In 2024, an enormous amount of journalistic effort was put into the project of convincing the world of a "fact" that was utterly false.
That "fact" was that Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who dominated the Olympic female boxing competition, was female.
There was substantial evidence that he was not, although at the time most of it was circumstantial (there was also direct evidence from a highly credible leak of a genetic test). Nevertheless, almost the entire Pravda establishment and the International Olympic Committee went to great effort to "prove" that Khelif was female, because The Narrative™ about sex and gender required that they do so.
Proving this became absolutely imperative when the Khelif issue entered the political debate, mostly because the transgender/alphabet ideology controversy had become part of the presidential campaign. Trump rightly pointed out that the Democratic Party was committed to ensuring that men could participate in women's sports, and specifically referred to the Imane Khelif controversy several times during the campaign.
Here is the current wikipedia article on imane khelif. flatly stating that claims she is male are "false" (the link goes to an irrelevant article on "Transvestigations"). there is a debate in the talk page where they are refusing to accept imanes own words as a source. pic.twitter.com/fOT0rI1g5G
— internaut (@the_internaut) February 7, 2026
The press went wild over the issue, accusing Trump of lying, mocking women for their looks, and lying about the obvious fact that Khelif was female. They referenced a GLAAD "fact check," aired outraged commentaries, and, amusingly, pointed to Khelif's passport as the key piece of evidence in the controversy, as the IOC had.
It is now established through genetic testing that has been made public that Khelif is a man, and that Trump and all the critics of the IOC's allowing Khelif to compete were absolutely right. All of us knew that he was, with a 99% certainty, and even if he had not been right on this, his point about the Democratic Party's position was spot on. The Democrats do fight to put men in women's sports and have enshrined that position in law everywhere they can.
Obviously, we cannot expect journalists to be right all the time, and it is unfair to ding them on an occasional error in fact. I make mistakes, and so do all people. But calling this a "mistake" is wrong; the media "debunked" Trump and trashed him as a liar, and debunkings imply actual investigations and a massive effort to investigate the truth or falsity of a claim. A mistake of fact in paragraph 4 of a story is forgivable, especially when corrected; a "fact check" that spreads falsehoods for political reasons is a lie.
Ah, the Russians again. The all-purpose baddies who lie to you.
This is a phenomenon that happens all the time, and is a cousin to the use of anonymous sources who spew lies all the time. No matter how often an "anonymous source" is proven to be a liar, the press keeps going back to them as definitive sources.
I have always maintained that any anonymous source who has been proven to be a liar should be exposed. Implied in a relationship between a reporter and an anonymous source is that the "evidence" being presented is honest and even gold-plated in its provenance. The goal of providing anonymity is to get true information from people who will be punished for providing information that should rightly be public. If they are using the reporter to spread lies, that is a severe break in trust and the person who committed this journalistic crime deserves exposure.
Otherwise, the "journalist" is merely a stenographer for liars, which is what many of them WANT to be. They want to be political players with the integrity of Harry Reid, who accused Mitt Romney of not paying taxes, and after the campaign, when he was asked about his lie, he merely replied, "Romney didn't win, did he?"
We get lectures about how important it is to have an independent media in a Republic. Since politicians can be expected to spin the truth or even lie, we need journalists to hold tehm accountable, right?
Only, many of these journalists have the integrity of Harry Reid, and their justification is that they do journalism that serves the "public interest," and obviously they don't believe that the truth serves the public interest by their lights.
They did the same thing during COVID. It is their excuse for propagating hoaxes. It is their excuse for outright lying, or being stenographers for liars.
Note there was no "Woodward and Bernstein" who revealed the leaders of our intelligence organizations manufactured "Russian Collusion" to destroy a President elect.
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) July 18, 2025
In fact "Journalists" echoed the manufactured narrative, and won Pulitzer Prizes by doing so. pic.twitter.com/xyXYQ6pGj1
Journalists are never punished for lying. Occasionally, they get sacked for being too obvious in pushing hoaxes, as Stephen Glass was. But even he was viewed as a wunderkind for years until a fellow journalist got fed up with his being celebrated for breaking stories that were pretty obviously false, but which fed The Narrative™. His bosses had to know that Glass was fabricating stories, but they were just too good to check.
I recently had an interaction with a fairly prominent reporter who insisted that none of the protesters in Minnesota were paid. Their proof? "Minnesotans love to protest."
I asked a simple question, to which I got no answer: While it is true that some Minnesotans love to protest and that some of the protesters do it for free, have you checked on the allegations that the organizers are paid?
Of course not. They insisted on "debunking" a story because of her gut feeling, and did zero actual journalism. Because writing a story showing that the organizers (from around the country, mind you) were paid was inconvenient.
How do we get so many racial hoaxes? It fits the Narrative™. The serial Trump hoaxes? Same. The Steele Dossier hoax, which won The New York Times and the Washington Post Pulitzer Prizes?
The Narrative™. When, years later, the hoaxes are exposed? Nobody is punished. Because the hoax was the point, and their bosses were happy to push them.
Pravda is a lie generating machine.
“Fun” Fact:
— Nazi Hunters (@HuntersOfNazis) July 4, 2025
This “Gazan journalist” is just another Nazi whose idea of “reliable reporting” includes — but isn’t limited to — praising Hitler, glorifying the Holocaust, and calling to repeat it.
Naturally, he was hired by The New York Times — because Western outlets apparently… https://t.co/fODuY9mRrb pic.twitter.com/8rIVTFa22t
The New York Times will publish Op/Eds from a Hamas Colonel and portray him as a "Pediatrician" who only wants to save children.
The New York Post just revealed that the Gazan doctor who wrote two opinion pieces in the New York Times, accusing Israel of genocide after October 7th, is actually a Hamas terrorist himself.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 31, 2026
It turns out that Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia is a Hamas Colonel. pic.twitter.com/awXjEcFUOJ
It will repeat obvious Hamas propaganda without questioning it. It will employ an actual Nazi sympathizer to report from Gaza, and when caught, will chastise him for sharing his opinions on social media ("Don't get caught!). The Wall Street Journal employed a Hamas sympathizer to cover the war.
Following the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, which Chamseddine covered for the Journal, he wrote on social media that the slain terror leader had "proved that the impossible has become possible" and that the turnout for the funeral "terrifies Israel." pic.twitter.com/7KS2C18wWn
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) July 28, 2025
The Imane Khelif story is merely illustrative. It represents not an anomaly, but a formula. Propagate lies and hoaxes, debunk the truth, and use the title "journalist" as a shield to create false credibility and to shield liars from accountability.
They no longer see their job as exposing the Harry Reids of the world; they ARE the Harry Reids.
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