe doesn’t win the election; in which case he is a shoo-in to win the Nobel just like Obama.
That was funny. WAPO doesn’t care about truth or even sanity. It is a rich man’s mouthpiece and that’s all that it is. Bezos wants Trump gone because Trump has been trying to kick Amazon off of the USPS subsidy gravy train that Bezos used to ruin all those brick and mortar stores with taxpayer subsidized shipping.
A news aggregating site I had somehow never heard of, the Citizen Free Press, linked to this post (as did a commenter among the many, many critics of Bump’s embarrassing article. Suddenly EA is getting one or its periodic surges.
Thanks, Citizen Free Press! I gather it is a newish competitor of Drudge, since Matt turned anti-Trump.
This kind of traffic all the time is what this blog need to have any significant impact, so it makes me wistful, but I’m grateful nonetheless.
Citizen Free Press is terrific. The person responsible for running it has great judgment and definitely appears to be working extremely long hours to make it a success.
I refer to it every day!
Well, I’m hoping his good judgment leads readers here again. Instapundit won’t link here because I’ve been critical of Glenn Reynold and the blog is way too moderate for the bulk of his readers. I’ve never had a link on Drudge: Althouse won’t even list EA on its Blogroll, and I;ve asked more than once. So I’m grateful.
There are subreddits which tolerate me linking to your blog.
Citizen free press sent me. Its the new and better drudge.
CFP sent me too!
Ps. Folks, it’s “shoo-in”. Not trying to criticize, just upping our game.
It’s called a “typo.” You’ll find a lot of them.There’s an ethical way to flag them and this isn’t it.
I’ll fix the typos in comments, thanks. And implying that one is based on ignorance rather than based on a finger slip is affirmatively obnoxious.
For added entertainment value, read the comments for Bump’s article. While there are certainly more than a few “yeah, but he’s right ya know…” comments, the vast majority of the commenters are taking Bump to the woodshed for his ludicrous analysis. Hope and change?
I like the relentless Trump and GOP hater who almost single-handedly is trying to defend Bump’s argument.
Did you actually read my comment? What is the “ethical” way to make it? How can you infer I was accusing someone of ignorance when I:
A. Deliberately made the point that I was NOT trying to be critical, but constructive, and;
B. Deliberately did NOT reply directly to the “shoe-in” comment to try to avoid giving offense?
You misjudge, sir.
Of course I read it, and thus marked it as obnoxious. That’s how you don’t give offense? The phrasing implies that the commenter (and everyone else here, “Folks”) doesn’t know how to spell “shoo-in.” And no, saying that you don’t intend to criticize and then write something that is insulting is a classic passive aggressive behavior. (“I’m the last person to criticize, BUT…”)
It’s not a big deal, but commenters don’t correct other commenters’ typos here (corrected their substance is always fine.) I appreciate my typos being flagged,and the way to do it is to email me at jamproethics@verizon.net, and tell me, without saying, “It’s spelled “their,” not “thier”….up your game.” I know how the words are spelled, I just don’t type very well. The same goes for missing words or punctuation, and I give all commenters the same benefit of the doubt.
Since you take offense at a modest correction such as I made, I’ll take the hint and check out. Goodbye.
Your choice. I was informing you of the rules and decorum here, and as I said, it’s no big deal. If you want to make it one, swell.
?
It is not just bias, it is incompetence.
Of course, this begs the question of just how prevalent systemic racism and police brutality are in those cities in question.