The Washington Post had two pieces on the (forced) resignation of its “conservative” blogger, Dave Weigel: one by ombudsman, Andrew Alexander; and, another by the staff writer, Howard Kurtz.
Both pieces make a bad situation worse: Alexander’s by unintentionally posing uncomfortable questions about how the Post goes about the business of journalism; Kurtz’s piece gets a key piece of information wrong or misquotes Weigel; Weigel responds. Unsurprisingly, no one involved comes out looking well.
Alexander’s piece first. In it he asks, one supposes, a rhetorical question.
But his [Weigel’s] departure also raises questions about whether The Post has adequately defined the role of bloggers like Weigel. Are they neutral reporters or ideologues?
One response to Alexander’s question might be:
Well, Andrew, that depends on what the WaPo blogger is covering. If said blogger is covering the Left [Lefty Ezra Klein], then the answer is ‘ideologue.’
If the WashPo blogger is covering the Right [Lefty aka “Libertarian” Dave Weigel], then the answer-oh, never mind. I guess the answer to all questions of how the Post covers politics-and most news-can be answered by hiring another Lefty ideologue. At least with Klein, it’s out in the open for all to read, if one chooses to do so.
Long ago, the Washington Post crossed the line from mere “bias” into the realm of information and content management. That is, it’s not so much in the business of slanting news as it is deciding what news will be seen by the paper’s remaining readers.
It’s not quite as far along that path as the New York Times-but that’s only because the paper still puts on airs that it is an objective journalistic enterprise. If the Post‘s readers want to read about what a dangerous, deranged outfit the Tea Party is, the Post is front and center with that coverage.
Weigel’s infamous comment about Rep. Bob Etheridge’s (D, N.C.) assault on a student-journalist (calling it Etheridge’s grabbing of the young man a “hug”) was another story in which the Washington Post was accused of “information management.”
Buried in the WaPo omsbudsman’s piece, was this nugget (emphasis mine).
He [Raju Narisetti, the managing editor who oversees The Post’s Web site] said that when Weigel was hired, he was vetted in the same way that other prospective Post journalists are screened. He interviewed with a variety of top editors, his writings were reviewed and his references were checked, Narisetti said.
Unwittingly, Narisetti damned the entire hiring practices of the Washington Post. Weigel’s hiring wasn’t an anomoly: it was the norm.
Throughout it all, conservatives asked, “Why did the Washington Post hire someone who despised conservatives to cover conservatives?” The answer is a simple one: Washington is a one-industry town and the Post is the company paper.
Conservatives are in a fight to downsize the company, which would be bad for business for the company house organ. It might also have to downsize in the process — never mind that the market is making that decision for the Post anyway.
Media critic Howard Kurtz, meanwhile, provided the back story to the Weigel affair, which included this claim:
Weigel declined to comment except to say that none of the e-mails was sent after he joined The Post. Earlier, he told the Caller: “I’ve always been of the belief that you could have opinions and could report anyway… People aren’t usually asked to stand or fall on everything they’ve said in private.”
Which clearly wasn’t true, as was quickly pointed out by Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades.
Which caused Dave Weigel to tweet the following in response, “Hey, guys, I was referring to the Caller story. You could have learned this if you did, you know, reporting. http://minx.cc/?post=303031.”
Malor responded to Weigel in an update.
First, everyone run over to the Washington Post right now and decide for yourselves whether it appears from the way Kurtz wrote it up that he thought Weigel was referring to emails to the Caller rather than emails to JournoList. I’ll wait.
Now that we’ve got that settled, Dave, don’t get snippy with me. Kurtz apparently misunderstood you and his column is written in such a way as to mislead the folks who read it. And, as I wrote earlier, all of the information was available to Kurtz at the Post’s own website if he had any interest in getting the story right.
Many commentators have offered that Weigel is a “nice guy” when writing of this sad affair. Apparently, “thin-skinned” might also be an accurate assessment.
Regardless, the rest of the Kurtz piece is a rehash of news previously appearing elsewhere in the conservative blogosphere, although he does admit that “this is not the first time that washingtonpost.com has had problems covering the right.”
Andrew Alexander closed his piece with the following.
Alas, it took only one listserv participant to bundle up Weigel’s archived comments and start leaking them outside the group. The result is that Weigel lost his job. But the bigger loss is The Post’s standing among conservatives.
Don’t sweat it too much, Andy. The Washington Post‘s standing among conservatives evaporated years before Dave Weigel ever bellied up to a Beltway keyboard.
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