In the 30th paragraph, 1,443 words into a profile about history podcaster Darryl Cooper lies a declaration by New York Times reporter Joseph Bernstein that there was no basis for the so-called "Russia collusion" story.

In what appears to be a veiled correction, Bernstein writes, "Mr. Cooper’s first real brush with national attention came in 2021, when he posted a widely shared Twitter thread about the psychology behind right-wing election denialism. In it, Mr. Cooper attributed Trump supporters’ skepticism of mainstream media to their feeling misled by the national press over sensational – and never substantiated – accounts of President Trump’s alleged collusion with the Russian government."

Ashley Rindsberg, who authored the exposé on the newspaper's misreporting and fabrications, "The Gray Lady Winked," reacted to the admission. 

"We're talking about seven years of news reporting," he said. "It was basically the only thing that they had to say about Trump for this entire period. Now they are quietly, almost in a whisper, saying that none of it was true."

During Trump's successful 2016 Republican presidential campaign and in its aftermath, Democrats led an effort, along with some FBI officials, to try to delegitimize his win by presenting material that appeared to show the campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the presidency. 

Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller in 2019 said that his probe into the matter "did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple efforts from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”

Rindsberg continued and said that "the reality is that these are the outlets that staged an illegitimate attempt to basically smear the sitting president with falsehoods, not in one or two or 10 or 20, but in hundreds of news articles across thousands of hours of footage, making claims that were never substantiated about his alleged collusion with Russia."

In 2018, The Times and The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for what its board said was "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign."

Berstein's story came days after Just The News exclusively obtained and shared nearly 700 pages of once-secret documents related to the FBI's investigation into the collusion allegations. 

The documents included proof that former National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers told FBI agents that the crux of one of the newspaper's stories included in the Pulitzer Prize award-winning package was “wrong."

Just The News reached out to the Washington Post's news standards editor to inquire about if there would be a correction and has not heard back.