The fake quotes, bad as they were, are just one of many ways the media have done a horrible job of covering election disputes in the state.
The Washington Post was busted for publishing fabricated quotes from an anonymous source, attributing them to a sitting president, and using those quotes as a basis to speculate the president committed a crime. The invented Donald Trump quotes, which related to a fight over election integrity in Georgia, were cited in Democrats’ impeachment brief and during the Senate impeachment trial.
But the fake quotes, bad as they were, are just one of many ways the media have done a horrible job of covering election disputes in the state.
According to the media narrative, the Georgia presidential election was as perfectly run as any election in history, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. To push that narrative, the media steadfastly downplayed, ignored, or prejudiciously dismissed legitimate concerns with how Georgia had run its November 2020 election and complaints about it.
That posture was the complete opposite of how they were reporting on Georgia elections prior to Democrats performing well in them. In the months prior to November, some media sounded a bit like Lin Wood when they wrote about Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Dominion Voting Systems, legal challenges in the state, and Georgia election integrity in general.
How Media Talked About Georgia Before Biden Won
“Georgia’s Election Mess: Many Problems, Plenty of Blame, Few Solutions for November,” read the June 10, 2020, New York Times headline of a story by Richard Fausset and Reid Epstein about the “disastrous primary election” in June that was “plagued by glitches, but Democrats also saw a systemic effort to disenfranchise voters.”
Citing irregularities with absentee ballots and peculiarities at polling sites, the authors said Georgia’s “embattled election officials” were dealing with a voting system that suffered a “spectacular collapse.” They said it was unclear whether the problems were caused by “mere bungling, or an intentional effort” by Raffensperger and his fellow Republicans in the secretary of state’s office.