The Washington Post’s media critic bashed his own paper for failing to cover the internal turmoil plaguing the Jeff Bezos-owned publication — including the decision to kill an editorial cartoon that showed the Amazon billionaire kowtowing to President-elect Donald Trump.
Erik Wemple didn’t pull any punches during a live chat session with readers when asked about the controversial decision to scrap the cartoon, which led Pulitzer Prize winner Ann Telnaes to resign.
“The Post has a long history of warts-and-all coverage of its internal matters. But there has been nothing from the newsroom’s media desk about this matter — just an AP story that we posted to our website,” Wemple said Monday.
He went on to say that recently appointed executive editor Matt Murray defended the decision as part of his new policy to “not cover ourselves” because it is “conflict-ridden.”
Wemple said Murray told him: “Most news orgs have the same or similar policies, of course. I set this weeks ago, so there is nothing about it specifically tied to the cartoon.”
Wemple ripped the new policy.
“The Post’s willingness over the years to cover its slip-ups and scandals has helped to set it apart from the many news organizations that refuse to hold themselves to the same rules to which they hold politicians, CEOs, professional athletes, etc. And it’s something, I believe, that subscribers have appreciated,” he said.
The Beltway broadsheet has been hit by a wave of defections in past months after Bezos killed an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris a few weeks before the Nov. 5 election. Roughly 250,000 readers reportedly canceled their subscriptions following the decision.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that WaPo will lay off 4% of the staffers, about 100 people, in its business divisions such as advertising sales and marketing as Bezos and publisher Will Lewis struggle to offset print revenue declines and reorient the paper’s left-leaning coverage.
A rep for The Post did not immediately return requests for comment.
Wemple, who joined WaPo in 2017, has been outspoken about his outlet’s missteps.
In 2022, Wemple reported on the drama in the newsroom that took place following an erroneous piece penned by colleague Taylor Lorenz. Lorenz exited the paper in 2024 amid another scandal in which she branded President Biden a “war criminal” in a social media post and lied to her bosses about it.
Wemple has had much to chew on when it comes to his own paper over the past year. The Washington Post has been at the center of media flare-ups from rising tensions between Lewis and his staff, including executive editor Sally Buzbee’s abrupt decision to step down.
Rob Winnett was tapped by Lewis to replace Buzbee but he withdrew himself from that position after Post journalists dug into the editor’s journalistic past.
More recently, several high-profile journalists have left the paper, including Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, two well-known political reporters, who joined The Atlantic, and Josh Dawsey, an investigative politics reporter, who departed for the Wall Street Journal.
