[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
This morning’s Washington Post newsletter – The 7 – offered a peek into the outlet’s ideological bent.
The seven topics offered to subscribers before 7:00 a.m. to help them catch up, in order presented:
1 — Mexico elected its first female president yesterday.
2 — Hunter Biden’s trial on criminal gun charges begins in Delaware today.
3 — President Biden announced a new cease-fire plan for Gaza.
4 — Anthony Fauci is set to testify in Congress today.
5 — Billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used for tuition at religious schools.
6 — Simone Biles won her ninth national all-around title.
7 — A Chinese spacecraft landed on the “dark” side of the moon yesterday.
That’s right: the U.S.’s fourth largest newspaper by number of subscribers feels that Hunter Biden’s trial is more important than the Biden administration’s efforts to stop the genocide in Gaza.
Never mind the protests across the country over the last six months which have spurred numerous horserace polling articles as well as coverage of conflicts on U.S. campuses.
The trial isn’t even being held in D.C. which the Washington Post calls home.
At the very bottom of the newsletter is this news blurb:
Before you go … some news from The Post: Sally Buzbee, our executive editor since 2021, has stepped down.
How benign that sounds. Happy trails, Ms. Buzbee, good luck on your future endeavors.
Except this is what happened, reported last night:
Steve Herman @[email protected]
Washington Post – Matt Murray, former Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal, will replace Sally Buzbee as Executive Editor until the 2024 U.S presidential election, after which Robert Winnett, Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Media Group, will take on the new role of Editor.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2024/06/02/sally-buzbee-steps-down-executive-editor-washington-post-matt-murray-rob-winnett-take-editorial-leadership-roles-new-newsroom-structure/
Jun 02, 2024, 10:58 PM
Did Buzbee leave willingly? WaPo’s certainly not telling us. It’s as if Buzbee accidentally fell out a window leaving a vacancy.
Here’s the first two paragraphs from the WaPo’s own report on the shakeup:
The Washington Post today announced Sally Buzbee has stepped down as Executive Editor. Buzbee has been with The Washington Post since 2021, leading the newsroom through the turbulence of the pandemic and expanding its service journalism, including Climate and Well+Being. Under her leadership, The Washington Post has won significant awards, including the recent Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.
Matt Murray, former Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), will replace Buzbee as Executive Editor until the 2024 U.S presidential election, after which Robert Winnett, Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Media Group, will take on the new role of Editor at The Washington Post, responsible for overseeing our core coverage areas, including politics, investigations, business, technology, sports and features.
Why would WaPo allow an Executive Editor who oversaw award-winning work to “step down”? Why would they promptly replace that EE with a temporary placeholder, and one who operated in a very different news organization?
It seems incredibly convenient that former Murdoch-News Corp editor Matt Murray will run WaPo just until the election.
Then WaPo will be helmed by an editor from a British conservative right-wing news organization, because we don’t have enough of our own Tories in media here. We need to rescue from Brexit import a Tory from a flailing media outlet overseas.
Not to mention Robert Winnett leaves a British paper with a subscriber base one-third the size of WaPo and with far less domestic and international impact.
When WaPo announced their slogan in 2017 – Democracy Dies in Darkness – one month after Trump was inaugurated, most observers scratched their heads. Would WaPo truly shine a light on that which is intent on killing our democracy? Would the paper be up to what has proven to be a monumental task?
But in hindsight we didn’t see that slogan for what it was. WaPo warned us it was going to turn off the lights. This abrupt change in editorial executives moving the paper further to the right is an indicator of yet more dimming of a truly free press.