Newspaper careens from crisis to crisis with no moral compass
There’s a meme among rightwingers on Twitter that reads “However much you hate the media, it’s not enough.” And then it describes some awful injustice perpetrated by the mainstream media to make conservatives look foolish or incompetent. This isn’t that.
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What the Washington Post did today on social media is sickening. Cruel. Biased. And typical. The fact that the paper deleted its tweet is a tiny step in the direction of acknowledging how low the paper has sunk. But until those responsible for this colossal error in judgement are identified and fired, and those who hired those responsible are retrained in spotting vicious nastiness right under their nose, the paper cannot possibly move forward in what’s already been a tumultuous year.
Here’s what happened.
On Wednesday night, Ronen and Orna Neutra delivered a stirring speech at the Republican National Convention. They are the parents of Omer Neutra, who was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct 7 and held as a hostage in Gaza ever since. Omer is an American. He grew up on Long Island and went to Solomon Schechter, just like my kids. His parents said at the convention that he was born in NYC a month after Sept 11. “It’s just insane that 23 years later, he was caught in this vile terrorist attack.”
This morning, Washington Post reporter Joanna Slater wrote a story about their appearance. Headlined “These parents of a U.S. hostage in Gaza took their story to the RNC,” the story seemed normal enough—not what I would have written, to be sure, but essentially neutral and professional.
But then came the tweet that accompanied the story.
I can’t recall ever seeing a more vicious take from a mainstream news source. Scolding the parents of a kidnapped American young man for having the nerve to focus on their “missing” son while the people who kidnapped him are forced to endure Israeli retaliation.
The reaction was instantaneous. Everyone from the ADL to the Forward condemned the cruel tweet. Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres had the most powerful and righteous take:
That the Washington Post would shame the parents of Omer Neutra for keeping their focus on the captivity of their son is beneath contempt. There is a taboo against any acknowledgment of Israeli victimhood because the Narrative, as opposed to the Truth, demands that Israel be seen only as the villain. The willful amnesia about October 7th is no accident. Denial follows inevitably from demonization.
The Washington Post deleted the tweet and said that it was “unacceptable and did not meet our editorial standards.” The paper said that Slater was not involved in crafting the tweet and then assures us “We have taken the appropriate action regarding this incident.”
I doubt it.
For one thing, declining to name the employee who wrote such a heartless tweet is a cowardly act of CYA. Even if the Post fired the person who wrote it, he or she will land elsewhere, free to exploit the pain of Jewish parents whose only sin is wanting their son home in one piece. Their American son, I feel the need to add, again and again, because the media seems to have forgotten that little detail in its rush to justify Hamas treachery.
But it’s not about the writer of this twisted tweet. Or even the social media editor who didn’t see a problem with it. It’s about a culture.
Rep. Torres got it precisely right. The taboo against any acknowledgment of Jewish pain has resulted in contortions by the supporters of Hamas throughout academia and the media that would have been unimaginable on Oct. 6. Suddenly, rape victims are not to be believed. Suddenly, it’s okay for college deans to mock victims of anti-semitism. Suddenly, it’s ok for professors to call for violence against Jewish journalists.
I reached out to a couple Washington Post journalists to ask what had gone wrong in the culture there. Slater didn’t return my email and the few I got on the phone wouldn’t speak about it. One hadn’t even heard about the situation, which is disheartening in its own right.
When the Post’s media watchdog, Erik Wemple, reached out to me 10 years ago over some perceived foot fault I’d committed, he landed a couple glancing blows but emailed to praise me for at least picking up the phone and being willing to hold myself accountable. Today, Wemple didn’t respond to my WTF request for comment.
It’s been a hell of a few weeks at the Washington Post.
In early June, there was a near mutiny when beloved editor Sally Buzbee quit and was replaced by a bunch of white guys. Will Lewis, who became the Post’s publisher and chief executive in January, said the paper had lost $77 million in 2023 and memorably told the staff: “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience is halved. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” Then the editor Lewis hired to partially replace Buzbee, Robert Winnett, decided not to join after all, a casualty of the subtle differences between journalistic ethics in the US vs the UK.
A few days ago, the wife of star columnist Max Boot, a Never Trump guy who never missed an opportunity to question whether Trump had been compromised in the phony Russia Russia scandal, was arrested for… wait for it… allegedly being a foreign agent. Sue Mi Terry is alleged to have accepted bribes in the form of expensive handbags and sushi dinners in exchange for, as Mediaite reported, “promoting South Korea’s policy positions and disclosing nonpublic government information. Prosecutors also allege that Terry wrote opinion pieces at the request of South Korean officials, using information provided by them.” Those pieces appeared in the Washington Post, which has now appended editor’s notes to pieces she co-wrote with Boot.
That’s a lot of bad news for one newspaper in less than two months. But today’s tweet, cruelly directed at parents who are writing the number of days their son has been held on their clothing every day, makes it clear that the Washington Post needs more than a new business plan. It needs a new heart.