The Dave Weigel Dumpster Fire is Latest Example of An Out-of-Control Washington Post

The first week of June has been an eventful one at the Washington Post. On June 1, the start of Pride month, Post politics reporter David Weigel retweeted a post from YouTuber Cam Harless claiming “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

His colleague, Post reporter Felicia Sonmez, posted a screenshot of the retweet on June 3, stating that it was “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”

Weigel initially defended the retweet by saying he “chuckled” at it, but later removed it because he realized it was “not that funny.”

The Post responded internally, leading Weigel to apologize and stress in a tweet he “did not mean to cause any harm.”

The paper then issued a statement publicly, with Post CCO Kristine Coratti Kelly saying Post “Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated.”

We later learned that Sonmez initially shared her issue with the remarks in an internal Slack channel, directly calling out Weigel’s retweet for sending “a confusing message about what the Post’s values are.”

That led Matea Gold, national editor at the Post, to tell employees in the Slack channel, “We do not tolerate demeaning language or actions.”

As a journalist who has reported on social media policies and practices in the media industry (and has also been on the receiving end of Weigel’s criticism on said topic), I’m not surprised at all about the sentiments expressed by Weigel’s post – they are still deemed acceptable to many.

Women are already more likely to receive stigma for their mental health, and as a bisexual person during Pride month, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that bi people are frequently ridiculed in this way. 2019 research found that “Bisexual people experience the worst mental health outcomes of any sexual orientation group” due to “unique stereotypes” and “identity invalidation.” In a logical scenario, condemnation of these sentiments would have been the end of it.

But this is Twitter.

In response, right-wing media and online trolls targeted Sonmez and others who similarly denounced the tweet.

Important context: Weigel is not popular on the right. He first left the Post in 2010 after remarks he made in a private email group leaked – which included wishing for Rush Limbaugh to die painfully. He has repeatedly earned ire and scrutiny from the right, most infamously for posting a picture of a small crowd at a rally for President Donald Trump, before admitting it was taken before the beginning of the event. Trump later said Weigel “should be fired” for being “FAKE NEWS.”

Yet, conservative publications that have covered Weigel’s past extensively, such as the New York Post, The Blaze, and FoxNews.com, did not take the opportunity to mention any of his past transgressions in their reporting. They chose instead to focus on the woman who called him out, bringing up Sonmez’s past lawsuit against the Post or her tweets about the late Kobe Bryant’s sexual assault allegation.

Eventually, one of Sonmez’s own colleagues took issue with her tweets: fellow national political reporter Jose Del Real, who claimed that Sonmez was “rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made” and was “engaging in repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague,” which amounted to “cruelty” towards colleagues a categorization which she rejected.

By Monday, Del Real had deactivated his account, then reactivated and alleged he faced “an unrelenting series of attacks intended to tarnish my professional and personal reputation.”

While Del Real implored people to be “kinder to one another” on the platform, Sonmez later tweeted that he had blocked her and several others who tweeted about the topic were blocked as well (including this writer.)

Adding to the Post’s PR nightmare, issues with Post columnist Taylor Lorenz’s article regarding online creators’ coverage of the Johnny Depp–Amber Heard trial boiled over on Twitter as well. On June 3, two YouTubers publicly accused Lorenz and the Post of lying in the article because it claimed they had been contacted for comment – which they hadn’t.

Only after their posts on that Friday evening did Lorenz reach out, which the YouTubers posted on Twitter and further alleged that her assertions about them were inaccurate. Shortly after, the article was altered to remove those claims, but the edits were not initially noted in an editor’s note. Lorenz, meanwhile, tweeted about the fact that she was trending again without addressing why.

Only following further scrutiny, namely from CNN’s Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, did the Post disclose multiple corrections to the article. In the lengthy note, the Post acknowledged that they “removed [an] incorrect statement from the story but did not note its removal, a violation of our corrections policy.”

Then Lorenz decided the issue was worth addressing directly, placing further blame on others for the “miscommunication” rather than letting the editor’s note speak for itself. She claimed the error was “due to a miscommunication with an editor” and went further to admit, “I did not write the line and was not aware it was inserted. I asked for it to be removed right after the story went live” — further undermining the Post’s own editorial process.

When Darcy shared Lorenz’s tweets as an update, she accused the media reporter of “irresponsible & dangerous” coverage.

“It’s misrepresenting my words to amplify a manufactured outrage campaign by right-wing media & radicalized influencers, which is driving a vicious harassment/smear campaign against me,” she wrote. Stelter shot back in defense of Darcy, “Scrutiny by fellow journalists is not the same as a smear campaign by crusaders.”

Before the weekend was out, Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee sent a memo declaring to all the paper’s staff that they need “to treat each other with respect and kindness both in the newsroom and online,” and that any issues they need to be brought to the attention of “leadership and human resources.” She made no mention of Lorenz, Sonmez, Weigel, or anyone else, let alone any condemnation.

The tensions did not calm. Post video technician Brianna Muir isn’t even on Twitter, but was previously dragged into the platform’s inescapable drama when her boss incorrectly referred to her, a Black woman, as “Breonna Taylor” in a tweet. She reportedly responded to Buzbee’s memo with a reply-all message by thanking Sonmez for speaking up, and alleging the paper has a “toxic work environment.”

Sonmez has made clear in further tweets that she believed this was evidence of the Post’s refusal to enforce its policies fairly. On Monday, Weigel was suspended without pay for at least 30 days, but on Tuesday, as Sonmez continued to tweet and Lorenz’s Twitter account was made private, Buzbee sent yet another memo “reiterating” her previous response and adding that the paper “will enforce our policies and standards.”

You may think it’s ridiculous for people’s tweets to be taken this seriously by anyone – and it is – but the Post has already, repeatedly, declared that it is their policy to do so. Wesley Lowery, a former Post reporter who is Black, faced professional reprimands for years over tweets of his, including criticism from a competing newspaper.

Sonmez was also previously reprimanded for speaking publicly (including on social media) about issues of sexual violence – and the paper went to court this past year to defend its right to implement such reprimand against her (and won). Now, wrong or otherwise, she is pushing for the paper to enforce its social media rules consistently.

Both Lowery and Sonmez were accused of hurting the institution’s reputation with tweets – yet others who had made inappropriate posts online, like editors Lori Montgomery and Micah Gelman were held to a different standard. It was only a matter of time before the outdated approach to social media (issues that Lowery warned would happen both before he left and since) would come to a head.

Rather than training and trusting staff to manage their online presence appropriately – or at least putting processes in place to handle improper social media behavior without leaving employees to police one another – the Post has become a case study for the wild west-like landscape that is Media Twitter, one where “retweets do not equal endorsement” just doesn’t cut it anymore. The Post can’t continue to be one of the most trustworthy news sources in the world that is keeping our democracy from dying in darkness, while letting two or three YouTubers have the ability to upend their entire paper without even trying.

The visceral reaction to Sonmez only served as proof that Weigel’s post undermined his colleagues, and it has had adverse effects – but so too has Lorenz’s response to the scrutiny her work is rightfully receiving. Even before her time at the Post, Lorenz was the subject of online harassment – but her work was also heavily criticized and controversial. The fact that she felt it was best to throw her editor under the bus publicly after legitimate issues were raised (and addressed) is completely a mess of their own making.

Clearly, any healthy procedures that Buzbee or former top editor Marty Baron had in place to manage staff are not working anymore – which is why these sagas have come to pass. And then there are the problems Twitter doesn’t see: A 2022 report by the Post’s own employees found “A truth that’s indisputable: The Washington Post operates with systems that create and perpetuate inequalities.”

It’s become glaringly obvious that inequalities are affecting the paper inside and online. If a media institution struggles to maintain ethical and moral standards within itself, how can we presume it will ethically or morally present the news to the public or question people in authority?

Journalist Kara Swisher once said she learned when she became a reporter at the Post that “everything is a narrative in life.” Whatever the narrative is in the Post’s newsroom, management has clearly lost control of it.

It’s why I (and many others) have repeatedly pointed out that the Post’s policies, and those across other parts of the media industry, are untenable with our present-day reality. They are free to set whatever rules of engagement they choose, but they should at least enforce them equitably and sensibly. The longer they do otherwise, the more the biases within the Post will become exposed.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.