THE SELF-IMMOLATION OF THE WASHINGTON POST:
The Washington Post has made several attempts to stanch the bleeding, including cutting its outlook section and offering mass buyouts for veteran staff. As Lewis told the newsroom, the Washington Post must “take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path.” Part of that action will include setting up a “third newsroom” whose purpose, an internal memo said, “is to give millions of Americans — who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed — compelling, exciting, and accurate news where they are and in the style that they want.”
However, as the old D.C. saw goes, personnel is policy. And in key respects, the Washington Post has ceased to offer “traditional news.” The newspaper has become so widely out of step with popular opinion in the United States, as well as common decency, basis in evidence, and an attachment to common sense and self-correction and critique. Nowhere is this truer of the Washington Post’s coverage than on Middle Eastern affairs, where the paper suggests the half-true slogan “go woke, go broke,” might be modified to “go Hamas, go homeless.” (“Go Khomeini, get no money”? Look, puns are hard. But the analysis holds.) WaPo’s coverage of the Israel-Islamist conflict, including the recent war against Hamas and other Iranian proxies, provides a harrowing look at how fringe the Washington Post has become.
On Oct. 7, 2023 — when Hamas terrorists, other Iranian proxies, and ad hoc groups of Gazans invaded Israel and murdered over 1,200 people, taking 240, including Americans, hostage, and beginning an attack that continues in the form of rocket barrages to this day — the Washington Post and its staff stood at the ready to put their resources and energies to work on the wrong side, the side that terms the country where the Washington Post is headquartered “the Great Satan.”
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah “liked” and shared a post praising the attacks as “decolonization.” She later penned a column drawing equivalency between the pogromists of today and their victims. Prior to Israel’s response, Attiah warned that Jerusalem was about to commit an “atrocity.” She has since accused the Jewish state of “genocide” — overlooking numerous steps Israel has taken to reduce civilian casualties, including some of the largest evacuations of civilians ever undertaken in urban combat.
Related: Washington Post Foreign Desk, Accused of Pro-Hamas Bias, Teems with Al Jazeera Veterans. Six members of the Washington Post’s foreign desk previously wrote for Al Jazeera.