Picture this!
On July 26, 2000, WorldNetDaily published an exclusive, copyrighted, breaking news story, "FBI fishes Senate e-mail for Trulock."
No other media organization had the story.
Two days later, the Washington Post published a remarkably similar story, "Probe of Ex-Official Extends to Hill." The Post's top national security writer, Walter Pincus, reportedly had been e-mailed copies of WND's story on July 27 by sources on Capitol Hill.
When WorldNetDaily confronted the Post, the news giant readily admitted it had failed to credit WND with the story, apologized, and ran a correction crediting WorldNetDaily.com. (See "The Post's uncredited WND rewrite")
In this tumultuous era for the press – which has changed in one generation from having been dominated by the Washington Post, New York Times and "the big three" networks to offering today a multitude of news choices – the so-called "Old Media" are having a little trouble accepting the "New Media." Competition makes them uncomfortable, especially from the revolutionary new Internet world.
The Post episode is not unique. In fact, it's a frequent occurrence, and not only with the Post. Stories that first appear on this site are subsequently picked up by the rest of the press, sometimes with credit, but more often – especially when picked up by big media – without credit.
When WorldNetDaily broke the story of President Clinton's Executive Order 13083 – which totally re-defined federalism and threatened to gut the 10th Amendment – it was a month before the Post finally got around to covering the story in a July 17, 1998, piece by Post staff writer David Broder. No credit to WorldNetDaily.
On Feb. 27, 2000, Post staffer Marc Fisher interviewed WND Editor Joseph Farah about another WorldNetDaily scoop – Jane Fonda's conversion to Christianity. In his story, "When Barbarella Met Jesus," Fisher writes: "This is one of those Internet specials, a report that originated on a wacky Web site and found its way onto page one of the Washington Times before flying all over the infotainment universe."
And when WND first brought the brutal rape-murder of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising to national attention, the ensuing controversy over the virtual media blackout on the case led to the Washington Post's ombudsman, E.R. Shipp, writing this:
"There is an explanation for the absence of coverage of the brutal rape and asphyxiation death of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising, but those who are inclined to believe the David Dukes, Joseph Farahs and Tim Grahams of the world – who have asserted that the story has been suppressed so that homosexuals won't be portrayed negatively – will not be satisfied."
So, while the Post has no problem in attempting to marginalize or trivialize WorldNetDaily by calling it names like "wacky Web site," or comparing veteran journalist and CEO Joseph Farah with Ku Klux Klansman David Duke, it also has a penchant for picking up WND's stories and packaging them as its own.
In fact, WorldNetDaily's exclusive dual news features on Fox's controversial "Temptation Island" series resulted in many follow-on stories in the rest of the media, including Associated Press, the New York Times, New York Daily News and others. All gave credit to WorldNetDaily for breaking the story – except the Washington Post.
The Post did manage, however, to credit Sperry for his uncovering of the Internet pornography scandal in the Clinton White House, involving the downloading by White House staffers of massive amounts of hard-core porn video files. The Post confirmed that story the next day with White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, and other major news media – including the Associated Press, MSNBC, USA Today, followed up – crediting WorldNetDaily with breaking the news on the latest White House scandal.
For the sake of new readers who may not be familiar with the five-year track record of WorldNetDaily.com, we present: "WND Scoops: You read it here first!"
Although by no means an exhaustive listing of original stories, "Scoops" features some of the high-profile stories that have had the greatest impact on Americans over the last five years. "Know Your Customer," the National ID card, CNN-Time's "Tailwind" fraud and many others are described and linked.
WND has garnered at least 14 Associated Press citations for stories it's broken – by far the most of any independent newssite on the Internet – which is more proof that the old establishment media are having to take our reporting seriously.
Sometimes we get credit for our work, and sometimes we don't. But it always has impact.
Here are links to lists of just some of the stories WND has broken, categorized by year:
2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997
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