Washington Post - David Weigel mess

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The Washington Post has suspended reporter David Weigel for one month without pay for retweeting a sexist joke, two people familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday.

Weigel did not respond to a request for comment, but an out-of-office reply from his Post email address said that he would return to work on July 5. Weigel apologized publicly last week for the retweet, saying he “did not mean to cause any harm.”

A spokesperson for The Post declined to comment, citing a need for privacy regarding personnel matters.

Weigel’s retweet was spotlighted publicly by his colleague, Felicia Sonmez, who recently had a discrimination lawsuit against the paper dismissed, a decision her attorney has said she plans to appeal.

Sonmez sarcastically wrote on Twitter on Friday that it is “fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed.” She attached a screen grab showing Weigel’s retweet, which was of a tweet from YouTuber Cam Harless, who joked, “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

Sonmez, according to messages obtained by CNN, also confronted Weigel in an internal company Slack channel. She tagged him and wrote, “I’m sorry but what is this?”

Sonmez added in the Slack channel that the retweet sent “a confusing message about what the Post’s values are.”

Others on Friday joined the discussion in the Slack channel, prompting national editor Matea Gold to write, “I just want to assure all of you that The Post is committed to maintaining a respectful workplace for everyone. We do not tolerate demeaning language or actions.”

The Post’s chief spokesperson, Kris Coratti, also issued a statement to the press that said, “Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated.”

But the public and private admonishment of Weigel’s retweet has failed to quell tension inside The Post.

Others on Friday joined the discussion in the Slack channel, prompting national editor Matea Gold to write, “I just want to assure all of you that The Post is committed to maintaining a respectful workplace for everyone. We do not tolerate demeaning language or actions.”

The Post’s chief spokesperson, Kris Coratti, also issued a statement to the press that said, “Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated.”

But the public and private admonishment of Weigel’s retweet has failed to quell tension inside The Post.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez’s initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel’s tweet was “terrible and unacceptable.”

“But,” he added, “rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn’t actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion.”

Sonmez responded, saying that “calling out sexism isn’t ‘cruelty,’” but something that is “absolutely necessary.”

Sonmez and Del Real then proceeded to engage in a back and forth over Twitter on Saturday, with Del Real ultimately moving to temporarily deactivate his account.

The Washington Post reporter suspended for retweeting a joke deemed sexist by a female colleague had been one of her staunchest supporters when she came under fire for a tweet she posted about Kobe Bryant hours after his death.

David Weigel, benched without pay for a month on Monday by the Jeff Bezos-owned broadsheet, defended his fellow political reporter Felicia Sonmez in early 2020 when she was suspended by the paper after posting a tweet linking to a 2016 story detailing rape allegations against the NBA superstar.

The tweet as the nation was mourning the Lakers legend, his daughter and seven others who died in the helicopter crash just outside Los Angeles on January 26, 2020, generated intense backlash against Sonmez.

Bryant supporters demanded the Washington Post fire her. She was also inundated with threatening messages.

Somnez didn’t back down.

Any public figure is worth remembering in their totality… even if that public figured is beloved and that totality unsettling,” she tweeted.

“That folks are responding with rage & threats toward me… speaks volumes about the pressure people come under to stay silent in these cases.”

Sonmez later deleted her posts, but the newspaper placed her on administrative leave after determining that the tweets “displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.”

Journalists inside the Washington Post newsroom protested management’s decision to suspend Sonmez.

The Washington Post Guild circulated an open letter to then-executive editor Marty Baron demanding that Sonmez be reinstated. One of the signatories was Weigel.

“We understand the hours after Bryant’s death Sunday were a fraught time to share reporting about past accusations of sexual assault,” the guild wrote.

But we believe it is our responsibility as a news organization to tell the public the whole truth as we know it — about figures and institutions both popular and unpopular, at moments timely and untimely.”

The paper reversed its suspension of Sonmez and Weigel posted a celebratory tweet welcoming her back to the newsroom.

In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Weigel voted for Ralph Nader, and served as a Delaware college elector for Nader.In May 2002, then-The Daily Northwestern writer and current Bloomberg News reporterDan Murtaugh noted how "in two years Dave Weigel has gone from being a Ralph Nader-voting uber-liberal to the scorn of the leftist movement at Northwestern" and how Weigel underwent a "180-degree political turn" "after he was turned away from The Daily" and started working for The Chronicle.In February 2003, while enrolled as a junior and working as editor-in-chief of Northwestern Chronicle,Weigel supported the Iraq War and crashed an anti-war protest at Northwestern University.

In the 2004 election, Weigel voted for John Kerry. Weigel later wrote that "[he regrets] the Nader vote, but not the Kerry vote, as a weak Democratic president with a conservative Congress would have been pretty tolerable in retrospect".He voted for Jack Ryan in the Illinois United States Senate election, 2004 Republican primary.

In early 2007, Weigel became a registered Republican in the Washington, D.C. area, in order to vote for Ron Paul at the Republican primary stage of the 2008 presidential election. In November 2008, Weigel voted for Barack Obama, explaining "I really don't think McCain has the temperament to be President or the interest in standing up to a Democratic Congress....I've got the luxury of a guilt-free, zero-impact vote in the District of Columbia, which I would cast for Bob Barr if he was on the ballot".

In the Republican Party presidential primaries 2012, Weigel voted for Jon Huntsman, despite his having withdrawn from the race, because "If you looked past his whiff of a tax plan (Huntsman recommended using the flat rates that Simpson and Bowles recommended not using), the guy had a few good ideas."In the 2012 general election, Weigel voted for Gary Johnson.

In late June 2010, excerpts of several of Weigel's private emails from JournoList were posted online by the website Fishbowl DC and later by Tucker Carlson's conservative news site, The Daily Caller.JournoList had been started in 2007 by Ezra Klein as an invitation-only discussion and debate forum for left-of-center bloggers and reporters. The excerpts of Weigel's archived emails contained negative remarks about various public figures associated with American conservatism such as Pat Buchanan, Matt Drudge, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh.

Weigel said all of the emails were sent before he joined The Washington Post.He apologized online before the second round of email excerpts was published on the Tucker Carlson site, explaining that he had thought the off-the-record listserv environment was a place where he could "talk bluntly to friends". However, The Washington Post responded that the apology could not save his job because "the damage was too severe.

As a result of the leaked emails, Weigel resigned from The Washington Post and Ezra Klein shut down JournoList.

After only nine months at Bloomberg Politics, Weigel returned to The Washington Post on July 20, 2015.

On December 8, 2017, Weigel tweeted a photo of the crowd at President Donald Trump's rally at the Pensacola Bay Center in Florida that showed many empty seats. He quickly deleted the tweet after it was pointed out that the photo was taken before the venue filled up. Trump addressed the incident the next day on his Twitter account and demanded that Weigel be fired. Weigel replied and apologized, writing "Was confused by the image of you walking in the bottom right corner“

Cam Harless, the man behind the tweet that got Washington Post reporter David Weigel suspended, appeared on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" to discuss the meltdown that has ensued at the paper since Weigel’s retweet.

Carlson asked Harless if he knew when he wrote the joke that he'd wreck a man's career?

"I didn't know that, but if I did know that I probably would've done it earlier, I think," he responded.

"I felt bad for like half a minute when I found out that he was suspended.  And I don’t think anyone should be punished for re-tweeting a joke that I tweet, that's ridiculous.  But, at the same time, I am really happy that, you know, I am profoundly against wars, so when I found out that Weigel was very pro-Iraq war, I was like maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that it was this guy that got that", Harless said.