Journalism in our era is mostly pathetic.
If there is a bright spot, it is the new media and principles of reporting coming from blogs and the great unwashed freelancers of the world. Every now and then, somebody from these unwashed masses is hired by the “old guard” media–sometimes to a good end and sometimes to a bad one.
Journalism should be a thing alive that always questions motives, understanding, assumptions and the facts of the moment. It does not need to lapse in false standards of purity, impartiality, conventional wisdom and the mythology of ‘objectivity’. When these whims become rules that trump good reporting and writing then the powerful can use these ‘rules’ to purge voices they find ‘offensive.
This is how a free press is controlled and silenced. The latest example was the firing of Dave Weigel over at the Washington Post for some statements in a private email listserve.
The WP Ombudsman put up an idiotic column about the incident. In this drivel, he argued that the lesson to be learned is that the WP was too mean to wingnuts. And so he defended the cowardly act of firing Weigel.
My how far the state of journalism has fallen.
The Washington Post has many problems. It has the worst Editorial Page in the Nation. The grotesque exaggerations of facts and outright lies by the likes of Kristol, Thiessen, Will, and others are tolerated. The contributors to the PostPartisan section regularly display private bias that colors the contributor’s writing and reporting far more than anything Weigel has ever written for the WP. And then there is the pro Georgetown cocktail party status quo bias that Milbank, Broder and others have shown over the years. All of this bias is OK because the bias is on the printed page and enjoys the blessings of the powers that be at the WP.
Weigel, OTOH, had his private emails exposed by an unnamed weasel and for his private thoughts he had to go. The excellence of his reporting became irrelevant in the face of poutrage.
What is troubling in this incident is that when the Conservative noise machine says jump the only response from the WP is “how high”. Weigle reported accurately on the extremes of wing-nut-ville and in doing so he became a target for a purge. Emails were leaked to get him fired. It worked. The WP caved in to the mob in record time.
I’ve been to a many a gathering in DC with WP staff and have heard things said that would make Weigel blush. The reporters I know have biases on the issues of the day—left, right and center, but it does not effect their reporting because they are professionals. The same was and is true about Weigel, but the Editors of the WP threw him under the bus because “conservatives” wanted blood.
Now that the Right knows they can hunt and kill WP writers and editors for their private thoughts it will be open season on the WP staff. I expect exposing the private biases of reporters and editors will now become a new inside the beltway obsession with conservative blogs like Daily Caller keeping track of how many people they can get fired..
And the fools at the WP have endorse that intimidation.
If H.L Mencken worked at today’s WP, he would be fired for his views and that is a tragedy. Here is Mencken writing about the Scopes Monkey Trial in the Baltimore Sun back in 1925:
The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.
True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can’t disarm their enemy.
Mencken’s word could and should be the outline of how to cover the TeaBaggers, FireBaggers and other nutballs of our era. Sadly, it seems that real journalism is too intense for the delicate sensibilities of today’s limousine journalists of DC.
I’m sure that Mencken would outrage today’s pampered press.
And no doubt if Mencken worked at today’s WP the wingnuts would be up in arms about him and the tragedy is that today’s WP would fire him (so would today’s Baltimore Sun).
Weigel covered the right with the same commitment to journalism that Mencken brought to every story. David will land somewhere else and we will all be better for it.
Thing will not turn out so well for the Washington Post if it keeps bowing to the bullies and morons of our times.
Some will cheer their demise, but I will weep for the WP. I love great American newspapers and their demise is a sad thing to watch. The WP has been a great American newspaper. It’s destruction is painful to watch, especially when they actively enable their assassins.
The stupid is just burning this great institution alive and it will be a sad day when this foolishness finally kills the Washington Post…
So it goes.
Cheers
frankdawg
Sadly, it is not just the Whore Post – all major dailies have gotten into the business of trying to please people that will not be pleased unless and until the paper reports only approved content in an approved manner.
They are losing circulation for a number of reasons but the fact that they piss on the people that actually WANT to read them while sucking up to people that want them dead is speeding the process.
Since they no longer serve any useful purpose it will actually be a good riddance.
TD
Weigel
Sorry =P
Church Lady
Once again, with feeling: Weigel was not fired. He offered to resign and his resignation was accepted. If his job is to cover the Right (I believe the tagline for his blog was something along the lines of “Inside the Right”) but, due to the emails being made public, his access to the Right would now be severely compromised, how in the world would he still be able to do the job the Post hired him to do?
someguy
So we’re deeply upset that the Republican-fluffing Weigel got fired by the Republican-fluffing WaPo as a result of somebody on Journolist leaking Weigel’s infantile ‘personal’ comments that he made to 400 of his closest friends?
Maybe I’m missing something but I’d have figured we’d be cracking open the champagne (of beers) to celebrate. It’s one more wingerfluffer down… I don’t get the outrage over the leakage or the firing. I’m just bummed it didn’t happen to Will, Krauthammer, Douthat or Brooks.
Dennis G.
@TD:
Thanks
Tokyokie
I doubt the current Baltimore Sun would fire H.L. Mencken. But it would have laid him off a couple of years ago.
Dennis G.
@Tokyokie:
No doubt.
The current Baltimore Sun is beyond sad. It is a hard paper to read these days as it is mostly a parody of a newspaper.
frankdawg
@someguy:
Are you just trying to be contrarian?
Seriously, in a paper that encourages Will, -Kraut- kraphammer, -Dout- asshat and Brooks to say truly awful things about people publicly. To say things that actually get people set on fire for real on its opinion pages. To go all mushy because of something someone said off-hand, in private on their own dime is indicative of the real problem at the Whore Post.
I would not want the above mentioned band of liars, assassins and thieves fired because they said the wished Obama or McCain should catch fire. That is silly even if they didn’t do it under whine from some interest group. They should be fired for their work not their beliefs.
Dennis G.
@Church Lady:
I think the WP should stand by its staff. He could still do his job–and will someplace else.
He did offer his resignation. In the evening there were reports that it would be refused. In the morning it was accepted. The WP had the choice to stand by him or cut him loose. They cut him loose. The difference between this and being fired is semantics.
Cheers
handy
Must be a slow news day.
asiangrrlMN
You pretty much summed up what I think about the matter, dengre. However, unlike you, I have no fond memories of WaPo, so I’m all for letting it self-immolate.
jl
I think that the Wiegel affair is silly. It is difficult to take seriously, except for what it says about the time servers, hacks, brown-nosers, careerists, incompetent corporate and establishment hacks, power worshipers and money grubbers in the establishment, or corporate, press.
The Washington Post’s combo ombudsman and corporate flack seems to agree with the comment from the some supposed conservative that the conservatives (actually cynical political operators, reactionaries and Tbaggers) should not be covered as if their movement were a zoo.
I disagree, every movement in politics should covered as if it were a zoo. Because to some extent they are all zoos, with all sorts of strange creatures, some of whom are magnificent, some of whom go rogue and stay rogue, some of whom unexpectedly change their spots for good or ill. To cover them as actors in political sphere is to cover a zoo. If any honest person wants a BFF buddy in that sphere, then they should get a dog, to paraphrase Truman.
The very idea that some one’s objectivity could be criticized for getting angry and making pissy comments about the a gang of conmen, operators, hypocrites, sickos and bigots as
Pat Buchanan,
Newt Gingrich,
Ron Paul, and
Rush effing Limbaugh,
is ridiculous.
I think Buchanon is a very informed, articulate person. More than most reactionaries today I have read some of his stuff and after the first couple of paragraphs am often impressed by his reasoning. But I cannot remember the last time I finished anything and did not think he was a bigoted nut.
But Limbaugh? Seriously, how could anyone be accused of bias for criticizing or making fun of Limbaugh, who spouts ignorant, racist, absurd nonsense on a daily basis? It is unbelievable.
I am a liberal and progressive, yet many of my private and semi-private comments about
Timmy Geithner,
Larry Summers,
Cass Sunstein,
Robert Rubin,
and some others,
would get me fired from covering ‘liberals’ using the same standards of the Washington Post.
In the long run, I think this type of censorship is the reason that the reactionaries and Tbagger nuts will lose, and things like the WaPol will disappear).
But problem is getting from here to the long run when both are gone, which increasingly concerns me.
rob!
The journalistic integrity and willingness to “afflict the comfortable” at WaPo shown in movies like All The President’s Men will probably look as alien to future generations as Wild West movies do to us.
“Was it really like that back then?”
Dennis G.
@frankdawg:
Of course Brooks is at the NYTs.
As for the rest, they should be fired for their work, which sucks.
Weigel, OTOH was a reporter and he is good at it. While his private emails made clear that he knew his beat was reporting on idiots, his actual reporting and writing treated these dumb fucks with far more respect than they deserved. I objected from time to time as he defended these jerks, but I could not fault his integrity or his reporting. It seems that nobody else could as well, but they could use a private listserve to take him down.
Cheers.
sherifffruitfly
1) Americans are generally stupid.
2) Therefore anything drawn at random from that pool will be largely stupid.
3) Therefore journalists are generally stupid.
Bella Q
@Dennis G.:
Clearly he resigned, but equally clearly the distinction is a purely semantic one, so purely so as to be a meaningless distinction. The paper should have stood by him as his work was first rate – which can’t be said for much of their staff.
@someguy:
The point is that Weigel was doing actual reporting as opposed to Republican fluffing. And he was relieved of his duties not for poor work product, but for comments he made privately (however unwisely), many of which were made long before he worked at this paper. It was a hit, and we should take note, and be outraged. As well as a bit unnerved.
StacyMN
Based on what I’ve read on the Daily Caller and the original blog that leaked the emails (the name escapes me right now, sorry), it didn’t really seem like he was attacking the Tea Party folks. His ire seemed to be more at certain political and media figures. I mean, even his “Paultards” comment was more lamenting what he saw as over-hyped media coverage then an attack on the actual Paul supporters. I thought criticizing these things was seen as a positive thing in wingnuttia.
I thought his reporting was superb. I mean, the whole reason why his posts on Journolist is such a Big Deal is that it gave those that already hated him for covering the Tea Party the “proof” that he wasn’t that favorable to his own beat. That they couldn’t snuff him out before this (because that bias wasn’t anywhere to be found in his actual reporting) is evidence enough that they guy understood what decent reporting actually is.
I get tired of the “reporters must never have opinions” idea. Obviously they do, as they are, you know, human. I’m actually more mistrustful of a journalist that claims they don’t have a personal ideological slant, much like I’m mistrustful of people that preface their comments by saying they are “independent” or “moderate” or rely on “common sense”. I just tend to notice that people that claim these things tend to be some of the worst partisans you can find. If you are really able to be that objective, it will come out in what you say or write. To announce it upfront as a way to establish your own credibility puts me on guard right off the bat.
Dennis G.
@rob!:
No.
In reality it was much like it is today, but they did go after Nixon. So there is that…
Allison W.
msnbc should hire him. i know he’s a conservative, but he tells some truths that they don’t like to hear. What better place than a channel the wingers despise?
Church Lady
@Bella Q: It should be noted that the hit came from one of his fellow Journolisters. If one of them hadn’t released the emails to two different media outlets, Dave would still be employed by the Post. It wasn’t the Right that bought Dave down, it was his own team.
jl
I guess I am confident that the conmen reactionaries and Tbaggers will lose is because they are becoming such a small, intertwined, narcissistic and incestuous hermetically sealed little society.
The posters and commenters here have noted how their pitches and ads and talking points are becoming increasingly cryptic. More a collection of inside jokes, secret signs and dogwhistles pitched outside the hearing range of most humans.
I got more evidence that over the last week or so when I visited my hometown in the Central Valley. I was trying to explain the rationale behind some of the GOP and Tbagger slogans and PR campaigns, which I got from reading about what the GOP’s and Tbaggers’ own explanations and memos that pop up on the blogs.
My friends there who could be called moderate low info voters were like “What? I don’t get it. Are you sure you’re right about this stuff” They were particularly puzzled by the BP escrow fund/Chicago corruption/Thuglife angry black conman connection that they are supposed to make in their heads.
There attitude was more like Damn straight BP needs to put up some serious compensation money up front and I don’t care much how it happens.
I hope things keep up like this, so that soon no one will understand what the hell the GOP and their gulls the Tbaggers are saying.
Nellcote
First Froomkin, now Wiegel, whose next, Ezra? It’s time to accept that the WaPoo is now a conservative paper similar to the Washington Times or Examiner.
fucen tarmal
its a lot easier to have integrity when you have a healthy profit margin. as the money to be made disappears, so does the integrity.
newspapers, in some form will survive, but more along the lines of dickie cougar mellon-scaife’s pittsburgh tribune review, a vanity paper to express the views of some rich patron.
btw when dickie cougar mellon-scaife was going after clinton.(h/t to john mcintire for the nickname) they had a balls out effort to get readers in my area as they were migrating into the metro from the burbs,
7 days a week, 52 weeks for 10 bucks, i still turned it down, even though they had, and still have, a decent sports page.
Tokyokie
@Dennis G.:
Well, what do you expect? They pretty much got rid of their copy desk a couple of years back, including their copy-desk chief, who was one of the best in the business.
asiangrrlMN
@Church Lady: It’s not only lefties on it, though. Marc Ambinder was on it, and so was Dave (who is not a liberal). No one knows who it was, but the fact that such a concerted effort was made to take him down, there is reason to believe that it would have been someone who leaned conservative.
Mark S.
I didn’t read Weigel a lot, but I never got the impression he was a conservative. Anyone could tell he wasn’t very sympathetic to the right wing fringe. That’s why I don’t buy this “They thought he was a conservative” bullshit.
Chuck Butcher
@Church Lady:
Nope, it was twits just like you who thought it made spit difference what his private opinions were. I don’t loath your side for your opinions, I loath you for your lies and misrepresentations – well, and your theocratic impulses.
Brachiator
@frankdawg:
How is this a good thing? WAPO and the NYT may have their flaws, but they are not being replaced by vibrant, independent alternatives. Major dailies are dying mainly because their primary sources of revenue, display and classified advertising, are drying up and because news articles are temporarily available for free on the InterTubes (also in part because no one has come up with a workable business model to make up for the loss of ad revenues).
Circulation is declining for other reasons as well, but much of the time I get the feeling that the people who turn away from WAPO and other news dailies because it is not stupidly conservative enough is far greater than those who have dropped it because it is not objective or fair.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the decline of newspapers is Rupert Murdoch, who is eagerly filling the void with vile, noxious nonsense.
People on the InterTubes and elsewhere are fighting back, but the process is fitful, slow and uncertain.
@Church Lady:
I get the feeling that Weigel offered to resign in the same way that Obama’s Runaway General was said to have “offered to resign,” an attempt at face saving to muddle being kicked to the curb. To see what an art form this can be, consider the recent Vanity Fair piece on the firing of the Wall Street Journal’s managing editor, soon after Rupert Murdoch purchased that news daily (The Man Who Tried To Manage Murdoch).
Ironically, Brauchili moved on to The Washington Post after being ousted by Murdoch and his team.
@someguy:
But that is precisely the point. The worst of these people are safely embedded, while Weigel, whose actual reporting is far more balanced than the crap these other people produce, has been kicked to the curb.
jl
I saw snarky comments about Wiegel from the liberal side, who were suspicious about his supposed libertarian tendencies.
It is also hard for me to believe that the people who call themselves conservatives today thought that Wiegel was ‘one of them’.
He does not seem like a type to identify himself too much with any kind of ideological movement.
Those are my IMHOs from what I read of him, but I admit that I did not follow his reporting regularly.
Michelle
Again, worrying over people who have made and will make so much more in their life times than the people who haul off their trash or clean the restrooms they use.
Why?
Michelle
I know the answer!
If the people who take away your trash or clean the public restrooms you soil stop working, . . . . . . .
NobodySpecial
The glorious fiction that papers and reporters were and are neutral is just that. Some of the biggest papers have and have had throughout their existence a partisan viewpoint. We ignore that at our peril. All The President’s Men is a piece of fiction, and should be treated that way, not as the reality of how it was.
StacyMN
Probably because of the impact of media on our political culture.
I assure you that the people that “haul off trash” aren’t well served by a media run by a bunch of self-righteous right wingers that defend a fake populist movement who push the meme that those that “clean restrooms” are worthless by virtue of what amount is in their bank account.
Edit: This one in the moderation waiting room too? Aw, what did I do? :(
Mnemosyne
@asiangrrlMN:
Not only that, but it was the right’s modus operandi that was employed — leak quotes to right-wing websites, let them spread to the MSM, and point to the resulting “controversy” as a reason to fire those people. See also: Melissa McEwan and Amanda Marcotte when they were hired to blog for John Edwards.
I suppose there’s a chance that someone on the left watched all of these other takedowns and decided to use the exact same route with the exact same players that have been used before, but that seems somewhat unlikely.
Mnemosyne
@Michelle:
Because these are the people who control your access to information.
Are you saying that it’s not important for voters to have, for example, accurate information about what legislation is being passed that will affect them? Or is everything just gossip so it’s impossible the bankruptcy bill of 2005 actually affected anyone who hauls trash for a living?
ETA: Weigel’s reporting helped expose the Tea Party “movement” for what it is — a tantrum by some of the most far-right elements in the country. I’m guessing you think that letting voters know that Rand Paul is a far-right nutjob isn’t important since they’re too busy cleaning toilets to worry about what their senator or congressman is voting for.
Chuck Butcher
@Mnemosyne:
As though you’d have to leak toxic waste from the bunch he was covering … they’re proud of it.
GOP leadership not so much – dog whistles are more their speed. (note-there are all kinds of dog whistles other than racism)
Mike G
Who was the rightard who said in print that “Chelsea Clinton should be killed” so she couldn’t continue the family political dynasty or somesuch? Whatever happened to him?
Dr. Squid
And these same conservatives still bellyache about political correctness, when they’re the foremost practitioners of speech code enforcement.
Michelle
@Mnemosyne:
“Because these are the people who control your access to information.”
No they don’t. I can understand what is going on in my world from other places than the WAPO opinion pages.
Get a grip.
Mnemosyne
@Chuck Butcher:
That’s why it’s so entertaining to watch them try and talk to teabaggers. The GOP tries to stick to their dog whistles to keep the independents on board, but the teabaggers want red meat so the mask keeps slipping.
mcd410x
Funny how so many people equate the editorial page with journalism. Or equate The Washington Post or The New York Times with what goes on journalistically elsewhere.
Mnemosyne
@Michelle:
Weigel didn’t write opinion pieces. He was doing original reporting on the Tea Party movement that exposed their links to and financing by far-right Republicans.
But, hey, who cares about facts when you can pretend you care about the small people?
Michelle
Fizzle to nothing.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Our media is doomed, until we reach the other side of the digital age, and if we happen to survive that period still as a democratic nation, then we might have a chance.
The problem isn’t that the independent media is evil, or has evil designs. Except maybe for Fox News. The problem is that it has been sucked into the free market model vortex, the same kind of vortex that our health care industry got sucked into. And both are inherently unsuited for that model. The services they provide demand quality and a strong sense of public service, ahead of profit.
What we have know is a hurricane of news sources that create hypercompetitive mindsets for an ever shrinking profitable pie. The media’s product is stories. There are all kinds of these and always have been. Some are vital in providing the critical public service called for in the constitution known as the Fourth Estate. All the other kinds are not critical, other than to draw attention for all sorts of human curiosities and hollow cravings that are not essential for the good governance of the nation. They are cotton candy stories, empty calories for empty minds. But they do draw attention, and attention brings readers, and readers bring a profit edge over the myriad of competitors.
And now this sugar fix of entertainment is whisked from one satellite, one high speed node to the next in an instant, and there are too many to count. About the only element of politics that fits this addiction is conflict, a perpetual gladiator match left v right. Oh, and the scandals, always the scandals.
At some point this will all reach a critical mass, where something must be done. Like everything else we humans do that feels good but is bad for us. And that goes triple for historical newby Americans. With the national attention span of Amoebas. Only when disaster is on our front porch do we focus on action above and beyond our petty feuds and resentments.
I wish you posted more DG. Your writing inspires.
Blue
“Journalism should be a thing alive that always questions motives, understanding, assumptions and the facts of the moment. It does not need to lapse in false standards of purity, impartiality, conventional wisdom and the mythology of ‘objectivity’.”
Ok, let’s go there. It is a fact, an uncontested fact, that on Journolist, a self-described leftwing closed list serve, Weigel was exhorting his fellow list members to slant the MA Senate narrative emphasizing the weaknesses of Coakley for the SPECIFIC AND STATED REASON of helping the Democrats.
How the heck does that reality comport with your vision of what journalism “should” be? The real journalists are those who “question the motives” of people like Weigel.
Michelle
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
To put a stopper in it, well done.
There is nothing about the “small people.” Perhaps DG is not among them.
Chuck Butcher
@Michelle:
Trolling, trolling, trolling the day away. Attention whores are a dime a dozen and over valued at that.
jl
@Blue:
First I heard of that.
Do you have a link?
And, Coakley was a Democrat, so not sure how your story adds up.
But maybe your comment was a joke.
BJ is so sophisticated, a lot of jokes go over my head.
Violet
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
The BBC is publicly funded by the British government. Its lack of a profit incentive means it’s somewhat less likely to do everything for ratings, and thus more likely to hold the government accountable.
“Question Time” on the BBC is a thing of beauty. If you haven’t seen it before, as an American it’s jaw-dropping. People ask actual questions of their elected officials. Who have to answer them. That would never happen here in the US, where the media and government are filled with prima donnas who are much more worried about things like where their seat is in the White House briefing room and getting re-elected than doing any actual reporting or serving the people.
Brachiator
@frankdawg:
My original attempt at a reply is stuck in moderation…
How is this a good thing? WAPO and the NYT may have their flaws, but they are not being replaced by vibrant, independent alternatives. Major dailies are dying mainly because their primary sources of revenue, display and classified advertising, are drying up and because news articles are temporarily available for free on the InterTubes (also in part because no one has come up with a workable business model to make up for the loss of ad revenues).
Circulation is declining for other reasons as well, but much of the time I get the feeling that the people who turn away from WAPO and other news dailies because it is not stupidly conservative enough is far greater than those who have dropped it because it is not objective or fair.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the decline of newspapers is Rupert Murdoch, who is eagerly filling the void with vile, noxious nonsense.
People on the InterTubes and elsewhere are fighting back, but the process is fitful, slow and uncertain.
@Blue:
Nonsense. Sheer and utter nonsense.
You mean scum like Drudge? I don’t expect for journalists to be mind readers divining motives. I expect them to write honest news stories.
Corner Stone
@Violet:
While I enjoy it, Q&A always seems like a smartass pissing contest to me.
It’s entertaining, but rarely informative in any way.
But it’s right up my alley.
scarshapedstar
I don’t get this bullshit notion that Weigel can’t cover conservatives because he’s not a conservative.
Christian columnists write about atheists. George fucking Will writes about black people. Etc, etc, etc.
Allan
@Blue: @jl: Blue thinks it is serious. It is replicating a popular right wing meme.
It has been addressed by Weigel on his own blog by posting the email in question so you can read it for yourself and laugh at Blue.
Mark S.
Ha-Ha!
/Muntz
Violet
Wow. I just read that WP Ombudsman column that Dennis linked in his post. Money quotes:
(Speaking about the vetting process in hiring):
WTF? Who hasn’t expressed some opinions in private that could make their job a bit more difficult if they became public? Maybe you talked badly about your boss, or a client or customer or supplier? Maybe a coworker was driving you nuts and you let off some steam in an email to your cousin? And just how far back “in private” do they want to go? Maybe you sent a rash email about your teacher being mean when you were in high school, and now she might be your supervisor if you get the job. Honestly, that’s utterly ridiculous.
And then this:
The GOP has the Post by the huevos, don’t they?
Larry Mills
It is sad, but the WaPo has not been a ‘great American newspaper’ for a good 10 years. I miss Katherine Graham, with all her faults.
Chris
Here is Clark Hoyt, the New York Times public editor, writing about the NYT a couple weeks ago, in his final piece before giving way to the new public editor:
Yes, Clark, because “creationism” and “intelligent design” are not, in fact, serious alternatives to the theory of evolution; they are religious expressions of disgust that science is taking “what we can know” and comparing it to “what we believe,” and some people are not taking the increasing overlap well.
To steal a line from “The Big Lebowski”: “The war is over!”
And the idea of journalism that can stand up to crude, bias-based bullying is what lost.
jl
@Allan:
thanks for the bombshell Wiegel/Coakley scandal link.
Some things are so silly, it is difficult to believe they are true. The wingnuts and Tbaggers are trying to parlay Wiegel’s comments on Coakley into a scandal?
To stupid or gullible to breathe and pump blood at the same time, yet they live!
But, I am biased and cannot render an honest opinion because I did follow the MA Senate race, did know something about it and completely agree with Wiegel’s comment:
“Yes, we can discuss her holding fewer than 1/3 as many events as Brown, saying that Catholics shouldn’t work in emergency rooms, and holding a DC fundraiser with a week to go before the election.
I think pointing out Coakley’s awfulness is vital, because it’s 1) true…”
Though from the NYT and WaPo perspective Weigel convicts himself of being unworthy in these comments because he
1) recommends reporting something forthrightly on the grounds that it is TRUE,
2) implied a falsifiable prediction with empirical content (Coakely would likely lose).
If I ever want to be a bigtime reporter, I will refrain from ever doing either.
Also thanks to Chris for link on Hoyt. He regards believing in evolution (and big bang, and genetics, and what other well established scientific theories?) as an urban Northeastern ‘sensibility’?
Mark S.
@Violet:
Because conservatives looove their fuckin’ WaPo. Glenn Beck’s always telling his viewers to make sure they read the WaPo.
Oh wait, he tells them to read the 5,000 Year Leap. My mistake.
jl
And I am too stupid to think and type comments at the same time: Weigel, Coakley.
Jason Wolfe
Why don’t I see any comparisons to Helen Thomas here? HT asked hard questions, but she got mad and made an off color remark. Same thing as Dave Wiegel. Both pushed out. I think the off color remark was cover for the termination of both of them for the hard questions they asked. Someone in the Washington post did not like Dave Wiegel and wanted him out. They just needed to find a mean spirited enough quote.
asiangrrlMN
@jl: You wouldn’t make it as a big-time reporter (at least not for WaPo or NYT). You are far too funny and independent-thinking. You would get shit-canned in a week.
@Mark S.: Now, he tells them to read The Overton Window, or whatever the piece of shit book he ‘wrote’ is called.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“First Froomkin, now Wiegel, whose next, Ezra? ”
Ezra will be out of the WP and either at back at the American Prospect or at a think tank before the end of 2011. The shower of fools in the GOPs primaries are gonna be so dumb that Ezra will make a public or private comment that will get him fired. And someone who’s risen as meteorically as he in Washington Journo circles is going to have someone on his Journolist that will stick the shiv in out of jealousy.
Amir_Khalid
My $0.02 worth as a retired journo: If a political reporter keeps his own leanings from skewing his coverage, as it seems to me Dave Weigel did, then he has been successful in keeping them from being any business of his readers — or, for that matter, of his editors.
That the Washington Post used what was found in Weigel’s wrongfully-disclosed private communications to fire him for opinions he had kept out of his work is most disappointing. But not surprising.
Where I worked here in Malaysia, newspapers are owned by corporations, whose bosses are political allies/business proxies of parties in the ruling coalition. You can guess what that does to a newspaper’s objectivity (and to the public’s perception of such). This kind of thing happens here all too often. At least in America it gets to be something of a contretemps.
jetan
Amazingly, both Frum and Jonah Goldberg are sticking up for Weigel. Frum isn’t that big a surprise, but Goldberg?
gwangung
@Michelle: Weigart is the most visible. The process goes on, elsewhere, on other journalists.
I think you, as an independent thinking person (which is what you claim to be) need to get a grip that this is an individual instance of what is a systematic process.
Tom Q
Something I’ve been thinking for the last few days in regard to this but which I’ve heard no one else specifically articulate…
If every reporter who ever privately said something contemptuous (not just negative, full-on contemptuous) about Bill or Hillary Clinton had been banned from covering them…wouldn’t the number of reporters in their entourage have been miniscule?
arguingwithsignposts
@jetan:
Probably because if anyone ever read what Goldberg wrote on NRO about pretty much everyone to the left of Hitler/Reagan, he’s be out of his LA Times sweetheart deal.
arguingwithsignposts
@Amir_Khalid:
I had a friend in grad school who was a journalist in Honk Kong, prior to coming to school. She had some really interesting tales of the PR/Journalism nexis. Not only did PR flacks give out stuff to journalists, it was expected.
Really different journalism culture.
aimai
The point that seems to be missing here is touched on over at Tbogg when he links covering the right wing to Jane Goodall studying monkeys.
Weigel isn’t really much of a reporter–if reporting means tracking down and breaking important stories. His main function was simply to cover the right wing and he did that competently by attending their functions and paying attention to their strategies, their memos, and their published communiques.
What was unforgiveable about that to the right wing, and ultimately the WaPo agreed, was that in covering the right wing like any other political party, or in the same way a student of animal behavior studies animal behavior, Weigel made clear that there was a difference between journalist and the object of study. He made clear that GOP/right wing narratives and propaganda were tools of a political movement, not ideologically and motivationally pure acts in a corrupt world. In other words: he covered the right wing like a phenomenon and not from the point of view of a follower/ideologue. And that is what couldn’t be tolerated. For one thing: to know the right wing, its history, actors, objects, goals etc… is to really hate it. Its not possible to honestly love those assholes–its why the teabaggers hate the GOP even as they vote for them. For another thing covering these guys in depth reveals the utter cynicism and corruption of the entire movement.
The WaPo will never make this mistake again. They will hire a movement believer to run the blog.
aimai
Yutsano
@aimai:
Or just kill the whole shooting match and stenograph whatever talking points the RNC sees fit to spew to them. Whatever the final result will be it will be spun as a victory for conservative fee-fees everywhere.
Pat
I always thought WP sucked, but that’s just me.
Dennis G.
@Tokyokie:
Yep. The number of people lost to ‘early retirement’, buyouts and layoffs has been staggering. The bench of editors and copy editors has been paired back and many of the best people have left. The confusion between the print side and the Online side continues and getting Google hits has become more important than getting it right.
This latest capitulation to the wingnut mob is just another sign of the decline…
Dennis G.
@Brachiator: Well said on all counts.
Dennis G.
@Blue:
Dude. If you want to go with facts you should know that Coakley’s weakness was the reason she lost the Senate race. She was a God awful candidate. Any reporter worth his or her salt would have pointed that fact out in any discussion of the race or the outcome.
The lazy fuck-up ‘journalists’ would be the ones who reported that the outcome of the race was some kind of TeaBag victory. Facts are that it wasn’t.
And let’s grant the point that Weigel was talking about ways to frame the story. Good. Because most of the media pack was buying the bullshit. I’m glad somebody had the balls to point out that the reason Brown won was that Coakley sucked as a candidate and ran a shitty campaign.
And by the way, reporters, editors and journalists have been talking to each other about how to frame the issues of the day since since the first story was ever written.
You should see the emails about writing the King James Bible.
What else have you got?
Dennis G.
@Tom Q:
Now that would thin the ranks of the DC press corps overnight…
snarkypsice
@someguy:
That’s a very simplistic view of his writing – I’m guessing you didn’t read his column.
I did and I loved it. I also learned a lot from his reporting. I’ll continue to read him wherever he lands.
That said, I also think Weigel was very, very stupid to make the comments he did on the Internet. Any person who doesn’t realize that every word they say is public once they’ve published it online is just setting themselves up for a fall. Nothing is ever guaranteed to stay private. Not if you’re behind a password. Not if you use a fake name. Not even if you use a fake name and proxy servers. Write nothing you wouldn’t be OK with the world seeing – Weigel should have known that. I guess he does now.
Mustang Bobby
Mr. Weigel’s firing is bothersome for more than just the fact that the release of his private e-mails hurt the feelings of some conservatives; we always knew that these bullies and poseurs were thin-skinned and would react with juvenile tantrums. What is really sad is that Mr. Weigel’s comments were not, for the most part, about people in power. They were about commentators and pundits on the right; Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich are talking heads, as are most of his targets. In other words, this whole flap is a schoolyard squabble over who gets to sit at the Kool Kidz table in the cafeteria.
Grow the fuck up, WaPo.
Karen
There are “reporters” who are just propaganda parrots. Journalism died a long time ago.
rumpole
“But once Mrs. Graham died, the paper started its downhill roll, which has now placed it on a scale somewhere between fishwrapper/birdcage liner and weekly shopper sheet, with worse ethics and less reporting.”
Sadly, that’s an insult to fishwrap.
Lex
Sad? I, on the other hand, am ready for the Post to just die already.