We’ve certainly written our share of articles rebutting something in The Washington Post over the years, but The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman is the latest to take a crack at the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” crowd, this time over its elitist sneering.

“Doing your own research is a good way to end up being wrong,” is the headline on a Washington Post story by Philip Bump. In an age of declining trust in the producers of media products, it’s essentially an attack on the consumers. The message seems to be that average citizens are ill-equipped to separate truth from fiction when investigating controversial topics. Should they trust the Post to do it for them?

According to Bump, alternative sources of news exist because “Americans like to view themselves as independent analysts of the world around us.” This is a bad thing, Bump says, because it creates a market for “nonsense or appealingly framed errors” and makes it easy for doubters to “find something to reinforce their skepticism.”

Ya think?

Bump points to others who worry about consumers who “gain more confidence in untrue information.” We do, too, given how many Americans still rely on the Leftmedia. Freeman then continues:

Perhaps it would be useful to such consumers if there was some kind of even-handed information product that would include a careful presentation of relevant facts that customers could rely on to check their own biases and assumptions regarding the events of the day. But Mr. Bump seems pretty convinced that customers are a big part of the problem, even when he acknowledges that he’s going with his gut rather than any specific new data.

That elitist attitude is a big part of the problem. Today’s journalists don’t inform people, they scoff at the ignorant rubes wandering the streets.

Is it possible that people who happen to work in journalism can also fall for a misleading veneer because it comports with their broader ideology or philosophy?

Freeman answers his own question by pointing to … Philip Bump, who totally went along, judgmentally so, with every pronouncement of Anthony Fauci, who we keep learning was either lying or making it up as he went along. Bump also lampooned Scott Atlas for objecting to the “scientific consensus” about lockdowns. Atlas was right.

As Freeman sarcastically asks:

Why have a public debate about reordering society when instead we can trust media folk to tell us which unelected officials should make the big decisions in a back room?

It’s not just COVID, though that’s a big one. Freeman also found that Bump didn’t bother researching Hunter Biden’s laptop, instead deferring to the leftist company line and helping to bury and discredit the New York Post’s “sketchy” blockbuster research and reporting.

Freeman concludes:

Of course the Post’s reporting turned out to be true and those emails really did come from Hunter Biden’s laptop. What would we do without professional researchers?

Read the whole thing here.