QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Shot: Is Bezos Employee Jennifer Rubin Auditioning For a Job At The Babylon Bee?

Newsalert, November 3rd, 2021.

Chaser: Wash Post publishes piece with debunked claim about DeSantis’ Florida despite source admitting it was wrong.

Several days after Business Insider admitted they had published inaccurate numbers of state residents that moved to Florida during the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin cited them and used them in an attack piece about Gov. Ron DeSantis’, R-Fla., leadership of the state.

Rubin published the column Friday in which she claimed, “DeSantis likes to brag that more people are moving to Florida than ever. Not so fast. ‘An estimated 674,740 people reported that their permanent address changed from Florida to another state in 2021.’” Those numbers are wrong and the Post, in a correction on Saturday, admitting the column “mischaracterized” the stats.

She originally added, “’That’s more than any other state, including New York or California, the two states that have received the most attention for outbound migration during the pandemic,’ according to the American Community Survey released in June tracking state-by-state migration.”

* * * * * * * *

Despite Business Insider admitting its original claim was contrary to the actual numbers, Rubin published the debunked fact in her piece three days later.

On Saturday afternoon, the Post offered a correction to Rubin’s column, admitting to “mischaracterizing” the numbers: “A previous version of this article mischaracterized Floridians’ state-to-state migration in 2021. According to the Census Bureau, more people moved into Florida than any other state that year. This version has been corrected.”

—Fox News, yesterday.

Much of what Rubin writes these days is unintentionally satiric, but to be honest, I trust the reporting at America’s Newspaper of Record much more than the vast majority of the WaPo’s output.