The Washington Post has published a lengthy article berating former Supreme Court reporter Robert Barnes for doing his due diligence and declining to report the Alito flag hoax as if it was a legitimate news story, robbing the newspaper of a “precious exclusive.”
Barnes, now retired, was aware of Justice Samuel Alito’s wife flying a U.S. flag upside down in 2021—an incident being pushed as earth-shattering news years after the fact as the corporate media attempts to influence Supreme Court rulings on Donald Trump and January 6 defendants. Instead of rushing to report the display as proof the Alitos supported the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, as the corporate media are doing today, Barnes actually did his job, discovering it was the result of a neighbor dispute.
WaPo media critic Erik Wemple is now blasting Barnes and his editors for not running the story, eventually published by The New York Times, regardless of the facts, complaining, “The Alitos received deference to which they were not entitled.”
FACTS (DON’T) MATTER.
Wemple reached this conclusion despite Barnes telling him “We determined that it wasn’t the justice that flew the flag upside down and we determined it wasn’t a protest about the election or something else on the part of Mrs. Alito.” Barnes told Wemple he corroborated this based on Martha-Ann Alito’s “actions when I saw her and what others in the neighborhood had told me.”
Mrs. Alito flew the upside-down flag in response to some of their neighbors putting up crass signs reading “F**k Trump,” “Trump Is a Fascist,” and—addressing the Alitos—’You Are Complicit.’ Wemple fumed Barnes had not gone to the couple for their side of the story, though they have never denied erecting the signs.
Wemple also acknowledges upside-down flags were not closely associated with ‘Stop the Steal’ at the time of the incident, and that contemporary managing editor Cameron Barr said the decision not to a run a story was a matter of “consensus.”
