The Washington Post has suspended reporter Dave Weigel without pay for retweeting a sexist and homophobic tweet, according to CNN’s Oliver Darcy. It’s not known how long the suspension is, but Darcy noted Weigel’s out-of-office email reply says he will be out until July 5.
Last week, Weigel retweeted YouTuber Cam Harless, who wrote, “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it's polar or sexual.” The Post’s Felicia Sonmez tweeted a screengrab of Weigel's retweet and wrote, “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”
Weigel removed the retweet and apologized. Darcy reported that Sonmez also noted Weigel’s retweet on the Post’s internal Slack channel, tagged Weigel and wrote that it sent “a confusing message about what the Post's values are.”
More controversy followed when another Post reporter, Jose A. Del Real, accused Sonmez on Twitter of “repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague” and suggested she was “rallying the internet to attack (Weigel) for a mistake.”
After a tense back and forth, Del Real briefly deactivated his Twitter account and then blocked Sonmez. This all led Post executive editor Sally Buzbee to send a memo on Sunday telling staff to “treat each other with respect and kindness both in the newsroom and online.”
There have been varying opinions about all that has happened since Weigel retweeted the offensive tweet, and without being in that newsroom it is impossible and completely unfair to characterize what the workplace environment is like at the Post.
But this much is true: Weigel was wrong to retweet the original tweet, Sonmez had every right to call him out on it, and the Post did the right thing by disciplining Weigel.
If you want more on all this, Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf has a detailed account of everything going back to the beginning.
Who, besides everyone, saw this coming?
Well, here we go again. Elon Musk is threatening to walk away from his bid to buy Twitter because, he claims, the company isn’t giving him information about its spam bot and fake accounts. So, once again, this $44 billion deal that many still believe is never going to happen … might not happen.
Or it still will. Who knows?
Twitter put out a statement that said, “Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr. Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the agreement. We believe this agreement is in the best interests of all shareholders. We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms.”
The Associated Press’ Tom Krisher and Matt O’Brien wrote, “Lawyers for the Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the threat in a letter to Twitter dated Monday, and Twitter disclosed it in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The letter says Musk has repeatedly asked for the information since May 9, about a month after his offer to buy the company, so he could evaluate how many of the company’s 229 million accounts are fake.”
Krisher and O’Brien added, “Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has said that Twitter has consistently estimated that fewer than 5% of its accounts are fake. But Musk has disputed that, contending in a May tweet that 20% or more are bogus.”
Meanwhile, Axios’ Felix Salmon writes, “Thanks to the recent rout in technology shares, both Twitter and Tesla, which is the main source of Musk's wealth, are worth much less today than they were when Musk entered his initial bid of $54.20 per share. That means Musk is overpaying for the company, with money he is going to have difficulty finding.”
Powerful piece
Kate Cray has a powerful piece in The Atlantic about what kids are feeling following the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Cray talks to teachers about what their students are saying, and the story also includes handwritten messages from children to legislators and the bereaved.
Some of the heartbreaking sentiments:
- “This is not okay.”
- “I don’t feel safe in school now.”
- “Please change the law, I beg you.”
- “I don’t want to be raised in such a violent place.”
- “We don’t deserve this.”
Bess Murad, a teacher at a Zeta charter school in Upper Manhattan, told Cray, “No one prepares you to sit in front of a fourth-grade class after a fourth-grade shooting and try to explain what happened.”
Take a moment to read Cray’s story.
Remembering The Washington Post’s Watergate editor
I’m late getting to this, but it should be noted that Barry Sussman, the editor who directly oversaw The Washington Post’s Watergate coverage back in the 1970s, died last week at the age of 87.
Sussman was the Post’s city editor in June of 1972 when five burglars broke into the Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington. If there’s one flaw in the classic movie “All the President’s Men,” it’s that Sussman was omitted from the story.
In her 2007 book about Watergate and Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, journalist and Watergate scholar Alicia C. Shepard wrote that Sussman’s character was cut out of the movie for “dramatic reasons.” In a detailed obituary of Sussman in the Post, Emily Langer wrote, “The story already had three editors — executive editor Benjamin C. Bradlee, portrayed in an Oscar-winning turn by Jason Robards; managing editor Howard Simons, whose real-life role the movie diminished, played by Martin Balsam; and Metropolitan editor Harry M. Rosenfeld, played by Jack Warden. If Mr. Sussman was deemed superfluous for the movie — a decision that deeply wounded him, according to Shepard’s reporting — he was by all accounts the opposite in the actual events that inspired it.”
While Sussman’s role in the Post’s coverage is considered crucial by everyone involved, a rift developed between him and Woodward and Bernstein, partly because Sussman hoped to help co-write “All the President’s Men” with the two reporters. In that book, Woodward and Bernstein wrote, “More than any other editor at The Post, or Bernstein and Woodward, Sussman became a walking compendium of Watergate knowledge, a reference source to be summoned when even the library failed.”
By the time that book came out, Sussman was reportedly not speaking to Woodward and Bernstein and ended up writing his own book, “The Great Cover-up.”
Despite the rift, after Sussman’s passing, Woodward told the Post’s Langer, “Barry was one of the great imaginative, aggressive editors at The Washington Post during Watergate. We all owe him a debt of gratitude, particularly Carl Bernstein and myself.”
Her side of the story