Tim Pool, der har skabt sin egen medievirksomhed og taler med indsigt, tegner et billede af, hvorledes en organisation går i hurtig opløsning, når man erstatter meritokratiske principper, med politiske, her, hvad der hedder ‘woke’. Folk der ansættes på deres ‘diversitets’ kvaliteter kan vanskeligt fyres, for med mindre de begynder at identificere sig som ældre hvid mand, beholder de de afgørende kvaliteter, der førte til deres ansættelse i første omgang. Ligeledes er det svært at argumentere imod deres dårlige ideer, fordi rationalitet ikke kan skelnes fra allehånde fobier. Hurtigt får de diversitetsansatte urimelig magt over arbejds-kollegiet og begynder at sætte urimelige og kvælende krav.

De første til at se at skuden tager vand ind er tit de dygtigste medarbejdere og chefer. Som de forlader virksomheden accelererer den dårlige udvikling og virksomheden underdrejes til den til sidst opsluges, ude af stand til at sætte ord på sin egen sygdom. Sådan går det Washington Post, der det seneste årti har tabt halvdelen af deres læsere. Så den nye chefredaktør, Will Lewis, mente at det var tiden til at være hudløst ærlig i et hastemøde med medarbejderne, skrev Vanity Fair

“We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore,” Lewis said. “So I’ve had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path, sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best.”

Det betød en mindre udskiftning af ledelsen og Lewis havde derfor hentet tidligere kollegaer udefra, som han kendte. Medarbejderne udtrykte bekymring for hvad deres ledelseskultur ville betyde for Washington Posts arbejdskultur. Og det er ikke længere Woodward-Bernstein kulturen som den blev portrætteret på film

“Everyone was pretty shocked with your email last night,” one reporter said at the meeting, according to a source present. The reporter suggested that “the most cynical interpretation sort of feels like you chose two of your buddies to come in and help run the Post, and we now have four white men running three newsrooms,” and expressed surprise at this development given Lewis’s prior commitments to diversity.

(…)

Later in the meeting, another reporter asked Lewis whether “any women or people of color were interviewed and seriously considered for either of these positions,” a question that prompted applause. Lewis said there will be “significant opportunities” within the new organizational structure. Asked by another staffer about which people he met with, Lewis said, “It was an iterative, messy process, which I don’t want to go into the details of.”

Man kan vælge at fokusere på kompetence eller diversitet, men ikke begge dele, er budskabet. Men det skal ikke her hedde sig at negerkvinder ikke kan bedrive journalistik eller skrive gode historier, sandheden er blot den, at der kun er 6% af dem i befolkningen og hvis ikke skriverlivet er tillokkende for dem generelt, vil der være relativt færre talenter at ansætte. For at hamre den historie igennem gjorde en af Washington Posts skribenter sig igen bemærk, trods hans hvidhed, nemlig Phil Bump, der som en af de sidste mennesker fastholder at Hunter Bidens computer, der lige er brugt som bevismateriale imod Hunter, er russisk des-information – og det sker på Washington Posts vegne. Jonathan Turley skriver

Bump and others used the question over whether the laptop was an authentic copy or a tampered copy to avoid any serious investigation into the underlying emails. Many simply threw up their hands and said “oh well, what can we do.” To this day, the media has shown little interest in the influence peddling operation. Few people seriously argue that the media would have shown the same limited response if these emails tied Trump children to millions in foreign influence peddling schemes.

But Bump was not done:

After Hannity lamented the media’s silence on the so-called “critical development,” Turley offered a theory for why that silence had ensued.

‘If the laptop is authentic, if those files are real,’ he said, “then you have these detailed accounts of a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling operation run by the Biden family. Those would also be authentic. But the media just simply doesn’t want to go there.’

Except that we already know that many of those files were real, because we got access to them and verified them. The reason the media ‘doesn’t want to go there’ on breathless claims about a ‘Biden family’ influence-peddling operation is that the material doesn’t prove any such operation. It shows — as has by now been exhaustively explained — work done by Hunter Biden and his Uncle James that involved lots of money but did not demonstrably involve President Biden. The entire point of the House Republican impeachment effort has been to prove Joe Biden’s involvement; they have been unable to do so.”

Once again, Bump makes it sound like the Post vigorously and quickly verified the laptop. The belated acknowledgement did not come until much later. It was not until March 2022 that the Post finally admitted that the laptop was real, but then did comparably little to pursue the corruption and other unlawful conduct detailed on the laptop.

Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid appeared to state the quiet part out loud by telling the media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”

Phil Bump har, som antydet i dette uddrag, stødt sammen med Turley før, til stor moro for os andre. Ikke desto mindre, så er fokus på identitet en fjende af kvalitet, for de der søger job på baggrund af deres identitet er typisk ikke dem, der tilbyder kvalitet. Med andre ord, hvis man vil fylde på med negerlebber, fisker man ikke blot i en lille sø, men man tiltrækker end ikke de bedste. Cameras Sean Durns skriver på X

The Post’s alignment with fringe perspectives, particularly on Middle Eastern affairs, has distanced it from mainstream U.S. views. Coverage has often favored narratives that align more with extremist positions than balanced reporting.

Its coverage of the massacre on October 7th 2023 is a key e.g.  The Hamas-led assault on Israel killed 1,200+ & took 240 hostages.   The Post included perspectives that downplayed atrocities & some columnists even framed them as “decolonization.”

Columnist Karen Attiah “liked” and shared posts praising the attacks. She later drew false equivalences between the attackers and their victims, accusing Israel of “genocide” despite the IDF’s significant efforts to minimize civilian casualties.

Attiah’s track record includes publishing op-eds by  the Houthi terror group, notorious for their anti-American & anti-Israeli rhetoric. Her selective concern for freedom is evident; she ignored Hamas’s violent 2019 crackdown on Palestinian protestors.

Ishaan Tharoor, another @washingtonpost columnist, minimized Hamas’s tactics and criticized Israel’s military response without acknowledging Hamas’s use of human shields.

The Post’s newsroom also often reports unverified claims from Hamas as facts.

It doesn’t even end there…

A recent headline following an Israeli hostage rescue mission misleadingly emphasized Palestinian casualties based on Hamas’s claims, ignoring the context of the operation and the complexities on the ground.

Det er ikke bare de outrerede synspunkter, siger Camera videre, det er det grundlæggende sammenbrud i journalistisk integritet. Og så linker Sean Durns til sin artikel i Washington Examiner

For example, on Oct. 17, 2023, several news outlets repeated the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health’s claims that the Israel Defense Forces struck al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, killing hundreds. In fact, U.S. and other intelligence assessments have concluded that it was likely a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that fell short, striking the hospital parking lot and killing anywhere from 10 to 50 people. But the damage was done. The decision to treat Hamas’s claims as credible led to rioting across the Middle East, including attacks on U.S. embassies. Subsequently, in an Oct. 20 press conference, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters, “I would not take anything that Hamas says at face value. I’m not sure anyone in this room would take at face value or report something that ISIS had said [and] the same applies to Hamas.”

And, of course! Even historians given open access to medical and government records struggle to ascertain exact or even sometimes close figures for casualties in even decades-old wars, something all journalists should take as a blaring alarm bell warning to be cautious about the very precise, as well as obviously inflated, numbers provided by Hamas’s Gaza Ministry of Health — even if it were not propaganda communications from a designated foreign terrorist organization. So, this could have been a learning moment. But not for the Washington Post. On May 27, the Washington Post ran a story titled, “Israeli strikes on Rafah safe zone kill at least 35, Gaza officials say.” However, the “Gaza official” who served as the article’s source, Muhammad Abu Hani, is a member of Hamas. His claim — Israeli strikes on humanitarian safe zone Block 2371 killed dozens — was proven false within hours. Instead of issuing a retraction, apology, or correction, the Washington Post deleted the entire article without explanation.

“[P]ersonnel is policy” som han pointerer.