The Biden administration has put a pause on its much-talked-about Disinformation Board, and the controversial pick to lead it, Nina Jankowicz, has resigned. The revelation came in a Washington Post story by 37-year-old reporter Taylor Lorenz, who herself is a lightning rod for her online theatrics. Lorenz frames the story as “far-right influencers” being responsible for a coordinated online hit job against Jankowicz.
Who is Lorenz talking about when she writes “far-right influencers”? Well, we don’t really know because she doesn’t specifically say. Who coordinated these supposed brilliant online attacks against Jankowicz that forced Senate Democrats to cancel a hearing with her and pushed the Biden administration to cancel her entire gig? We also don’t know that because Lorenz does not elaborate or back up that claim with evidence, something you would think would be quite important for a newspaper such as the Washington Post.
Have editorial standards at the Washington Post sunk so low that its own journalists don’t have time to corroborate their claims in writing, or are editors simply terrified of how Taylor Lorenz went scorched-earth on her former employer, the New York Times, on her way out the door?
Let’s examine a couple of these claims. Lorenz claims that Jankowicz “has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.” What has been misrepresented? Again, Lorenz never cites examples. Perhaps Lorenz is speaking of a Zoom meeting in which Jankowicz talks about wanting social media platforms such as Twitter to operate more like Wikipedia, with certain governing users having the ability to edit other users’ tweets.
Perhaps Lorenz is citing the fact that Jankowicz herself trafficked several times in disinformation, including an Oct. 22, 2020, tweet in which she cites a debunked report that Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” was a “Russian influence op,” something Jankowicz herself has yet to correct, and something Lorenz and the Washington Post both ignore.
Lorenz claims that Jankowicz and her work have been misrepresented but doesn’t offer an example as to how. Lorenz makes the claim a second time, writing, “Jankowicz’s experience is a prime example of how the right-wing Internet apparatus operates, where far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them.” Who are these ‘far-right influencers,’ and to reiterate, what about Nina Jankowicz’s words, both on recorded video and in cringe-inducing viral show tunes, has been mischaracterized?
Lorenz also cites Hill staffers who claim that “Jankowicz was set up to fail by an administration that was unsure of its messaging and unprepared to counteract a coordinated online campaign against her.” Who coordinated an online campaign against Jankowicz? How was it coordinated? Did a secret cabal of investigative reporters use Slack channels? WhatsApp? Twitter DMs? Who are these mysterious and nefarious right-wing actors who carry unparalleled influence over a Democratic presidential administration? Once again, Lorenz doesn’t actually say.
Finally, Lorenz takes issue with journalism (and her own career, it seems), writing, “Dozens of websites including Breitbart, the Post Millennial, the Daily Caller and the New York Post began mining Jankowicz’s past social media posts and publishing articles to generate controversy.” Lorenz wants you to believe that news outlets looking into the social media posts of someone who has just been given a powerful, unvetted position within the Department of Homeland Security is somehow off-limits. Lorenz herself has made a career in this kind of practice.
The issue here is not with Taylor Lorenz, who is a walking contradiction with every piece she writes about digging into social media posts and mining for controversy. The issue here is with the Washington Post and its editorial standards, which by all accounts seem to be nonexistent when it comes to investigating Biden administration officials. And the paper seems scared stiff to confront outlandish claims made by its star reporter to avoid a PR headache and its own online drama. This is not Woodward and Bernstein’s paper any longer.
Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) has written for National Review, the New York Post, and Fox News and hosts the Versus Media podcast.
