ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: The Washington Post Writes a Hit Piece on Its Own Incoming Editor.
I’ll sum up the details of the hit piece, because the details aren’t important: Winnett, while working in the UK, used stories by a shady reporter who used deceit, and maybe even phone hacking (if you remember that scandal) to get stories. The hit-piece is wondering whether Winnett did enough to instruct his reporters on journalistic ethics — and you know, Washington Post “journalists” are all about journalistic ethics — and whether he maybe he encouraged the bad behavior.
Like I said, the details are not important. What is important is that these charges date from 15 years ago and no one has had much interest in “resurfacing” them — until now.
It’s not like Winnett hasn’t been working in journalism all this time. He didn’t retire from journalism and just jump back into it.
This story was old and dead.
But Washington Post reporters now “resurface” it to try to pressure Bezos into firing him.
Back in 2022, Josh Barro asked: Are There Any Adults at the Washington Post?
You may have noticed a bizarre trend at organizations whose staffs are full of younger liberals: Internal disputes aren’t kept internal anymore but are aired in public, on social media or in the press, with rampantly subordinate staff attacking their colleagues or decrying managerial decisions in full public view — and those actions apparently tolerated from the top.
In the most extreme cases, you get meltdowns like the one at the Dianne Morales campaign for mayor of New York, where staff went on strike to demand, among other things, that the campaign divert part of its budget away from campaigning into “community grocery giveaways.” But it’s especially a problem in the media, where so many employees have large social media followings they can use to put their employers on blast — and where those employers have (unwisely) cultivated a freewheeling social media culture where it’s common for reporters to comment on all sorts of matters unrelated to their coverage.
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I hate that I’ve written so many paragraphs about this. I hate that I know so much about this dispute. It’s so high school, and it ought not to be any of our business. These are all internal HR matters. But [Felicia] Sonmez is explicit: She wages these fights in public because management is more responsive to that than when employees complain privately. By giving her “good friend” [Dave] Weigel such a long suspension and doing nothing to her, management is only encouraging her and other Post employees to put their colleagues on blast more, which she has indeed been doing.
Airing internal workplace disputes in public like this is not okay, even when you are right on the merits. My statement isn’t just obvious, it’s how almost all organizations work. If you think your coworker sucks, you don’t tweet about it. That’s unprofessional. If you disagree with management’s personnel decisions, you don’t decry them to the public. That’s insubordinate. Organizations full of people who are publicly at each other’s throats can’t be effective. Your workplace is not Fleetwood Mac.
But it’s definitely Kindergarten Cop:
