Weekend reads
Discover more from Lean Out with Tara Henley
Weekend reads
The "clusterf*ck" at The Washington Post, the raging dumpster fire that is establishment media, "democracy dies in dumbness" - and thanking "a slew of gods every day for the existence of Substack"
Last week, The Washington Post fired reporter Felicia Sonmez for “misconduct that includes insubordination, maligning your coworkers online and violating The Post’s standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity.”
Ten days later, the story continues to have legs — likely because it so perfectly illustrates the dysfunctional culture of establishment media.
When Sonmez was fired, The Post’s newsroom had, for many days, been consumed by a very petty and very public brawl over a retweeted joke.
The offending tweet reads: “Every woman is bi, you just have to figure out if it is polar or sexual.”
If you don’t live your life on Twitter — like the vast majority of people — here’s Vanity Fair’s recap of the raging dumpster fire that ensued, “‘Clusterf*ck’: Inside The Washington Post’s Social Media Meltown.”
Dave Weigel, a national political correspondent, is, as of Monday, suspended without pay for the next month after retweeting a sexist tweet last week, which he then promptly unshared and apologized for after a colleague called him out both on the company Slack and publicly. Hours after news of Weigel’s suspension broke Monday, that colleague, political reporter Felicia Sonmez, was urging the paper to take action against a different colleague, Jose Del Real, who on Saturday took aim at Sonmez for “the cruelty you regularly unleash against colleagues.”
Sonmez, as I mentioned, was ultimately fired last week. But the coverage on this controversy continues, including on Bill Maher, in his aptly-titled monologue, “Democracy Dies in Dumbness.”
I don’t celebrate anyone in media losing their job. And there are some issues here when it comes to free speech, which Kat Rosenfield and Lean Out podcast guest Amna Khalid talk through in a nuanced way on the Feminine Chaos podcast:
The Post leadership is also not blameless, as John F. Harris points out at Politico:
A barrage of episodes have shown plainly how senior editors at some news organizations are afraid of backlash from their own staffs, or from ideological activists in their audience—both of whom have unprecedented ability to make life treacherous for those in leadership positions.
And:
… complainers often act like they are passive observers, rather than people with responsibilities for setting the culture and standards of institutions. Leaders who are afraid of their employees, or students, or customers—rather than ready to confidently engage them—are in the wrong job.
Still, if your instinct is to simply have a laugh about the absolute absurdity of this train wreck of story — an instinct I certainly share — take a listen to Blocked and Reported (which also has some good info on the many backstories at play here):
My main issue with this whole controversy is that it reinforces the perception that establishment media is a bunch of self-involved, out-of-touch lunatics.
Inflation is high, there is a serious housing crisis, income inequality is at Gilded Age levels, billionaire wealth has soared during the pandemic, people are dying from drug overdoses, crime is a massive problem, gun violence is rampant — and some of the top reporters in the country are obsessed with a retweet? Seriously?
Here’s something else that the Blue Checkmarks might want to ponder, in between unleashing tweetstorms: This behaviour impedes the actual work of journalism.
How can you expect anyone to trust your outlet enough to go on the record if you insist on doing this type of thing?
If this is how you treat esteemed colleagues, how might you treat the unwashed masses?
Meanwhile, it’s worth pointing out, as always, that our industry is in utter shambles.
And that the dynamics I’ve just described serve an increasingly wealthy and powerful elite. It’s obviously pretty convenient that journalists are all now glued to Twitter 24/7, snarking at each other, perpetually distracted from the business of actually holding power to account. (And nope, I don’t count docking the pay of a good reporter for an off-colour tweet “holding power to account.”)
Add to all that: Imagine being a 22-year-old journalist right now and watching this all go down. You’d better believe you’d be taking zero risks in newsroom meetings. If a retweet of a joke can implode a newsroom, and trigger weeks of insanity, you can bet junior staff will be watching every single word that comes out of their mouths for the foreseeable future.
Ultimately the whole debacle just reveals how broken establishment media is.
Here’s Freddie deBoer on this:
Yesterday the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel was suspended a month without pay for retweeting a tasteless joke. It strikes me as almost a parody of the absurd hypersensitivity and retributive culture that rules in media right now, and makes me grateful once again that I don’t take a salary in that business. Weigel might have avoided punishment, but the issue was pursued with almost comical tenacity by WaPo’s Felicia Somnez, who spent hour after hour on Twitter prosecuting the case against her coworker. I can’t imagine being motivated by a desire to discipline others that way, but then I’m not the kind of person to make it onto the masthead at the august Washington Post.
The term “cancel culture” comes pre-mocked these days, mostly by white men who want to ensure that they’re perceived to be the right kind of white men. (Also the people who mock the idea that canceling is a problem are almost always people who lie awake at night in fear of being canceled themselves.) But whether you want to call it cancel culture or not, it’s indisputable that we live in a public condition now where people live in constant fear of facing immense professional and social consequences for minor offenses. To retweet a dumb joke (not even to write one, but to share one!) and lose your salary for a month is an absurd overreaction. You don’t want to call it cancel culture, Michael Hobbes, fine. That condition, the condition where someone like Weigel can make such a minor offense and face severe professional and financial consequences, is unhealthy, ultimately unsustainable, and contrary to justice. More importantly for me, it’s incompatible with a basic ethic of forgiveness. I’m against that state of affairs, and if you want to mock me as an anti-woke bro, fine by me.
The last word today goes to Matt Taibbi: “I thank a slew of gods every day for the existence of Substack.”
Weekend reads
To be frank, and probably also petty, I am glad to see WaPo go up in flames because they dropped unbiased reporting and writing at least a few decades ago. That WaPo acts as if they are unbiased and journalists is the height of hypocrisy. They are so far gone that they can’t even see how abysmal they are.
Update this tale of media schizophrenia: The WaPo's Taylor Lorenz has been demoted from reporter to Tech Support, and anything she submits for publication must be reviewed for accuracy. She too was toxic in the work place. Her hysteria ridden interview on ABC made a fool of herself and by extension tainted the newspaper. Her bathetic tales of how she was sexually harassed and received death threats were on par with Jussie Smollett, Amber Heard, and Megan Markle. Did she report any of it to the police? No of course not.
Also, USA Today had to fire Gabriela Miranda, their star female reporter, and had to delete 23 of her stories on politics, world events and social commentary for falsehoods, fake quotes, and lies. In other words: she faked it.