As we’ve discussed in previous posts, the Washington Post’s new CEO Will Lewis is up to his neck in alleged (!) criminality and not-so-alleged unethical journalism. Will Lewis is British, and he cut his teeth in British tabloids, specifically News Group Newspapers’ print media. Lewis was a major figure in Rupert Murdoch’s British media arm during the pre-Leveson heyday of phone hacking, blagging and other crimes. Lewis was eventually shifted over to Murdoch’s American media arm, almost like he was specifically being whitewashed. He worked for Dow Jones/WSJ for a time, and then Jeff Bezos recently appointed Lewis as the new CEO of WaPo.
In May, Prince Harry won several motions in his long-running lawsuit against NGN. Basically, Harry’s lawsuit can now name names of NGN editors and journalists who were responsible, years ago, for all of the criminal activity around royal coverage. Lewis was one of the names. Last month, we heard a curious story that Lewis wanted WaPo to minimize the fact that he has been implicated by name in Harry’s lawsuit. Then on Sunday, WaPo’s executive editor Sally Buzbee quit that bitch, and the New York Times reports that in the weeks before she quit, she clashed with Lewis over WaPo’s coverage of Harry’s lawsuit and Lewis specifically wanted her to kill WaPo’s coverage. There was even a slight insinuation that Lewis was about to demote Buzbee partially because she wanted WaPo to cover Harry’s lawsuit. Well, it’s even worse than that. Apparently, Lewis has had a bee in his bonnet for a while now about how the American media is covering his alleged history of criminal activity when he was in the UK. From NPR’s David Folkenflik:
The Washington Post has written twice this spring about allegations that have cropped up in British court proceedings involving its new publisher and CEO, Will Lewis. In both instances Lewis pushed his newsroom chief hard not to run the story.
According to several people at the newspaper, then-Executive Editor Sally Buzbee emerged rattled from both discussions in March and in May. Lewis’ efforts were first reported by the New York Times. The second Post article in May, which was thorough and detailed, ran just days before Lewis announced his priorities for the paper, which is financially troubled.
On Thursday, a spokesperson for Lewis denied the publisher had pressured his editor, saying, “That is not true. That is not what happened.”
Buzbee did not recuse herself from the stories, which were overseen by Managing Editor Matea Gold, and drew upon reporters from three desks. Lewis did not block the story from running. He unexpectedly announced Buzbee’s departure on Sunday night, about three-and-a-half weeks after the longer story ran, along with a restructuring of the newsroom’s leadership structure.
It is not the first time that Lewis has engaged in intense efforts to head off coverage about him in ways that many U.S. journalists would consider deeply inappropriate.
In December, I wrote the first comprehensive piece based on new documents cited in a London courtroom alleging that Lewis had helped cover up a scandal involving widespread criminal practices at media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids. (Lewis has previously denied the allegations.)
At that time, Lewis had just been named publisher and CEO by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, but had not yet started. In several conversations, Lewis repeatedly — and heatedly —offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations. At that time, the same spokesperson, who works directly for Lewis from the U.K. and has advised him since his days at the Wall Street Journal, confirmed to me that an explicit offer was on the table: drop the story, get the interview.
NPR published the story nonetheless. On Thursday, the spokesperson declined comment about that offer. That first interview appears to have gone to Puck’s Dylan Byers. It ran a day after the Post’s piece in May.
As NPR points out, American journalists and editors simply don’t operate this way. The American media – when dealing with itself – isn’t a scratch-my-back culture. NPR points out that when a journalist or editor is caught up in a crime, their newspaper or outlet generally takes pride in covering the story thoroughly. This is a specifically British mentality, that Lewis believed he could have stories about his alleged criminality “killed” through backroom deals with journalists and they would never breathe a word. As Press Watchers notes in their editorial: “Doing what he did violates a core doctrine of American journalism: that editors and publishers are not supposed to interfere with their own newsrooms’ coverage of issues in which they have a personal conflict of interest. It’s really about as basic as it gets.” Press Watchers says it plainly: “Having crossed that line, Lewis should hand in his resignation as a result. Or Post owner Jeff Bezos should fire him.”
Photos courtesy of Getty.
Fire him! Ugh, I wish they would. Far as I can tell, he’s obv still there and coincidentally hired two of his white male friends for new positions. He’s not gonna resign that’s for sure. So please please please someone fire him. What an unethical pos.
“Lewis repeatedly — and heatedly —offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations.”
Wow, why did Jeff Bezos hire this guy? Does he need something to be hidden? He is so obviously a dirty journalist in USA standards. Now, he got another guy from Telegraph, I assume, we are gonna start getting hit pieces on H&M very soon there.
Right? I wondered the same. Does Bezos need something hidden bc jeez why would he hire this guy for the Wp?
Those Press Watchers quotes nail it.
He is not a person who should be in this role: he came from a dirty anti-journalism, anti-Fourth Estate tabloid background, and his behavior has shown he’s using the same old playbook.
He needs to be bounced out of there.
The entire WaPo newsroom has seen this go down, and he’s going to make their jobs so much harder, and continue staining the publication’s reputation if he stays.
🎯
Bezos will cut this guy loose when the US mainstream media gets a hold and WaPo’s profits take a hit. Bezos made a bad hire.
Bezos might just want him through the election, so he can pay even less in taxes.
I have to agree, Bezos made a bad hire 😕
Subscription cancelled on Sunday. Good riddance. I hope the filth about him continues to pour out.
people need to cancel their subscriptions instead of just getting mad about it.
It’s amazing that so many progressives and independents pay for subscriptions to fund pro Tory monarchy type tabloid journalism in the U.S. at a legacy paper.
Lewis is already showing his pro Trump hand with placement of stories.
It’s been slanting pro-Tr*mp since at least the middle of last year, when WaPo was minimizing the allegations against him, while simultaneously running much harsher criticism against Biden, among other things. I cancelled my subscription then. I’m not surprised they are in financial trouble.
At this point, I’ve given up on regular newspapers. I sporadically pop into Byline Investigates and NPR and that’s about it.
This is being covered extensively in the U.S. mainstream media.
Hopefully this attempted coverup will backfire as spectacularly as most do. At least his hacking is getting coverage on SM. C’mon Jeff, get rid of him.
That bit about Lewis “repeatedly — and heatedly —offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations” is pretty damning. Why was someone so unfamiliar with American journalistic practices heading up the Post, anyway?
It would be hilarious if Lewis’s efforts to try to avoid coverage of his alleged role in Harry’s case ended up bringing even more attention to it! It also, to me, this contradicts the Murdoch empire’s claims that all of these activities happened too far back in the past for Harry to touch. If they are still taking steps to cover it up now, doesn’t that mean that the crimes are ongoing?
“ If they are still taking steps to cover it up now, doesn’t that mean that the crimes are ongoing?”
Thank you! Exactly!
For some reason, in an election year involving Trump who brags he will be a dictator, CNN, the Daily Beast, WaPo and others have brought in British talent to lead the newsrooms.
It’s depressing as hell to watch the British takeover of once-respected news organizations … especially as guys like Lewis are bringing their unethical practices with them.
How the mighty have fallen, I guess. The WSJ, the NYT and now WaPo have all gone down the toilet.
Yes, and whereat the mighty go down the toilet Bezos doth follow.
The Washington Post has been a good newspaper; so has the Wall Street Journal (except for the editorials). Both owned by Murdoch, and apparently both are experimenting with a pro-Trump stance.
Disgusting. And he illustrates the problem with letting billionaires (Bezos, in this case) control the media.
Unfortunately, billionaires are the only ones who can afford “the media” — newspapers everywhere have been a losing proposition since a little thing called the Internet came to town. The city where I live used to have three newspapers and an alt-weekly: there’s only one Pulitzer-founded rag left and that is barely gasping.
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post not Murdoch. Murdoch owns the NY Post and WSJ.
Yes, Bezos just brought in a Murdoch trained person to run the newsroom, who has been accused of widespread cover up of illegal activities.
The WSJ has been off for a while, not just the editorials, but the coverage, the slant put in supposed “non-editorial” content.
It’s always had a more pro-business, Wall Street, aimed at the wealthy, aspiring wealthy vibe, but was still a reliable news outlet. It used to be one of my regular reads (my boss subscribed so there was always around the office) But in the last ~ 15 years? Murdoch’s biased influence is absolutely there.
The Washington Post was fine, aside from like most other MSM outlet’s confusing reflexive both-siderism for balanced coverage (their right wing columnists are really bad, ignoring facts and spinning alternate takes in a way that would make peak-Trump Kelly Anne Conway proud) and chasing clicks with Trump-tastic quotes.
But they are at a flexion point ATM.
A new outlet with the motto Democracy Dies In Darkness should never have an editor trying to squash legitimate journalism and burying new stories. Shame on Bezos for that.
Scary times at the moment.
I’m truly scared for the U.S. it’s just sad to see the smaller independent places cut off by the tech billionaires while these anti democracy huge conglomerates and legacy papers get taken over by billionaires.
The WSJ has always been conservative. It’s a business newspaper. Stories used to be much more liberal than the opinion pages but not so under Murdoch. The Biden coverage is disgraceful.
I wish it was just a case of Lewis wanting to cover up his shady past and lack of ethics. This is about the US presidential election news coverage.
If you are a Washington Post reader, you can see UK right wing fingerprints all over the way political news is being covered.
This week alone there have been so many Post articles equating Trump’s 34 felonies to Hunter Biden’s trial over drug addiction while applying for gun license. Hunter Biden was a drug user and an addict. He wrote about his struggles and failure in his book. This criminal trial though is a hatchet job designed to embarrass Joe Biden. It’s trying to smear President Biden with guilt by association. In the real world, no prosecutor would send this case to trial. It’d have been a plea deal at best. This type of gaslighting tactic is frequently used by British journalists. It was used successfully with Brexit and certainly we talked about it here in the case of royal rota much more blatant war against the Sussexes.
It’s tragic to see how far the Post has fallen. It became a paper where the news is untrustworthy.
I’m with you Kit. I hope people cancel their subscriptions. Money is the only power citizens have besides voting.
The sipreme court has fallen. Now free press has fallen after being chipped at for years by consolidation. Fire this trash, Bezos!
Bezos didn’t do his due diligence when he was considering Lewis for the job. If he did he would have known that Lewis was implicated or at least around when the phone hacking was going on and that there were cases going through the British courts about it.
American oligarchs salivate at the thought of having a type of British propagandist media stronghold here. Democracy-loving Americans will fight that tooth and nail. Also, those papers will be sued by aggrieved parties till they’re (i.e the newspapers) broke.
I hope the journalists don’t let this die and keep shining harsh lights on this.
‘All reporters there were allowed to know was that their CEO had settled on two men that, by sheer coincidence, happened to be his friends: Matt Murray (who will serve as interim editor) and Robert Winnett (who will assume the job permanently after the election). Not only are all three of these men as white as a block of Monterey Jack, they also happen to have deep roots in upscale conservative media. Lewis and Murray both did long stints with Rupert Murdoch, with Lewis running News Corp’s Dow Jones and Murray coming over from the Wall Street Journal. As for Winnett, he currently runs England’s Daily Telegraph, purveyor of such fine op-ed pieces as, “No one ever says it, but in many ways global warming will be a good thing.”’
-Drew Magary, SF Gate 6/7/2024
Has to be what Bezos wanted. That was the plan.
First off, I deeply appreciate the photos of Lewis used in this post!🔥
Next, please sign up to vote!!
One of the ways that the far right operates is to limit the news. And spread misinformation. If you look at Brexit, this was right down the far right’s alley, and Lewis had a hand in shaping the news that led to it. Denying people stories about what happened is par for the course.
I have been a twenty-five year plus subscriber to WaPo and this news has me very close to cancelling my subscription. I just don’t know who I would replace them with.
Cancel it. Not canceling is condoning what’s happening there.
Mr. TMcQ canceled our subscription as soon as he realized who the new CEO is and read about his background in tabloid journalism. We also canceled our Baltimore Sun subscription after it was bought by Sinclair. We’re lucky to have a local, independent paper, but it is harder to find good sources of national and international news. It’s funny, because we actually had a convo about it this weekend, where to do now that WaPo is untrustworthy? We read the Guardian, but it would be nice to a US paper we could depend on. Given what happening at other papers across the country, it will be difficult.
Still, we refuse to pay for what we know is a right-wing propaganda machine. Not a penny.
I canceled mine yesterday because of this story specifically. Unfortunately when canceling they don’t give you an option to specify why beyond a few preselected choices, so I couldn’t specify that I was canceling for this reason. If Bezos sees his bottom line getting hit because of this, maybe then he’ll care.
Cancel it and figure out what to replace it with next.
For now, I would suggest people are better off reading the AP and picking some smaller outlets to support than they are reading or supporting NYT and WaPo.
Some reasonable alternatives: Reuters, AP, NPR, USAToday, The Guardian, ProPublica, AFP (global focus), The Texas Tribune (good in-depth local reporting )
I just texted my friend, who has had a thirty year career in journalism, to see if she comes up with any interesting suggestions. Her initial response to me “they still do good work” and my response back was I’m sure the real journalists are doing the best they can but that WaPo has now started the slide towards being right-wing rag.
Lewis at WaPo is part of a coordinated effort to take over all media (including social media) that isn’t influenceable by Right Wing oligarchs.
NYT, WSJ, Facebook, Twitter, Buzzfeed and TikTok have all been targeted for takeover in order to silence or minimize voices that aren’t right wing. This is not a coincidence, it is a coordinated attack.
You’re so right. It’s frightening.
Yup!
There were photos of Bezos’ side piece partying with Ivanka and Kim K. So yeah Bezos is totally down with Trump. This is absolutely a fascist takeover of what is left of truth, democracy, and journalism.
Yes! And CNN now run by a Brit.
I posted the following as a response to a Washington Post Facebook page regarding Lewis’ problematic past and current actions.
“ I’m a longtime subscriber. The hiring of William Lewis was the start of a very bad trend.”
“Maybe a loss of subscribers will send the message that needs to be sent. We don’t need British tabloid journalism and its compromised ethics shaping our media.”
After Biden gets elected again, and the Dems get the house and senate, we should be shouting for them to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. That should be a HUGE effort on the part of the citizens. If we don’t have a fair press, then how does democracy survive?
The Guardian has reported on this with a great in-depth article: https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jun/07/washington-post-new-ceo-leadership
Jackaxx, with UK comms team, is credibly accused of deleting vast swaths of incriminating emails covering up illegal activity and has the gall to call Folkenflik “an activist, not a journalist.” Dude. That $40 annual subscription I had been thinking about? Uh, no.
“As NPR points out, American editors and journalists don’t operate this way.”
I responded to another of Kaiser’s post a couple hours ago on the same subject . But I also wanted to mention, they cannot get away with what they’re used to in the UK over in the states.
Americans are loud and they will call people out whenever necessary. Heck a jury convicted an ex president of the US. No one is above the law. The more other US outlets dig into this story, I won’t be surprised if he will be replaced.
This story has been also circulating around SM.
Although even if he gets replaced. As with all CEOs in the US he would most likely get an insane compensation package for life.
Cancelled my subscription. I feel for the good journalists who are still employed there.