Washington Post must retract and apologize for its completely fabricated story naming indy media websites as Russian collaborators

Sunday, November 27, 2016
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: Washington Post, fabricated story, retraction

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(NaturalNews) If the Washington Post hopes to retain any semblance of journalistic credibility, it must now retract and apologize for its baseless, deliberately falsified story that accuses dozens of independent media websites of working in conspiracy with the Russian government to undermine U.S. democracy.

The story by Craig Timberg, published by the Washington Post on Nov. 24, stands as perhaps the most desperate example yet of a defeated mainstream media wholly fabricating false stories and peddling them as "news." After having lost the election, the Washington Post has now lost its mind, and writers like Timberg now seem so deeply muddled in their own paranoid delusions that they clearly qualify for psychiatric evaluation.

Flatly stated, Craig Timberg and the Washington Post knowingly fabricated a blatantly false and defamatory story that accuses dozens of patriotic U.S. website publishers of being traitors to their own country. In doing so, the Post now cements its own credibility demise, having abandoned any shred of journalistic integrity in its quest to defame the very parties that are now taking over real journalism in America. The Washington Post has lost the hearts and minds of the American people. It has lost the debate. Now it hopes to censor its competition out of existence so that readers have no choice but to keep swallowing the lies and deceptions peddled by the Post.

Glenn Greenwald: "Reckless and unproven allegations... shoddy, slothful journalistic tactics..."

The disgraceful, malicious hit piece engineered by the Washington Post is so reprehensible that even Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept lashed out at the publisher for its shockingly unethical journalism.

"[T]he article is rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, and fundamentally shaped by shoddy, slothful journalistic tactics," wrote authors Greenwald and Norton. "In his article, the Post's Timberg did not include a link to PropOrNot's website. If readers had the opportunity to visit the site, it would have become instantly apparent that this group of ostensible experts far more resembles amateur peddlers of primitive, shallow propagandistic clichés than serious, substantive analysis and expertise; that it has a blatant, demonstrable bias in promoting the interests of western governments; and that it is engaging in extremely dubious McCarthyite tactics."

Now, Natural News is demanding the Washington Post retract its blatantly falsified story and publicly apologize to each website named in the story.

We are giving the Post an opportunity to take this action in avoidance of a coordinated, multi-party defamation lawsuit that will be served against the Washington Post if a retraction and public apology are not forthcoming. There is no excuse for the Post's complete fabrication of their blatantly false story. They must either retract their false story or forfeit any claim to legitimate journalism.

The Washington Post will forfeit any last semblance of credibility if it does not retract this obviously false, baseless and defamatory story

Accusing independent media publishers of actively conspiring with a foreign enemy of the U.S. government is no small matter. Such a damning accusation must surely be backed by evidence if it were to appear in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post, no?

Yet a review of the article authored by Timberg reveals not a single shred of credible evidence supporting the story.

Surely there must be documents or audio recordings linking the named websites to the Russians, right? No. There are no documents or audio recordings. They do not exist.

Surely these accusations of conspiracy against America must come from credible, authoritative sources willing to stand behind their reputations, right? No. All the accusations mentioned in the Washington Post article came from anonymous sources... cowards hiding behind anonymity to make baseless accusations while fleeing from scrutiny of their own biases or political leanings.

Surely the Washington Post must have contacted some of the websites it named in order to confirm or deny these serious allegations, right? No. I am the founder of Natural News, and I was not contacted by anyone from Timberg's team, nor was I given any opportunity to refute the false charges asserted by the Washington Post.

Surely the process by which websites are added to the "blacklist" from PropOrNot must be researched with a well-defined, rigorous, objective review process rooted in science, right? No. The list appears to have been scraped together like a high school s##t list targeting the "unpopular" crowd.

Surely the Washington Post conducted some sort of fact checking or due diligence before publishing its story that cited these anonymous sources, right? No. The Post conducted no fact checking whatsoever and refused to name its sources. The entire article was a slanderous hit piece fabricated out of thin air.

Well then, surely the Washington Post must be sitting on some sort of damning evidence it's going to roll out that ties all these sites to the Kremlin, right? No. The Post has no such evidence because there is no such evidence. It does not exist. The story was utterly and completely fabricated in Rolling Stone fashion. There is not a single shred of credible evidence to support even a single assertion of the story.

Multi-party defamation lawsuit is now forming

I'm going to give the Washington Post a bit of time to retract their story and apologize to those websites it named in its hit piece. To the lawyers at the Post, if you want to reach me, your writer named Sullivan knows how to reach me because he interviewed me for a different story, and he actually had the integrity to quote me accurately. So you can reach me through Sullivan if you wish to negotiate the wording of your apology.

If a retraction and public apology do not appear in the next few days, I will activate a sustained legal effort against the Washington Post, and I will invite every publisher named in the PropOrNot blacklist to join the defamation lawsuit. One of my legal representation firms is located in Washington D.C., so they can sit down with you in person to negotiate the terms of your settlement.

NOTE to independent media websites named in the WashPost story: Contact me soon. I am building a contact list for coordination of the anticipated legal action against the Washington Post. You do not need to contribute any funds for this lawsuit, but you may need to testify if this goes to trial. The legal action is already fully funded, so you will not be asked to provide any funds.

I also anticipate announcing a $10,000 reward for the identities of the PropOrNot participants, payable in the form of 13.7 Bitcoins via an anonymizer of your choice, as someone has already stepped up to the plate and told me they will offer this reward money in the interests of public transparency and truth in journalism. This offer is NOT YET activated, but for those who may be interested, watch Natural News for further details. Once activated, the offer will be solid.

Prediction: There will be a significant grassroots backlash against the Washington Post

Legal action is only the beginning of where all this may lead, it turns out. By utterly fabricating this defamatory piece of false journalism in order to destroy its competition, the Post has declared war on the independent media and confessed that it is willing to invent false "facts" without hesitation in order to push its censorship agenda. (Hilariously, the Washington Post, which has invented this utterly FAKE news, accused the independent media of being "fake news" sites.)

This means the Washington Post is now completely comfortable with publishing so-called "factual" articles accusing anybody of anything. Don't be surprised if you see another hit piece story accusing some indy media founder of being a child molester, in other words. At this point, the Post can (and will) fabricate anything it wants, even if the assertions are utterly baseless. If I ran Natural News using the same lack of integrity practiced by the Washington Post, I could invent some completely false story that says Jeff Bezos molests little children, then cite a group of "anonymous" activists who made a "secret list" of all the names of the little children Bezos has molested. That's the kind of despicable journalism to which the Post has now descended. There is no place for such tactics in a free society.

The victims of the Washington Post's malicious journalism aren't just conservative websites, by the way, such as InfoWars or Liberty Blitzkrieg. The Post is also maliciously targeting a huge number of independent, progressive websites like Collective Evolution and Truthout. What they all have in common is that they question the false narratives of the establishment media. And that's what's freaking out the globalists like Bezos who run the WashPost.

What's going to happen if this moves forward is that every single website targeted by the Post will coordinate a massive grassroots (but peaceful) retaliation campaign against the Washington Post... and the Post will find itself rapidly going down the path of Gawker, subjected to intense public ridicule, boycotts of advertisers, comment section flashmobs and a number of other non-violent grassroots tactics now being used by the masses against dishonest, lying institutions that deceive the people.

With its journalistic credibility in tatters, the Post will quickly find itself on the receiving end of a barrage of defamation lawsuits combined with, I predict, independent activist actions from justice hacker groups like Anonymous. I do not have contact with anyone inside Anonymous, and I do not control or endorse their actions, but I do realize they often see themselves as justice warriors taking a stand against the corrupt, lying institutions that enslave people with disinformation. That's a perfect description of the Washington Post, and it's not difficult to predict that groups like Anonymous may unleash unrelenting cyber assault waves against Bezos properties, including Amazon servers, WashPost content servers and even WashPost advertisers. This is an analysis, not a call to action, by the way. People can decide for themselves what they wish to do. I consistently tell people to avoid violence and avoid violating the law, as a matter of principle.

In my analysis, in other words, I predict they will do to Jeff Bezos exactly what they just did to Hillary Clinton. (Yep, it was the hackers who ultimately brought her down via Podesta's leaked emails.)

The appropriate hashtag for this operation might be #TakeDownWashPost.

WashPost's fabricated stories are the dying, desperate screams of an institution slitting its own throat and bleeding out for all the world to see...

Rest assured, this will all get really interesting. It might even be entertaining. But the only loser in all this will be the Washington Post, as the independent media has the real truth on its side.

You see, what the NYT, WashPost, CNN and MSNBC still don't realize is this jaw-dropping whopper of hard-core truth: They CREATED the independent media by refusing to carry out legitimate journalism in America.

By censoring real news, falsifying "facts" and treating their own audiences as dumbed-down sheeple, they created a journalism vacuum that has been filled by Natural News, Infowars, AntiWar, Truthout, The Economic Collapse Blog and dozens of other website publishers dedicated to the real truth as they see it. Every website doesn't get every fact correct every time, but these people -- and I know many of them -- are deeply dedicated to the core ideals of legitimate journalism... i.e. rooting out the truth in a world full of lies and delivering that truth to curious readers.

The Washington Post, in contrast, is dedicated to fabricating lies in a world full of truth, then pulling the wool over the eyes of its ever-shrinking base of readers, hoping they will swallow all the lies without question. The Post, you see, is dedicated to LYING. It lies with premeditation and conscious deliberation. It lies to achieve a political outcome (such as the election of Hillary Clinton) or to disrupt its competition. The Washington Post has no dedication whatever so honest reporting and stands today as a bastion of Orwellian propaganda parading around as "facts."

That is why the Washington Post will implode. Readers in America have no real desire to continue to be lied to by propagandists pretending to be journalists. They want real news from real people who display real passions and real life experiences. They're hungry to hear the other side of the story that publishers like the Washington Post have been sweeping under the rug for decades. And because WashPost, NYT, USA Today and CNN no longer engage in real journalism, curious readers turn to the independent media sources that tell them the truth.

If the Washington Post had been reporting real news all these years, sites like Natural News never would have gained two million Facebook followers and millions of monthly readers. Infowars alone now has a far more popular broadcast than Anderson Cooper of CNN, and the combined readership across the independent media completely dwarfs the Washington Post. (DrudgeReport.com all by itself generates more website referral traffic than the New York Times.)

The "lamestream media" has lost the war. So now they're trying to throw suicide grenades in every direction, hoping to take out as many other publishers as they can while they implode. That's the Washington Post today: A suicidal psych ward of insane propagandists who tell each other they're journalists... but they wouldn't recognize real journalism if it sat on them.

These people at the Post have been cognitively masturbating each other for so long with so many deep layers of echo-chamber propaganda, they literally cannot recognize reality anymore. They live in the liberal "bubble" of self-delusion, and to explain what they see as bizarre transformations happening all around them, they are now turning to the kind of kooky, conspiracy paranoia they used to attribute to people like Alex Jones.

Now, Alex Jones appears more sane than Jeff Bezos, and it's Craig Timberg from the Washington Post who needs to be locked in a padded cell. The Washington Post has become not a Ministry of Truth, but the Ministry of Clinical Paranoia Pretending to be News.

Stay tuned to Natural News for more updates as this drama unfolds. Don't expect the paper to apologize, by the way. They're so deluded, they can no longer tell the difference between fiction and reality. So they print fiction and call it "reality" and hope nobody notices the difference.

Well, we did. And right now, I'm calling bulls##t on the Washington Post.