The resignation under pressure of Washington Post blogger David Weigel raises so many important issues that it’s difficult to know where to start. So I’ll limit my comments to a few of the most important:
Coming on the heels of the firing of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, Weigel’s exit reinforces the notion that anything journalists and public figures say, write or do can become part of the public record with a few keystrokes and the click of a mouse. McChrystal was a fool to think that a journalist — especially a freelancer — would not report disparaging remarks made about Obama administration officials and their policies, even if those remarks were made at a bar in the euphoric haze of Margaritas during happy hour.
So, too, was Weigel a fool to think his comments about the conservative movement in an off-the-record list serve would not become public, especially when those remarks were highly disparaging toward the people he covered. Weigel has since issued a half-apology, but the damage has been done.
The goal of any good journalist should be to get at the truth and be as fair as possible to all sides. Do journalists have opinions? Well, contrary to popular belief, reporters are human beings. And they have opinions — sometimes very strong ones — about the people they cover. Heck, just walk into any newsroom and listen to the jokes and wisecracks reporters tell at the expense of public officials. For that reason, lest they be overheard making fun of the mayor’s toupee or the local school board’s boneheaded policy, journalists are trained to be wary of newsroom visitors.
The problem is that the general public thinks journalists should have no opinions at all. So when they lower their guards and offer candid views, the prevailing assumption is that they cannot possibly be fair in their coverage. Nonsense, I say.
When I was covering municipal government, I maintained a blog on my company’s website. I offered frank opinions — sometimes on topics I was covering as a straight journalist. I had managed to convince my editor that unless I went completely over-the-top, readers would find the transparency of my views on those topics refreshing. My publisher was mostly supportive of that effort and for that reason the blog was a big success.
But Weigel’s private contempt for the conservative movement was so intense that the Post had no choice but to accept his resignation. For even if he was still technically fair in his coverage, his credibility had been greatly compromised and his sources would surely have dried up had he continued covering the conservative movement.
The larger question is how the Post could have hired a guy like Weigel to cover the right in the first place? Was the Post‘s hiring process so superficial that management could not detect Weigel’s strong views during the interview process? Did they know he disliked conservatives and hired him anyway? Was there a complete absence of reporters in their applicant pool who held no deep animus toward conservatives? Is Ezra Klein that powerful?
Will we ever find out the answer to those questions? Don’t hold your breath. Journalists and editors routinely disparage public officials and corporate executives for ducking responsibility, issuing vaguely worded press releases and trying to manage the news during a crisis. So what do news organizations do during their own crises? They mostly duck responsibility, issue vaguely worded press releases and try to manage the news. I would expect nothing more from house that Katharine Graham built.
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