The Wall Street Journal owes its readers — and the public — better.
The business broadsheet published and hyped a story Wednesday declaring that “behind closed doors,” President Joe Biden has shown “signs of slipping.” The story questioned Biden’s mental acuity, playing into a GOP-propelled narrative that the 81-year-old president lacks the fitness to hold the nation’s highest office.
But an examination of the report reveals a glaring problem: Most of the sources reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes relied on were Republicans. In fact, buried in the story, the reporters themselves acknowledged that they had drawn their sweeping conclusion based on GOP sources who, obviously, have an incentive to make comments that will damage Biden’s candidacy.
“Most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans, but some Democrats said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges,” Linskey and Hughes conceded. The duo also noted that they had spoken to sources in the administration “who found no fault” with the way Biden conducted himself in meetings for which they were present.
I noted this in the thread on the article itself:
“according to six people told at the time about what (Mike) Johnson said had happened.”
The sources weren’t even first hand sources. They were sources who were told what happened by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
This NEVER should have made it to the level of reporting. It fails every single smell test.
It passes the “does it smell bad enough to spread on my neighbors yard” test….
What? Nobody likes that guy.