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When a company fails at its basic mission in a way that harms the public, and then tries to mislead the public about it, newspaper reporters can be counted on to immediately swoop in and demand that the company be held to account.
So what happens when the company in question is a major, highly influential newspaper? Let's see.
On Friday, the Washington Post published an earth-shattering report that Russian hackers had infiltrated the U.S. electricity grid through a Vermont utility.
The story's lede said that a "code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials."
It went on to say that while "the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter, the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability."
"Officials said that it is unclear when the code entered the Vermont utility's computers," the story added.
This was huge news, and for good reason. If Russian hackers, or any hackers for that matter, had found their way into the U.S. electricity grid, there would be almost no end to the harm they could cause. Not surprisingly, the Post story spread like wildfire.
But it turns out that none of it was true. Zip. Zero. Nada.
There was no code, the grid was never at risk, and the "threat," such as it was, had nothing to do with Russia.
In fact, hours after the story posted, it was updated to note that the utility in question said there was only one computer involved — not "computers" — which wasn't in any way connected to the power grid. Strike one.
Three days later, the story fell apart completely. What actually happened: "An employee at Burlington Electric Department was checking his Yahoo email account Friday and triggered an alert indicating that his computer had connected to a suspicious IP address," the Post reported on Monday.
Strike two and three. In short, there was no story at all worth reporting.
Worse, the Post tried to bamboozle the public about what happened. The Post's top PR official, Kris Coratti, told Forbes contributor Kalev Leetaru that the reporters involved had reached out to both Vermont utilities before the story first posted Friday night. But Leetaru checked the original version of the story, captured by the Internet Archive, and found no evidence to back this up. An official at the utility in question told Leetaru that he didn't hear from the Post until after the story published. Had the Post talked to the utility before rushing onto the web, the story probably never would have seen the light of day.
"It is simply astounding that any newspaper, let alone one of the Post's reputation and stature, would run a story and then ten minutes after publication, turn around and finally ask the central focus of the article for comment," Leetaru wrote.
Then there's the broader political context to this story.
Just a few weeks earlier, the Post had to basically retract another story, this one claiming Russian propaganda officials had spread fake news in the run-up to the election to help Donald Trump. The Vermont utility story also directly tied the breach to the Russian's alleged hack of the DNC.
In other words, both of these fake news stories conveniently amplified the Democratic Party's narrative that Russia had tilted the election in Trump's favor. That's a serious breach of journalistic ethics if ever there was one.
So what's the Post's response to all this? Essentially, nothing.
In fact, when Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple pressed his own paper for answers, he got the brushoff from the Post's PR department, which merely issued a statement saying, "We have corrected the story, prominently displayed the correct information after further reporting, evaluated what transpired, and had the appropriate discussions internally to make sure something similar does not occur again."
Reporters would never let an energy company or a toy manufacturer or any other major corporation get away with that sort of cavalier response after a similarly spectacular failure in carrying out its basic mission. They shouldn't let the Post off the hook either.
The public deserves a fuller accounting from a newspaper as influential as the Washington Post, and some clear evidence that it is taking concrete steps to ensure that it is honestly and fairly reporting the news, not making it up to help Democrats.
http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/the-washington-post-needs-to-come-clean-about-its-russi...
