The Washington Post's subtle twisting

Press bias: Sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, and what’s subtle can be the worst, like a copperhead lying on red clay or dead leaves

I interviewed on Wednesday and Thursday two straight talkers who oppose the gay rights agenda and are paying a price for it. In the issue of WORLD that goes to press 10 days from now we plan to have a column about the firing of college football analyst Craig James and a Q&A with E.W. Jackson, the Virginia lieutenant governor candidate.

In my research for interviewing Jackson, I ran across two examples of subtle Washington Post distortions. Last year Jackson observed accurately that Democrats have an “abortion policy that amounts to infanticide. They have also made the lesbian-homosexual-bisexual-transgender agenda their vision for America.” He then asked a good question: “How have they managed to hold on to black Christians in spite of an agenda worthy of the Antichrist?”

Note that Jackson was describing ideas, not individuals, but the Post on Sept. 29 stated, “To E.W. Jackson, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia, Democrats are agents of the antichrist.” I agree with Jackson that the agenda is anti-Christian, but people may accept that agenda for all kinds of reasons: It’s not the same as saying they are “agents.”

Here’s another hard but true statement Jackson made: “Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was.” That’s statistically true, whatever your perspective on abortion is, because even folks who somehow say African-American unborn babies aren’t human beings at least know that they are alive. But The Washington Post reported Jackson’s supposed belief that “Slavery and the Ku Klux Klan were no great threat to African Americans compared to that posed by Planned Parenthood and the welfare state.”

See the difference? Jackson said the KKK was bad and Planned Parenthood was even worse. The Washington Post had Jackson sounding like a no-big-deal apologist for the KKK.

Subtle but deadly. Like some snakes.