Why is the Washington Post Elevating Internet Trolls?

Did you hear the one about the Washington Post doing a story about that mean old Governor Larry Hogan blocking people from his Facebook page featuring a Internet troll notorious for blocking people on social media?

In a horrible piece of pathetic “gotcha” journalism the Washington Post featured the infamous Twitter troll, Matt Gonter, known for his petty, vile and immature attacks on the Governor.

It’s cheeky that the Post in as story about the Governor blocking people would feature Gonter, who is famous for blocking anyone who disagrees with him, particular those of us here at Red Maryland.

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Here’s a small sample of Gonter’s vulgar and infantile tweets at the Governor that the Post conveniently neglected to mention.

And that’s just a small sample of Gonter’s body of work as an Internet troll with nothing better to do. We’ve got pages of his greatest hits hurling all manner of lewd and invective insults at the Governor and the Governor’s staff.

Congratulations Washington Post; in an attempt to put legs on a nothing burger of a story you just elevated a small minded snowflake by giving him undeserved press. Stay classy guys.

Would it have killed them to do five minutes of basic research to discover this?

Speaking of research, the Post failed to do some basic research on another one of the people they featured; Gretchen Weigel Doughty. The Post described the Takoma Park resident as “a real estate photographer and marketer who says she has never been particularly politically active.”

Not politically active? Did the Post reporters bother to check that for accuracy before printing such an alternative fact?

A rudimentary Internet search would have revealed this Facebook post of her children holding anti-Tea Party signs at the John Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally in 2010.

We have to question the instincts of reporters who take at face value the assertion that anybody from Takoma Park claims that that they are not politically active.

Mrs. Doughty is also listed on this Baltimore Sun letter to the editor with hundreds of others including another person featured in the Post article.

That Mrs. Doughty and the other person the Post interviewed were part of this clearly organized effort lends credence to the Governor’s communications staff concerns about organized spamming of the his Facebook page.

But the Post reporters would have known that and could have avoided spreading this fake news had they done some basic research.

In a time in which “journalists” like those at the Washington Post are trying to pretend that they are high-minded and the only credible source of news in the world, they remind us why people don’t trust journalists in the first place. Instead of trying to write about actual news the Post, along with their cohorts at the Sun, are doing their best to invent elevate ridiculous news stories and not even get the basic facts right about them.

The Washington Post owes all of us an explanation as to why they are elevating lewd internet trolls into freedom fighters at the vanguard of the “resistance”.