Is this News Article Genuine?
The first thing that struck me about this article is that it is from The Federalist, a conservative online magazine that has pushed misinformation about the Coronavirus and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Right away, I knew this piece would be a bit biased.
The Federalist is financially backed by Dick Uihlein, a packing supply magnate and Trump donor who is best for supporting extremely conservative candidates. Furthermore, DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund that has been characterised as the “dark money ATM” (which means many donors can remain anonymous) of the right, finances the website as well.
Moreover, Jordan Davidson, the writer of the article, is known for her affiliation with right-wing subjects.
Davidson herself is a Christian conservative. She went to Baylor University (the largest Baptist University in the world), worked as an intern at the National Journalism Center (founded by the late M. Stanton Evans, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union, and author of Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies), and worked as an intern for Representative Bill Flores (a former chief executive officer of Phoenix Exploration Company, an oil and gas company) of Texas’ 13th congressional district.
Her pinned tweet on Twitter is, “It’s a great day for media bias and big tech censorship!” By observing her ever-busy feed, I can see other articles by Davidson that claims “Biden’s Unity Branding is False Advertising That Will Sow More Division” or that “Joe ‘Moderate’ Biden Wages War on Life By Ordering You To Fund Overseas Abortions With Your Taxes.” Davidson’s perspective is clearly conservative, and will establish this narrative to paint the Biden administration as a deficient, bureaucratic spoils system.
It is true that the subject of Davidson’s piece, Suzi LeVine (Biden’s pick for an interim leadership position in the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Adm. program), was the head of the Washington state’s Employment Security Department (ESD) when it was attacked by criminals taking advantage of the unprepared benefits-processing systems during the pandemic. However, this is extremely misleading because Davidson either left material out or just made it up.
One, the article Davidson sourced did discuss the background of Levine, but it also mentioned that Washington was one of many states that were targeted by such criminals. A piece from cnbc.com stated such fraud claims went up 35% to 40% all over the country, and many top state officials were unprepared to face this crisis.
Two, Davidson’s own article neglects to mention that there was other factors that contributed to why ESD lost $600 million due to fraudulent payments (over half of it has been recovered): the pandemic itself, a desire to process claims quickly for the growing numbers of jobless workers, a small ESD workforce, and fraud rings that were waiting with stolen identities from past security breaches that did not involve ESD.
Three, Davidson has called Levine a “major player in the Democratic Party” who was reported to have donated “hundreds and thousands of dollars to the Biden 2020 campaign and other ‘Democratic causes.'” Although, she doesn’t source this information, and emphasizes Levine’s connections to Biden and other top Democrats in order to paint her as a party insider.
Jordan Davidson uses conservative curse words (such as “Democratic Party”, “left-wing”, or “President Joe Biden”) and misleading facts to paint Suzi LeVine as an incompetent, establishing-leaning, and corrupt politician to entice her readers. Even if this information is true, everything from the title to its skewed content heavily implies a right-wing message.
All in all, Davidson kept her conservative readers interested by portraying Levine as another swampy, inept, liberal politician that won’t solve any of America’s problems.
The Blip Blog 