Last week, journalists in particular and progressives in general let out a cry of anguish straight out of Star Wars, but in any other industry hundreds of millions in losses, declining readership, and a staff in open rebellion would have resulted in changes long ago.
Last week, journalists in particular and progressives in general let out a cry of anguish straight out of Star Wars. When The Washington Post announced that it was laying off about a third of its staff, eliminating local reporting and reducing foreign correspondents as part of a general restructuring in an attempt to make an organization that has been consistently losing around $100 million per year profitable, some $177 million over the past two years alone, I was reminded of Obi Wan Kenobi reacting to the destruction of an entire planet. “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened,” but before we consider the reaction, let’s consider the fact that The Post’s challenges went far beyond losing money and bleeding subscribers. Their staff was also in turmoil for several years, effectively at war with their own management in a way that simply wouldn’t be acceptable in any other industry. In 2022, reporter Felicia Sonmez engaged in seven days of non-stop attacks on the publication after fellow reporter Dave Weigel retweeted an off-color joke from comedian Cam Harless “Every girl is bi,” it said. “You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.” Though Mr. Weigel immediately apologized and deleted the tweet, writing “I just removed a retweet of an offensive joke. I apologize and did not mean to cause any harm,” Ms. Sonmez was not placated, continuing to rant about the horror of having to work at an institution that “allowed” such behavior and proceeding to taunt Mr. Weigel on their internal Slack channel, tagging him in an unrelated feed, and asking “I’m sorry but what is this?” When another colleague, Jose Del Real can to Mr. Weigel’s defense, claiming Ms. Sonmez was engaging in the “repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague” and that she was “rallying the internet to attack [Weigel] for a mistake,” she proceeded to attack him, insisting that he was not sufficiently sensitive to the woke feminist cause, “If you are more outraged over the fact that I pointed out a sexist tweet than over the sexism itself… all I can say is that speaks volumes about your own priorities.” Sensing that he’d put his own reputation at risk, Mr. Del Real attempted to apologize at that point, writing that “fighting sexism and misogyny matters deeply to me,” but then he added “Entirely separately, I hope you reconsider the cruelty you regularly unleash against colleagues.” Ms. Sonmez pressed onward, however, claiming that it was actually Mr. Del Real who mounted a “public attack on her” and then insisted the underlying problem with the entire situation was that she’s a woman.
“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,” she said. “He first hid any replies objecting to his attacks, and now seems to have deleted his account.” Though Mr. Del Real had in fact deleted his X account (then Twitter) to withdraw from the ugly feud, he felt forced to respond, reopened his account, and wrote in hopes of de-escalating, “I temporarily deactivated my account, amid a barrage of online abuse directed by one person but carried out by an eager mob. The one-sided attacks continued even after I stopped engaging. I know the old adage: Hurt people hurt people.” He continued, “In such a situation, it is difficult to find the line between sympathizing and challenging with compassion. My instinct is to defend myself. But I talk a big game about kindness, and I’m going to try to practice some of that now by simply moving on and not engaging.” Perhaps needless to say, Ms. Sonmez still wasn’t satisfied, promptly claiming Mr. Del Real didn’t live up to his own standards, citing “an email from him accusing” her of fostering a ‘toxic workplace.’” After Mr. Del Real blocked his own colleague at that point, The Washington Post management felt the need to get directly involved given these exchanges were occurring in public and garnering thousands of retweets on their own. Executive Editor Sally Buzbee emailed the newsroom with a rather anodyne message, not naming names or publicly calling anyone out. Instead, she said, “We expect the staff to treat each other with respect and kindness both in the newsroom and online. We are a collegial and creative newsroom doing an astonishing amount of important and groundbreaking journalism.” Ms. Buzbee even attempted to include a peon to wokeness, claiming, “The Washington Post is committed to an inclusive and respectful environment free of harassment, discrimination or bias of any sort” before recommending the obvious, “When issues arise, please raise them with leadership or human resources and we will address them promptly and firmly.”
In any sane world, a personal message from your boss to knock it off would have ended the spat immediately, but the Post wasn’t sane even years ago. Instead, Ms. Buzbee was dragged into the social media battle after being called out directly by Ms. Sonmez, who claimed she’d asked her for help on her crusade. “Retaliation against a colleague for speaking out against sexism is never okay. I hope Washington Post leaders treat this as the serious issue that it is.” From there, Ms. Sonmez continued to post dozens of times about the incident on her feed, literally multiple tweets per hour almost 5 days later to the point where I wondered if she actually wrote any content for the paper. Sadly, the paper itself relented, labeling Mr. Weigel’s rather minor transgression “reprehensible” and suspending him for 30 days without pay despite Ms. Sonmez’s poor behavior, but this still wasn’t enough. Ms. Sonmez went on dox several of her colleagues to the point where she was put on leave herself. Nor was this her only run in with management. Four years earlier, The Post refused to let her cover the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings because Ms. Somnez was a victim of sexual assault herself and they believed it was a conflict of interest for obvious reasons. Rather than accept their decision, she sued her own employer, claiming she suffered “economic loss, humiliation, embarrassment, mental and emotional distress, and the deprivation of her rights to equal employment opportunities.” “At various times, Ms. Sonmez became severely depressed, developed intense anxiety and received treatment from therapists and psychiatrists who she continues to see today,” the lawsuit continued, also noting that she was prescribed antidepressant medication. For reasons that remain unclear, she chose to stay with The Post, only to explode again over a simple joke.
Ms. Sonmez has been far from the only reporter publicly at odds with her employer. In 2022, Taylor Lorenz took to social media to claim her Washington Post editor was at fault for mistakes in a story, insisting she was the victim of a “bad faith” campaign against both her and the paper. According to NPR, “Post media columnist Erik Wemple wrote that the paper had given her the green light to say the editor had been at fault, but questioned whether that was the fair thing to do.” Two years later, she found herself in a dispute again after posting a social media image that labelled then President Joe Biden a “war criminal.” At first, she flat out lied, claiming she did not write the caption or share the post, accusing those who said otherwise of falling “for any dumbass edit someone makes.” Once it became incontrovertible that she was lying, she pretended that didn’t happen and completely changed her story, what NPR euphemistically described as “Lorenz changed her account of what happened, acknowledging to editors she had shared the image.” For its part, the Post launched a formal review noting “Our executive editor and senior editors take alleged violations of our standards seriously” as Ms. Lorenz began claiming it was all a big joke. “I literally never ‘denied it was real,’” she lied again, saying it was an “obvious meme.” Before the review was completed, Ms. Lorenz resigned to pursue a career in “independent journalism,” and though The Washington Post wished her well despite insiders claiming she “lost the trust of the newsroom’s leadership both by posting that selfie with the caption about Biden and then by willfully misleading editors in claiming that she had not done so” according to NPR, she couldn’t avoid taking a few final potshots. “I like to have a really interactive relationship with my audience,” she insisted, pretending she didn’t lie and change her story. “I like to be very vocal online, obviously. And I just think all of that is really hard to do in the roles that are available at these legacy institutions.” Bizarrely, she also insisted the entire thing was a joke, something for insiders. “What I’ll say, on the record, is every single President that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime is a war criminal,” she told The New Yorker.
Shortly afterwards, the rebellion among staff wasn’t limited to a handful of people when the paper’s management made the decision to not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential race. Setting aside that this endorsement was considered to belong to Vice President Kamala Harris by some kind of divine right, The Post’s own opinion columnists banded together to trash their leadership, claiming “It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020,” a group of 17 of them wrote. “An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment.” A retired editor at The Post itself, Martin Baron, claimed the decision showed “disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” Legendary journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame shared their thoughts as well, calling the decision “surprising and disappointing.” “We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”
Perhaps needless to say, it will never be the right moment in their eyes and none of them ever attempted to come to terms with what Jeff Bezos, the owner of the paper and therefore its chief authority, said on the matter. “In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.” He continued to define the two criteria essential in running a media operation, “We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.” He concluded, “While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high.”
Last week, the stakes were made plain and in any other industry, a combination of mounting losses in the tens of millions, declining readership, and the sense that the inmates were running the asylum would have resulted in major changes long ago, but the media doesn’t think they’re any other industry. The same way the endorsement belonged to Vice President Harris by divine right, the job of being a progressive activist journalist free from the confines of any accountability or responsibility is theirs’ by diving right. Rather than recognize the obvious, the staff and the media at large rebelled once again. The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents the staff, immediately cried foul and organized protests, claiming Mr. Bezos was not the right owner in the first place. “A newsroom cannot be hollowed out without consequences for its credibility, its reach and its future,” they said, “Continuing to eliminate workers only stands to weaken the newspaper, drive away readers and undercut The Post’s mission: to hold power to account without fear or favor and provide critical information for communities across the region, country and world.” “If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then the Post deserves a steward who that will,” they added in a rather bizarre suggestion that someone should continue to waste millions upon millions in a failing enterprise, for the sole purpose of keeping ineffectual, unread journalists on the payroll. Do you have a steward? Does your boss have a steward? After The Post’s CEO Will Lewis resigned amid the turmoil, the guild cheered his departure and urged an immediate sale, “Will Lewis’s exit is long overdue. His legacy will be the attempted destruction of a great American journalism institution. But it’s not too late to save The Post. Jeff Bezos must immediately rescind these layoffs or sell the paper to someone willing to invest in its future.”
The rest of the media went into overdrive as well. The Atlantic described it as a murder. The Guardian said it was a threat to democracy, arguing that it’s somehow Mr. Bezos’ obligation to lose money forever, “It is not as though Bezos needs the money. He is the fourth-richest person on the planet, according to Forbes, with a $245bn fortune. As Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, pointed out, Bezos could cover five years of the Post’s $100m annual losses by dipping into his earnings from a single week,” and concluding that the “The cumulative malaise that is descending over US media leaves the country’s democratic institutions vulnerable to attack.” Robert McCartney, a 39-year veteran of the Post before retiring five years ago, described it as a “tragedy and an outrage.” “This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” explained Mr. Baron mentioned earlier, before castigating Mr. Bezos for his “sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump”, saying it left an especially “ugly stain” on the paper’s standing. In other words, the paper exists purely to battle Trump and journalists’ jobs are therefore a sacred part of their fight. While no one will cry for a failing newspaper or journalists who believe they are somehow protected from the failings of the company they work for, there’s an old expression about saying the quiet part out loud that surely applies as well. It’s a glimpse into the progressive mind, and it’s not a pretty or rational sight. They truly believe they are better than you and sometimes it shows.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 