Washington Post

Tuesday

Cockburn

The Washington Post is digging its own grave

It takes a master to untangle the web of drama being spun at the Washington Post these days. Fortunately, Cockburn knows a thing or two.  The recent drama concerns Sir William Lewis’s appointment as CEO, handpicked by owner Jeff Bezos, and the subsequent attempt by Lewis to dissuade journalists from covering his role in a long-running British phone hacking scandal (he denies any involvement), which supposedly contributed to the recent and abrupt departure of former editor Sally Buzbee. Add that to the earlier stories of Cameron Barr stepping down in 2023 as managing editor after nineteen years and the lawsuit filed by former Post journalist Felicia Sonmez in 2021, who went ham on her colleagues on Twitter and was subsequently fired.

washington post
Stephen L. Miller

Nicholas Kristof tries to figure out who destroyed the West Coast

Like alcoholics, whenever a journalist has a moment, however brief, of political clarity to consider that perhaps they are the “baddies,” it should be commended. Such is the case with columnist and former candidate for governor of Oregon, Nicholas Kristof. Earlier this week, Kristof penned a piece in the New York Times titled, “What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast?” and strained to defend his own political philosophy.

Tuesday

Stephen L. Miller

Inmates are running the newsroom asylums

Say what you want about Washington Post hypochondriac tech reporter Taylor Lorenz, but she was correct when she said that “the journalism industry is overrun by rich, elite, underqualified entitled, nepo babies.”In several high-profile mainstream media outlets, the inmates are still attempting to wrest control away from those put in charge of running the asylum.This was evident last week when Washington Post CEO Will Lewis announced the sudden departure of executive editor Sally Buzbee, who oversaw a tumultuous period as the Post slid off the deep end of progressive politics. Lewis was blunt with his staff, announcing a restructuring of staff resources. When Lewis appointed new management, staff members reportedly asked him if he had interviewed any women or people of color.

Friday

The Spectator

Hunter Biden’s gun trial nearing its end

The gun trial for Hunter Biden will likely wrap up early next week as the prosecution rested its case on Friday. The defense expects to call about two to three witnesses, including an employee of the gun store at which Hunter purchased a firearm while allegedly being an active drug abuser, Hunter’s uncle James Biden and Hunter’s daughter Naomi Biden.Naomi took the stand Friday afternoon and testified that her father seemed “hopeful” in October 2018, the month he purchased the gun, and that she did not personally observe any drug paraphernalia or other signs of abuse in her father’s car. She had previously visited Hunter at a rehab facility in the summer of 2018 and told him she was “proud” of him.

Wednesday

Amber Duke

The reality of homeschooling

Are children more likely to be abused in a homeschool environment than in a public school? That key question has emerged in response to the recent surge of parents who have chosen to homeschool their children. Late last year, I wrote in this newsletter about an anti-homeschooling series by the Washington Post. The Post series argued that parents regularly use homeschooling as a shield for abuse, most aggressively in an article headlined “What home schooling hides: a boy tortured and starved by his stepmom.”  “Most schools have teachers, principals, guidance counselors — professionals trained to recognize the unexplained bruises or erratic behaviors that may point to an abusive parent.

homeschooling

Tuesday

David Christopher Kaufman

Our culture of cheapness and vulgarity

There are many things in short supply these days, but cheapness and vulgarity are not among them. They’re everywhere right now — in politics and pop culture, among the royals, within the legacy media and across social media. Most obscene is the cheapness and vulgarity that has pervaded the conflict between Israel and Hamas and its accompanying explosion of global antisemitism.  It would be easy to attribute this collective rot to mere coincidence, but it’s more a case of compounded indecency. And nowhere more so than at the top. The coarse bravado of then-candidate Donald Trump a decade ago metastasized during his presidency into the corruption and cravenness that now dominates — and could possibly derail — his third stab at the White House.

Thursday

Amber Duke

The Washington Post’s assault on homeschooling

The number of parents choosing to homeschool their children has risen sharply since the Covid-19 pandemic. There are plenty of reasons for this trend, but the overarching issue was that parents simply lost trust in the public education system, whether because of the adoption of illogical Covid policies pushed by teacher’s unions or the introduction of controversial, politicized content into curricula. It became clear over the past few years that school boards and teacher’s unions mostly don’t have the best interests of students in mind, are resentful of parental involvement and are willing to lie if it means avoiding accountability for their bad decisions. The effect of liberal control over public education? Math and reading scores in the US are at their lowest level in decades.

media

Friday

Amber Duke

On the ground at the Washington Post journo strike

Around 750 employees for the Washington Post walked out on their jobs Thursday in the first labor strike against the newspaper in fifty years. A couple hundred of the actively striking employees gathered outside of the paper’s headquarters in Washington, DC, where they marched in tandem and noshed on coffee, pastries and pizza provided by local businesses. Coincidentally, that is about even with the number of jobs — 240 — the Post says it needs to cut amid negative profits and struggles to grow its subscriber base. So far 120 employees have accepted voluntary buyouts to leave their roles, meaning just as many will likely be laid off in the coming months. Nonetheless, the employees mostly seemed happy and excited to be on strike.

washington post

Tuesday

Stephen L. Miller

Washington Post reporter comes after citizen journalists

Most of the time, single posts on Twitter/X aren’t worth rebuking with an entire piece, but Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi laid out an absolute banger this weekend when he lamented the idea of “citizen journalists” not being as professional, trained or equipped as he or his colleagues at major news outlets like the Post, New York Times or CNN. The idea that citizen journalists are not every bit as capable as journalists employed by these outlets (and others) is ridiculous and should be rebuffed.Farhi posted, “Someone invented the phrase ‘citizen journalism’ a few years ago to describe amateurs doing the work of pros. Yes, it occasionally works, but probably no more often than ‘citizen cop,’ ‘citizen attorney’ or ‘citizen soldier.

Friday

Mary Katharine Ham

The case against the Thanksgiving dinner fight

As we come upon the treacherous holiday season before a presidential election, there will be plenty of people in media who tell you it is your moral responsibility to ruin food and fellowship with political confrontations. Armed with the emotional IQ of one of those idiots tossing perfectly good soup on the Mona Lisa — an ineffectual waste of vittles and dignity — these columnists insist that you must not let Aunt Margie’s incorrect opinions stand, lest democracy die in the darkness of her benighted worldview. You must serve countervailing takes as hot as the mashed potatoes, no matter the cost to family comity. It doesn’t have to be this way. There was a time, not too long ago, when we didn’t have to turn every breaking of bread into a struggle session.

family

Wednesday

Stephen L. Miller

The media accuracy crisis around Israel mirrors how it got BLM wrong

After an explosion in Gaza this week, Hamas asserted that an Israeli airstrike had targeted a hospital, killing up to 500 civilians. Outraged at this evidence-free claim, news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press all repeated it, without confirmation or investigation. Several members of Congress, including Palestinian sympathizers Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, condemned the “attack,” again, without waiting for confirmation.As evidence began to mount that Israel had not committed this act, the New York Times began to stealth-edit their original story — updating their original headlines several times.

Friday

Cockburn

Dave Portnoy catches WaPo reporter in a web of lies

Of all the things to lead to a Washington Post smackdown, Cockburn never would have expected it to happen over a pizza festival.   On Wednesday, Barstool Sports’s Dave Portnoy posted a call with a Washington Post reporter on social media. Portnoy had caught wind that the paper was running a hit piece on his One Bite Pizza Festival taking place in Brooklyn on Saturday and decided to hit back first.   https://twitter.com/stoolpresidente/status/1704574353415823411 Portnoy was tipped off by an email that reporter Emily Heil had sent to one the event’s largest sponsors.

Friday

Ben Domenech

Inside the progressive war on the Supreme Court

In the basement of a Washington, DC restaurant, 200 ticket-purchasing fans have gathered to witness the live recording of a multifaceted conversation about the villainy and corruption of the Supreme Court, and one justice in particular. It only seems appropriate to order the shrimp and grits: it costs $19.99 and comes with a white-wine tomato sauce. This may seem rather hifalutin, but it also comes in a glass mason jar that references tired hipster kitsch — perfectly suitable for a live podcast hosted by Slate.

Supreme Court

Tuesday

Mark Judge

The end of the Washington Post

The Washington Post is collapsing. Once one of America’s great media institutions, the paper lost $100 million last year and has shed 500,000 subscribers. Recent reports reveal that Post owner Jeff Bezos is going to be more hands-on to try and save the paper. Yet trying to get employees of the Post to do their jobs is like trying to get dogs to play baseball. Dogs just aren’t interested in baseball, and the breed of journalist now at the Post is just not interested in journalism. Always a liberal paper, the Post is now pure propaganda.

washington post

Tuesday

Stephen L. Miller

The media’s bizarre Sound of Freedom freakout

A small studio-produced film managed to best a big-budget iconic action hero franchise from Disney on the July 4 box office. You would think that would make for the media an interesting story, both with the success of that small film and the failure of the iconic Indiana Jones franchise. But that is not the tale being told about Angel Studios’ Sound of Freedom, an action-thriller dramatization of the life and career of Tim Ballard, the former DHS agent who founded the OUR (Operation Underground Railroad), an organization dedicated to fighting child trafficking globally. Sound of Freedom has largely been a crowdsourced word-of-mouth success.

sound freedom

Wednesday

Cockburn

WaPo union protest consists of pizza in the park during lunch break

Cockburn’s soul surged with admiration earlier as he witnessed the brave employees of the Washington Post do something truly heroic. Risk life and limb to report from the front lines? Well, no. Attend a White House press briefing and grill Karine Jean-Pierre? Nay, something far more daring still: more than 450 members of the Washington Post Guild, the publication’s union — brace yourself — stepped away from work on their lunch break to demand “Washington Post management gets serious about management and bring [them] a wage proposal.” It looked to be a beautiful sunny day outside the Post offices in Franklin Square, where employees mingled in t-shirts and helped themselves to — are those boxes of pizza?! — and what appears to be a variety of flavored bubbly water.

washington post twitter lunch protest

Tuesday

Mike Tunison

Is Dan Snyder finally about to sell the Washington Commanders?

The early months of the NFL off-season are typically flush with intentionally misleading and openly manipulative media reports about how teams, free agents and draft prospects regard one another. This year, with an embattled franchise owner weighing his options about a potential sale, it's the billionaires, and also the millionaires, who are having their plans and motivations guessed at. Since November, Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder has been making moves indicating that he's trying to unload the team he's owned for nearly twenty-five years. For many, the logical buyer is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

jeff bezos washington commanders

Monday

Cockburn

Anna Paulina Luna kneecaps the Washington Post

Anna Paulina Luna is a bad girl. Why else would the Washington Post be so eager to discipline her? Reporters Jacqueline Alemany and Alice Crites, truly a modern-day Woodward and Bernstein, appear convinced that the freshman congresswoman representing Florida’s 13th congressional district is a George Santos retread. The pair of bullies went rummaging through Luna’s panty drawer in search of skeletons. The result? A lengthy article intended to punish her — to which several corrections and clarifications have been added in the days since its publication.

state of the union anna paulina luna washington post

Monday

Dave Seminara

The media doubles on its Ron DeSantis conspiracy theories

It’s an article of faith on the left that misinformation and conspiracy theories originate almost exclusively from the right. But consider the media’s coverage of the latest controversy over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (or any that preceded it). Florida recently rejected a planned Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies curriculum that DeSantis argued would indoctrinate children. The curriculum includes works from proponents of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the abolition of prisons and police. There are units on Black Queer studies, the case for reparations, “Black feminist literary thought,” BLM, intersectionality, and other pet progressive causes. “In the state of Florida, our education standards required students to study Black history,” DeSantis explained.

Friday

Cockburn

Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez now works in retail

The Washington Post’s revolving door People are losing their jobs in all sorts of industries — but chances are the layoffs you’ve heard about most in recent weeks are in finance, tech or the media. Squeakiest wheel and all that. This week brought news that the Washington Post was cutting twenty newsroom jobs and shuttering its gaming vertical. Also out at the Post: Margaret Sullivan, who has left to sign as a columnist for the Guardian. It's not all departures at One Franklin Square though: executive editor Sally Buzbee has signed up a slew of names for the Opinion desk, including conservatives Jim Geraghty and Ramesh Ponnuru from National Review and disaffected liberal Ruy Teixeira.

felicia sonmez