NewsBusters Win: WashPost Admits It 'Should Not Have Sent' Fiercely Anti-Israel Intern to Cover Protest

July 22nd, 2014 7:47 AM

Kristinn Taylor at Gateway Pundit reported a win for NewsBusters on Monday night. Yesterday, we noted The Washington Post published a story on anti-Israel protests written by a transparently anti-Israel graduate student (and apparent Post intern) named Britain Eakin. The Post now admits this was a mistake, and that it wasn't aware she was trashing Israel in fierce editiorials for al-Jazeera America and the leftist website Counterpunch.

Although Post spokesman Kris Coratti did not send us a statement, an editor’s note was appended online:

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Post covered a protest outside the State Department on July 20 against U.S. policy in the Middle East and Israel’s actions in Gaza. One reporter sent to cover the protest, Britain Eakin, is an intern who has written opinion pieces elsewhere that sharply criticize Israel in the conflict. The Post should not have sent her to cover the protest and, had it known of her writings, would not have done so.

We commend the Post editors for this admission, and saying it would not be their policy to send fierce advocates to support protests under the guise of "objective" reporting.

Finding Eakin's writings was easy. They were splashed across her Twitter page. It started with the Post promoting the latest visuals of the leftists at Code Pink, which opposes Israel and almost every part of U.S. foreign policy.

In Tuesday's paper, the Post was boosting Code Pink yet again on the front page of the Style section in an article titled "A Congress too pathetic to picket." This established Code Pink as morally superior to Congress. Reporter Ben Terris began:

Fifteen minutes after the rally’s scheduled start and here’s what we have outside the Russell Senate Office Building: one pink fedora, one pink sun hat and a half-dozen pink T-shirts.

Three Capitol Police officers ascend the marble staircase to have a word with Medea Benjamin, the head of Code Pink, an antiwar protest group that has come to publicly demand that Congress send no money to Egypt.

“I haven’t seen you guys in a long time,” Officer Patrick Gray says, giving Benjamin a bearhug. “Man, you guys used to be feistier. I remember when there used to be like 200 of you guys.”

...“We get arrested a lot more, and it’s harder to justify whether it’s really worth coming to the Capitol,” Benjamin tells me. “People say there’s no sense in dealing with Congress anymore because they are so impotent and useless.”

Code Pink activists have gone through the cost-benefit analysis and determined that making a scene outside of the Capitol isn’t worth it. Congress, it seems, has gotten so pathetic that even the protesters aren’t bothering to show up.

Late in the story, Terris also noted the Tea Party Express said they prefer protesting in the states instead of inside the Beltway.