Just when you think Newsweek has hit rock bottom, they prove you wrong. So very wrong.
On Tuesday, shortly after a troubled woman went on a shooting spree at YouTube’s offices in San Bruno, Calif., Newsweek tweeted a shocking and dismaying news alert:
“Breaking: The San Bruno Police Department scanner said 37 people were transported to nearby hospitals after an active shooter situation was reported at YouTube’s headquarters in California.”
Even cub reporters know you’re not supposed to report police scanner chatter as fact, let alone tweet the alleged details from their newsroom’s official social media accounts. This isn’t even a strikeout. This is an automatic disqualification.
In the least surprising twist, Newsweek’s Twitter account eventually published a clarification, which read, “Update: New reports from CNN say number of people transported to hospitals is significantly lower. Spokesperson Lisa Kim at Stanford Hospital said, ‘There are 4 to 5 patients en route to hospital – would not say injuries or condition.”
Characterizing that follow-up tweet as an “update” was extraordinarily generous. It wasn’t an “update.” It was an attempt to soften a major and unprofessional failure of basic journalism.
I write a great deal about this particular news organization, you might notice. There’s a reason for this: Of all the national media outlets in the U.S., the new Newsweek is uniquely terrible. It may have once been a well-respected and reputable news outlet, but that was back in the day. Today, it is more like a punchline. It is biased, lazy, chronically sloppy and flat-out wrong more often than any other publication I can think of.
At Newsweek, you’ll find interesting nonfacts, like the claim that Kenneth Starr was a “former Watergate investigator.” You’ll also find retractions in place of reports like the one alleging the girlfriend of the man who shot and killed 59 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas had two Social Security numbers, or that one story that alleged an army of Kremlin-connected trolls took down disgraced former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.
You’ll find lurid and misleading stories, like the one that used the shabbiest and flimsiest supporting “evidence” to suggest President Trump may have erectile dysfunction. You’ll find stories (fan-fiction, really) fantasizing about what it would take to oust Trump and have Hillary Clinton installed as the president of the U.S.
You’ll also find aggressively ignorant journalism, like the time Newsweek claimed the Speaker’s Lobby’s longstanding and loosely-defined dress code was basically just like the dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Lastly, you’ll find grossly unfair characterizations of conservative figures. That includes the time Newsweek paraphrased an article by National Review’s David French, wherein he explored the unhappy options and expectations should the U.S. come under nuclear attack, with a headline that reads, “Nuclear War? It Won’t Get You in the Suburbs, Conservative Magazine Tells Readers.”
Astonishingly enough, these examples from America’s frontrunner for worst publication cover just the last nine months.
