Something is Rotten at the Washington Post

Below is a joke you may or may not find funny. I have to admit I saw it in my timeline and I chuckled. Regardless, the retweet is the significant part. Dave Weigel is a Washington Post reporter.

Weigel did nothing wrong.

His retweet of the joke let loose a frenzied reaction within the halls of the Washington Post. He deleted the tweet. He apologized without making any excuses. The frenzy has continued.

Now, while this was happening, the Post’s Taylor Lorenz was screwing up yet again. In a story about social media content creators covering the Depp-Heard trial, Lorenz claimed to have reached out to two separate individuals for comment. One of them she claimed was making up to $80,000.00 for content.

ThatUmbrellaGuy, an anonymous YouTuber whose entire channel is dedicated to pro-Depp content, earned up to $80,000 last month, according to an estimate by social analytics firm Social Blade.

According to the anonymous ThatUmbrellaGuy, not only did Lorenz not even attempt to reach out to him, but she also misstated his income pretty significantly. “The Washington Post also FLAGRANTLY misrepresented my earnings report and needs to correct it. Social Blade says I made between $4.9k and $79.1k. They ADDED TO the highest estimate, overreporting for dramatic effect,” ThatUmbrellaGuy noted.

The Washington Post had to repeatedly update Lorenz’s story and repeatedly got the corrections wrong. Despite her claims to the contrary, Lorenz did not reach out to several parties until after they went public claiming Lorenz had not reached out, despite her claims to have done so.

This is another instance of Lorenz repeatedly screwing up a story. Subsequently, she has blamed the Post’s editors, blamed conservatives, and taken no responsibility for her sloppy work. Her entire social media meltdown has been all about her and blame directed at everyone else.

Here’s the problem for the Washington Post and why something is rotten.

The public responses of Post employees on social media have been overwhelmingly about Dave Weigel’s retweet of a joke, despite his deletion and apology. The employees are far more upset with his retweet than one of their colleagues screwing up yet again. Here is a sampling where Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez is more outraged by Weigel doing nothing wrong than by Lorenz’s repeated journalistic malpractice.

Felicia Sonmez @feliciasonmez

When women stand up for themselves, some people respond with even more vitriol. Last night, a Post colleague publicly attacked me for calling out another colleague’s sexist tweet. He first hid any replies objecting to his attacks, and now seems to have deleted his account. 1/2

Again, Weigel did nothing wrong. You may not like the joke, but retweeting a joke is not abuse, journalistic malpractice, or anything of the sort.

But the outrage from inside the Post is about that and not the repeated actual screw-ups of a reporter. Also, Felicia Sonmez is a nutter who has managed to keep a job at the Post for reasons that baffle.

Jeff Bezos needs a clean-up.