Wash Post publishes piece with debunked claim about DeSantis’ Florida despite source admitting it was wrong
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
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."
Business Insider published the figure earlier in the week, claiming that 674,740 residents left the state, overtaking 433,402 residents leaving California and 287,249 residents moving from New York.
Though the outlet corrected it Tuesday, after critics, including Team DeSantis’ Christina Pushaw, pointed out, consulted the data the report was based on and blasted the paper.
Pushaw tweeted, "That figure -- 674,740 -- is people who moved TO Florida, not OUT OF Florida. Retraction needed."
Confirming critics’ analysis, Business Insider wrote a new piece correcting the figure, which was headlined, "We got it wrong: More people moved out of New York and California in 2021."
In it, reporter Kelsey Neubauer – who wrote the original erroneous piece – stated, "Out-of-staters flocked to Florida in 2021, with some 674,740 people moving there," amending the claim.
It added, "About 469,577 residents left the state, for a net population gain of 205,163," and affirmed, "The state became a big draw for Americans who decided to move during the pandemic."
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."
Since Rubin published the piece, multiple Twitter users blasted her and the Washington Post outlet for not catching the error.
The National Review’s Charles Cooke shared screenshots of Rubin’s error and the new article from Business Insider on Twitter. He wrote, "In which Jennifer Rubin writes a piece in the Washington Post on Friday that is based around the massive mistake that Business Insider made—and then corrected—on Tuesday. ‘Does she have editors?’ was just emphatically answered."
Cooke added, "It really is jarring to see. When I’ve written for the Post and the Times, I’ve been fact-checked until I bled. If I wrote that there are 50 states, I was asked for a citation. That’s fine—good, even. But, as is evident if you read those papers, it only happens in one direction."
Outkick.com writer Ian Miller tweeted, " Jennifer Rubin and the Washington Post lied about the amount of people who moved to Florida because they didn’t want it to be true since it makes Ron DeSantis look good — and they still haven’t corrected their very obvious mistake. Amazing to see how desperate they are."
RedState.com senior editor Joe Cunningham commented, "Hell, CNN fact-checked the hell out of an op-ed I wrote. But Jennifer Rubin gets all the free passes.
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Given her batshit crazy positions and her shamelessness in offering completely contradictory opinions in the service of "getting" conservatives, Rubin has become quite the favorite on the left. Her rants are often posted here. That she would make such a basic mistake isn't really that surprising.
But does the Washington Post even have editors anymore? The original story with Business Insider's fuck up went viral a few days before Rubin published her buffoonery. Even without the widely available mockery of the specific claim Rubin made, how does anyone not know that the claim that Florida is losing more residents than other states is laughable on its face? IS there not one person at either of these media outlets with enough awareness to recognize how ridiculous a claim that is?
Something to keep in mind anytime the Post reports anything.
so conservatives are unhappy with media that publishes debunked claims now?
That would put about 90% of right wing media out of business.
Deflection is the only tool available for the Jen Rubin fan club.
Can you explain how anyone could believe more people moved out of Florida than California and New York in 2021?
Lol, yep. That’s just how deluded some on the left are. Totally batshit crazy. Look no further than NTers for proof of that.
If you bother to read the seed, it actually says 469,577 moved out of Florida which is more than California(433,402) or NY(287,249).
They had a net gain in Florida. Did California or New York?
"From 2020 to 2022, the Sunshine State added more than 655,000 residents, trailing only Texas. Florida was not only the fastest growing state last year, it was in the top three over the last two years. States like Florida with large populations don’t usually grow at such a fast clip. That’s typically the domain of much smaller states like Nevada, Idaho and Montana."
This is truly amazing. Let's walk through reading comprehension. For starters, the title of the story should have told you that there were debunked claims to be aware of. Knowing this, you should probably have expected the original false claim and its correction were probably in the story. When you got to this line:
everything should have clicked. Sadly, neither yourself, the Washington Post fact checkers nor Jennifer Rubin, nor the people who bizarrely gave you a thumbs up for repeating a claim now thrice debunked were able to grasp what that means. That single sentence tells you what the what the fake claim was and what the actual truth is. Of course, that shouldn't even be necessary unless you've been living under a rock and paying no attention to the news the last few years. That Florida has gained population while others lost it is simply something any observer of America probably knows at this point.
Regardless, even if words are too difficult and you've paid no attention to the news, simply reading and understanding the chart contained in the links would have prevented you from pulling a Rubin. If you can actually read a chart correctly, you'd see that 469,577 moved out of Florida, but 571,041 actually left New York and 841,065 left California.
78,000 retire there yearly and die, so smaller gain than you think.
Along with the population gain is currently the highest inflation rate in the US, the highest auto insurance rates in the country, and by far the highest home insurance rates in the country. Housing prices have skyrocketed.
In the last week two more insurers have stopped writing policies in Florida, AAA, and Farmers they join the many others that have either pulled out of the state or declared bankruptcy. AAA in-house Florida subsidiary will continue writing policies.
The state-run insurer, Citizens overwhelmed before the last two left, and of course to fund that insurance of last resort is dependent on policy premiums and Florida law also requires that Citizens levy assessments on most Florida policyholders if it experiences a deficit in the wake of a particularly devastating storm or series of storms.
But the main target of our politicians is ''Drag Queens'' and a war on ''woke''....
The population of Florida in:
Ten years ago, it was 19,551,678. Looks like steady growth to me, while accounting for deaths.
I have a serious question for you. Since DeSantis, or before, announced his candidacy for president, you have posted seed after seed slamming him for whatever it is going on in Florida, no matter whom it is that deserves the blame.
You live in a county that voted plus 30 points for DeSantis in 2022, plus 60 points for Trump in 2020, which puts you in the very small minority politically in the state'
If you hate the governor of this state so much, why do you stay? Would you not be more happy in a state that meets the standards that you believe Florida should hold.
Just curious.
Sean I read the article, I didn't bother to read the references. How often do you read the references? The article says this -
-and this-
The implication was that the only wrong number was 674,740. I should have delved into it deeper because the of this line you pointed out: "More people moved out of New York and California in 2021". That line made the numbers in the seed and verbiage disagree. I'll have to be more careful.
Anyway, I think new Floridans gonna be surprised. My friends were complaining just last week that their south FL home insurance went up 40% last year and another 20% this year. Farmers Insurance moved out of FL, but they're small. I wonder how long it will take for climate change to make living at sea level in a hurricane zone undesirable?
I wonder how long it will take for climate change to make living at sea level in a hurricane zone undesirable?
Exactly, wildfires, drought, tornadoes, heatwaves, hurricanes, they might be enough to convince people to move back to New York and Illinois.
One of my brothers lives in northern FL (outside Jacksonville). He & his wife said they were afraid to go out before the vaccine because it seemed like most took no precautions at all. I noticed that the per capita COVID death rate in FL was 50% higher than CA. My brother's not interested in politics, but FL's COVID response and DeSantis's policies wrt 'wokeness' strike him as completely insane <- his word. It's actually funny to talk with him because he says what in the world is going on while watching his governor attack Disney for having an opinion.
I posted about insurance in southern FL elsewhere here.
Everything I've read about Reedy Creek indicates that surrounding districts dream of Disney management. Do you know anything about that?
I have a serious answer for you as well. Is anything that I just posted inaccurate? no, it isn't if the truth bothers you don't read my comments. Fairly simple solution.
So, what's your point? You are aware that we have two major parties and sometimes the Republicans win and other times the Dems win. That's how America works. Didn't a democrat just win the mayoral race in Jacksonville. Are you going to move because of that?
You are aware that Trump lost the presidency in 2020, right? Trump 52% 48% Biden in Florida, that's a hell of a minority.
I don't hate DeSantis, that would require using a lot of mental energy, I totally disagree with his policies though. Seems that the courts aren't that enamored with them either. I live in Florida because I like the state and the politics are a separate issue, that is something that you should probably try to learn.
I live about 100 miles from Jville in Ocala which is north central Florida. Before the vaccine around here a fair number of people did wear masks and many of the businesses required masks as did all the medical and government facilities. Our county had a very high rate of people getting vaccinated.
The ''woke'' nonsense is, IMO insane bullshit. We have many problems that need to be addressed that are not being addressed. As far as Reedy Creek, two weeks before State/DeSantis were to abolish it they finally figured out that if they did that the taxpayers of the two counties would be on the hook for over $1 billion in bonds. It makes no sense to have a battle with Disney, I believe that Florida/DeSantis will lose that battle in the end.
But from the context of the article, there's no need to read the link. Start with the title and the point is clear that the Post ran a debunked claim form Business Insider about people leaving Florida AFTER Business Insider wrote a retraction. Its as clear as day from the article that the BI claim is wrong. It's literally the entire point of the article.
And again, it is so self evidently wrong that alarm bells should have been going off in any informed readers mind immediately.
After the Russia Collusion hoax it would have put 100% of mainstream and leftist media out of business.
I have often thought about posting the media lie of the week. This would certainly fit.
Let's give Rubin and the Post the first biggest lie award!
LOL, If liberals posted lies/distortions by conservatives, this site would require more energy than crypto mining. Trump alone was responsible for an unpresidented 30,000 during his presidency. I really don't think that a lie-off would go well for conservatives, probably worse than criminal convictions-off of presidential administrations.
Your post 1.1.4, which is a lie/distortion, has the most thumbs up of any post in this seed, and the thumbs up all come from the most partisan progressives.
Because the seed is poorly written. If written properly this line in the seed --
would be followed by this line --
A properly written [one page] article would not require work to mine the correct information out of it. The other thing worth noting is that it was corrected within days, we're still hearing about a stolen election, and in fact, the overwhelming majority of Republican politicians must support this lie to have any chance at all.
United Van Lines publishes a list of states ordered by percent of inbound moves, here are the top 25 states --
A ridiculous analysis that doesn’t consider any other moving companies or people moving themselves.
Talk about incomplete……
Trump was a politician,
As I said above, we depend on news organizations for the truth. It is the left that took over much of the msm and had editorialized the news.
Its not the article's fault that your takeaway after reading the article was "Business Insider posted accurate numbers." The initial sentence is literally "S everal 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" How is that unclear?
The author isn't asking too much in assuming readers will retain information for the time it takes to read two sentences. After telling you Business Insider published inaccurate numbers, the author tells you what those inaccurate claims were. Not too hard for most of us to follow.
The article says this -
And then corrects it with this -
The article only corrects the Florida number implying that the other numbers are correct. So the verbiage of the article disagrees with the data presented in the article. I pointed that out. If they got it wrong once, they can get it wrong twice. Why is this so hard for you to grasp? In my first response I said that a reference link does support the verbiage, but that I don't think it's too much to ask that the article be consistent on its own.
It is telling that you never comment on the fact that this error was quickly corrected, which is rarely, if ever, the case on the right. Nor do you comment on the fact that the Big Lie of the stolen election is supported by a majority of Republican Politicians - who know it's a lie. An insignificant and quickly corrected error is of overwhelming importance to you, but the poisoning of our democracy by the Big Lie is ignorable. Conservatives are so desperate for a win that something this insignificant is worth pursuing. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I do enjoy this.
The REAL problem is the fact the WashPo did not fact check the article at all, or it would have KNOWN that BI had already acknowledged its error days before.
Rubin is an opinion writer, here's what the WSJ says about news & opinion:
Notice that opinion doesn't talk about facts. It doesn't appear that much fact checking happens to opinion pieces. Rubin was not careful and repeated something that was wrong. I get WaPo, so I had heard the name, but had to look her up. I must have read some of her pieces at some point in the past and put her on automatic block in my head since then. The REAL problem is that something of so little consequence is important to you, but massively damaging, ongoing lies and the horrific fallout from those lies are OK.
Gee, it must be just as important, if not more important, to you, as you offer excuses up and have come to defend WashPo.
Is there anyone in this country who did not know that people have been flocking to Florida since the pandemic when Florida had the OPEN FOR BUSINESS sign lit up?
Journalism has become a creative writing job to invite clicks from a mostly captive audience. The truth really doesn't matter, they got you to look at their site and read with little effort.
With your permission Sean, I'd like to use this seed in the next few days.
Sure