Washington Post Does Wrong by Weigel, Readers

Turns out McChrystal’s is not the only high-profile resignation this week.

The Afghanistan general’s departure is notable for the shocking indiscretion of McChrystal and his staff, and is clearly a tremendous shake-up for the military and political worlds. Dave Weigel’s resignation from the Washington Post doesn’t mean that much to those outside of the blogging world, but it is certainly notable: as undeserved as McChrystal’s was warranted, and a tremendous loss for the paper.

Weigel belonged to a center- to center-left listserv, run by Ezra Klein, called JournoList. Some member of that listserv went through old conversations (and some new ones) and found the most disparaging comments they could about conservatives, including a sarcastic suggestion that Matt Drudge should “set himself on fire.” That person succeeded in blowing up those excerpts into a big story; and for this, Weigel has resigned.

There has been an outpouring – an absolute deluge – of commentary on the event. I’m not going to link to it all. We have everything from a lament on the decline of journalism, aimed at Weigel (by Jeffrey Goldberg), to a cancelled subscription (by Bruce Bartlett). Most commentators seem to agree that the Post “hired Weigel…under the false impression that he’s a conservative.” The ellipsis in my quotation of Ben Smith may hide the appellation, “a liberal,” but the general agreement on that point is that Weigel is actually a left-leaning libertarian. He used to work for Reason, after all. Beyond that, the general agreement is that Weigel covered conservatism fairly and accurately. Not dispassionately: fairly. He defended conservatives from unfair attacks from the left, but he pointed out craziness when he saw it.

Anyway, Fallows makes the obvious connection, and two excellent points:

To say two other things: 1) Why is this different from the recklessness of Gen. McChrystal’s associates, which I said couldn’t be tolerated? Because there is a difference between the military chain of command and the varied menagerie that is any healthy news organization. 2) Might this episode mark a change in the digital-generation’s tragic imagination about the consequences of “living in public” through social media etc? Yes, the emails shouldn’t have been leaked, and even when they were the paper shouldn’t have gotten rid of Weigel. But until now, many tech viziers have said that the whole idea of discretion and privacy was antique; that when all opinions from everyone were on the permanent record, nothing could prove embarrassing; that everything should hang out. Maybe not.

To the first point I will add, in further defense of Weigel, that he didn’t say anything about his bosses, and that the leaks didn’t demonstrate an appalling deterioration of organizational culture inside his department. And with the second point, Fallows is right on the money. Public and private are different spheres, and although I hope fervently that standards of public acceptability will change (higher in some places, lower in others) I wouldn’t wish to erase the boundary.

Fallows is, in fact, even more on the money than that: following the basic thrust of the narrative – Post thought Weigel was a conservative writing about conservatives, he said something disparaging about conservatives, they fired him – most bloggers have spoken less about the public/private dichotomy than about changing journalistic standards. Like Phil Klein, they point out that Weigel is as apt to make comments supportive of conservatives as disparaging: “I could just as easily report on private conversations in which he’s revealed a fondness for Ronald Reagan, a willingness to vote for Bobby Jindal as president, and agreed that Van Jones should have been fired for his 9/11 trutherism.” And beyond that, they note, it’s simply inconceivable that reporters would not form opinions on their subjects. Since there’s no dishonesty on Weigel’s part in concealing his opinions, and he’s done a good job professionally, why fire him?

All the possible answers, it seems to me, hinge on the fact that Weigel made his remarks in a private forum, which later became public. Had he posted mean things about Matt Drudge on his blog, rather than on a private listserv, it would have been a fair moment for the Post to make a statement: we’re not Wonkette, we don’t treat people like that, we uphold higher standards of discourse. I would prefer a thousand flame wars bloom than have only the murky, often-dishonest Post op-ed page to read, but that’s their call. So is it the same thing when it turns out that he wrote those words in private, and they become the talk of the town? I think not. The only ways I can see that Weigel’s emails might discredit his journalism would be if they a) were as ridiculous as Helen Thomas’s statement about Jews, or b) constituted a pattern that they plainly did not. He didn’t go around telling everybody he knew how much he hated Matt Drudge’s guts; he sent an angry email about a specific grievance. That’s embarrassing, sure. But hey, it’s a free country.

Update: the post originally read “Gawker,” instead of “Wonkette,” for some reason unknown to me. I meant to emphasize respect in terms of civility, not in terms of propriety. Because that went out the window a while ago.

Tags: Dave Weigel journalism Washington Post