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WaPo Finally Dumps Dishonest Partisan Propaganda Merchant Glenn Kessler

Posted on | July 28, 2025 | Comments Off on WaPo Finally Dumps Dishonest Partisan Propaganda Merchant Glenn Kessler

Today is a glorious day of celebration, and if you want to know why I call Glenn Kessler a “dishonest partisan propaganda merchant,” this Breitbart thread on X is a good place to begin, although of course it could never contain every bullshit “fact check” in Kessler’s long and odious career of bullshit fact-checking. When future historians examine how the mainstream media lost all credibility, Glenn Kessler’s career at the Washington Post will certainly deserve its own chapter. The man is to media credibility what Gavrilo Princip was to the empires of Europe.

Ace dowses Kessler in gasoline and lights him on fire:

As you know, the Washington Post sent out an email telling its woke staffers that they should accept the “voluntary” buyout package if they felt they could not “align” with the Post’s new non-woke agenda. The not-so-subtle implication was: Either take the buyout or you’ll be fired and just get the customary two-weeks’ paycheck.
All of the left-wing propagandists are outing themselves, resigning because they know for a fact they cannot be objective and do not wish to be. They wish to be paid propagandists.
The Washington Post will not be replacing Kessler with another “fact” checker. Apparently the Post’s new management has realized that left-wing “fact” checking is just Democrat-Communist propaganda dressed up to look like neutral reportage.
Kessler made that fact painfully clear, even to the water-heads of the Washington Post. . . .
Kessler wanted the buyout because he knew he would be fired in August if he didn’t take it, but “offered” to keep doing left-wing “fact” checks until they found a replacement for him.
And management told him “No thanks, we’re good, clear out your desk.” . . .

In other words? Exit, lying.

After the news broke of Kessler’s departure, I considered writing up a Short History of Fact-Checking as an American Spectator column, and might still do so, but that’s likely to be a 3,000-word opus and there was no way I could do the topic justice in a single day. To condense it severely, however, “fact-checking” began after a series of events, beginning in the mid-1990s, which caused mainstream media to become concerned that they were losing control of the narrative-building function that is essential to their value as “Democratic operatives with bylines.” After the 2002 mid-term elections (when Democrats lost seats, where historically they should have gained seats), David Brock launched Media Matters to try to discredit alternative media, and it was just around that time that “fact-checking” became a thing. Here is a brief snippet of something Glenn Kessler wrote in 2014:

The [fact-checking] trend kicked off in the United States, largely in response to the domestic media’s failure to properly vet the Bush administration’s claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 invasion. There are now three main fact-checking organizations based in the United States: FactCheck.org, founded in 2003 in affiliation with the University of Pennsylvania; PolitiFact, created in 2007 by the Tampa Bay Times; and The Fact Checker, created in 2007 by The Washington Post. Countless local newspapers and television channels run their own on-air fact-checking programs, especially during election seasons.

In his telling, then, it was opposition to the Bush administration’s Iraq policy which inspired the creation of “fact-checking,” which is to say, it was a partisan political effort to help Democrats, period. Never mind the errors of Bush’s Iraq policy. When did the major media ever feel the need to organize against any Democratic administration’s policy, foreign or domestic? What pissed them off was the Republicans were winning elections — remember John “Swift Boat” Kerry? — and the liberal media believed “right-wing” media (Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.) was to blame for this. “Fact-checking” was about attacking Republicans and defending Democrats, and it was never about anything else.

Anyway, I might expand that brief summary to a detailed 3,000-word column, but not right now. I’m exhausted from all this dancing in glee. We are so #winning and the liberals are so #losing.



 

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Category: Media Bias

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