The Washington Post’s Liberal Image and Record

Accuracy in Media

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The Washington Post says that Ken Cuccinelli, who is running for governor of Virginia, has an image problem because he has described sex between homosexuals as “wrong” and branded President Obama’s team as “the biggest set of lawbreakers in America.”

When one reads the front-page Post article with these assertions, it is hard not to wonder whether the paper is being serious or comical. If it is serious, then the attempt clearly is to make it appear as though Cuccinelli has an image problem that he can only solve by acting and thinking like a Democrat.

Welcome to the world of The Washington Post, which wants to influence political races across the country, but especially in neighboring Virginia.

But there’s more: “As Virginia’s attorney general, his targets have included abortion-clinic rules, climate scientists and the Environmental Protection Agency, which he has derided as the ‘agency of mass destruction.’”

Can you believe that this guy wants medical “rules” and standards to apply to the abortion industry? And that he has criticized the federal government for destroying private businesses in the name of a theory about man-made global warming that is in dispute among scientists?

These are additional sins in the eyes of the Post, which wants to influence the race on behalf of Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman.

In overall terms, according to the Post, Cuccinelli has “established himself as a combative icon of the tea party movement” and “has endeared himself to conservatives while inflaming Democrats.”

The print version of the article wondered if Cuccinelli would “soften” his image while the online version was headlined, “Cuccinelli’s test: Winning centrists without losing conservatives.”

The liberal bias of the Post is legendary, but it is helpful on occasion to dissect how the slanting of the “news’ is actually carried out on a day-to-day basis.

If it is true that that Cuccinelli is trying to soften his image through a TV commercial featuring his wife talking about his humanitarian causes, then that is the result of a campaign against him that has been featured in the pages of the Post, depicting him as harsh, rigid and ideological.

It is a typical ploy—to portray the conservative as an extremist.

If this paper finds it objectionable that Cuccinelli, a Catholic, would describe homosexuality as “wrong,” then you know that the Post is offended by any number of traditional conservative beliefs and practices. Indeed, the Post is a long-time Democratic Party paper that only pretends to be fair to the other major political party. The Paul Schwartzman article about Cuccinelli is only one of the most brazen examples of how the bias is implemented in practice.

More than two years ago we noted that the Post relentlessly hammered Cuccinelli over his opposition to Obamacare. But his legal action against the socialized medicine scheme was vindicated by a federal court.

Now consider how the Post has covered McAuliffe’s refusal to release his tax returns. It was covered in a story headlined, “McAuliffe releases abridged tax information, reports $8.2 million in income in 2011.”

The term, “abridged tax information,” is another way of saying that McAuliffe did not release his tax returns so the public can fully understand how he made and spent his money. Cuccinelli opened eight years of tax records—a total of 225 pages—to the media, the story noted.

But if you think the Post will run a front-page story about McAuliffe’s image problem as a result of this concealment, you have another thing coming.

Ditto for McAuliffe’s image problem that has resulted from his involvement with a “green” car venture linked to a Chinese businessman and offshore tax shelters.

Fortunately, a report from a conservative-oriented news site, Virginia Watchdog, examines this controversial aspect of McAuliffe’s career.

The firm, GreenTech, is a subsidiary of Capital Wealth Holdings (CWH), an investment company incorporated in the tax shelter country of the British Virgin Islands, and was founded in 2009 by Chinese businessman Charles Wang.

McAuliffe, a part-owner of GreenTech who stepped down as chairman four months ago, has been grilled by Ryan Nobles of NBC’s Richmond, Virginia affiliate NBC12 about why the car company failed to follow through on a plan to build a factory in Virginia, and instead moved it to Mississippi. The company is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

Watchdog.org, an affiliate of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, ran a 17-part series on the car company.

You can bet the Post will do its best to ignore or play down this major issue in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign. It is determined to protect McAuliffe’s “image” as a respectable businessman while savaging Cuccinelli.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

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