Against the backdrop of hysterical warnings that the George Mason University Board of Visitors might fire President Gregory Washington, GMU’s first Black president, at its meeting today, the Board gave him a raise. It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement — only 1.5 percent — but it was a raise. Apparently, that means he still has a job.

Let’s review the tape of what the media were saying about the GMU president, who has been on the defensive as the Department of Justice, the Youngkin administration, and the Board of Visitors pushes back against anti-Semitism and racial preferences at the Northern Virginia university.

The New York Times a couple of days ago:

Faculty members said they were concerned that a pileup of investigations would be used to justify toppling him, as happened with Dr. Ryan. [at the University of Virginia].

“We’re worried it’s going to be high noon on Friday,” said Tim Gibson, an associate professor at George Mason and the president of the Virginia state conference of the American Association of University Professors, a faculty rights group.

VPM News yesterday:

A growing number of George Mason University faculty are concerned about the fate of President Gregory Washington, whose annual performance review is set for the upcoming Board of Visitors meeting Friday morning — amid an onslaught of federal investigations.

And how did things turn out? Here’s how the Journal of Higher Education spins it:

In a Plot Twist, George Mason’s Politically Embattled President Gets a Raise

And Virginia Business:

Embattled GMU president survives board meeting with pay raise – Virginia Business

Survives? Plot twist? You mean the wildly partisan prognostications of Tim Gibson and other leftist professors at GMU, who have zero insight into the thinking of Board members because they’re so busy denouncing them rather than, you know, asking what they think, didn’t pan out?

If you take it as an operating supposition that GMU’s board members are tools of the Department of Justice and the Youngkin administration — as state Senate Democrats who just cancelled four of Youngkin’s appointments to the GMU board apparently do — the predictions might have seemed plausible. Washington’s defenders managed to gin up enough angst that a band of Washington’s defenders felt moved to protest outside the Board meeting today.

There’s always someone out there who will tell the media what it wants to hear. The lesson: Take everything news outlets say with a grain of salt. No, with a shaker of salt. No, with that the entire mine in Saltville.

— JAB