Insurrection Revealed: Reporters and PR Chiefs Inside Jeff Bezos' Embattled Washington Post Led Coup to 'Nuke' Incoming Executive Editor
The inmates are running the asylum.
The scandal engulfing The Washington Post was created after journalists conspired to dig up dirt on the British journalist who had been appointed as their next editor — and the paper’s own PR department deliberately sabotaged the man’s response to reporters’ questions about him.
That’s the bombshell from a Puck report authored by its media correspondent Dylan Byers, who revealed the public relations team at Jeff Bezos’ embattled media organization failed to turn over Robert Winnett’s responses to questions from four reporters who penned a stinging rebuke of their soon-to-be boss last weekend.
The public relations team at Jeff Bezos’ embattled media organization failed to turn over Robert Winnett’s responses to questions.
The Post’s report on itself alleged Winnett, who was scheduled to start at the helm of the masthead in November after the presidential election but quit before he even started, had used stolen records in a series of stories for Britain’s Sunday Times decades ago.
“Post reporters first reached out to Winnett on Sunday evening to ask him for comment on the story, just a few hours before it was published,” Byers reported.
“Winnett furnished responses to their inquiries to the Post’s P.R. team, which were not included in the Post’s report. Instead, a jarring and startling line in the story stated: ‘Winnett, currently a deputy editor of The Telegraph, did not respond to a detailed list of questions.’”
Lewis, who just became CEO and publisher of The Post in January, had appointed Winnett to lead the newsroom and replace executive editor Sally Buzbee following her abrupt departure amidst the restructuring.
Byers openly questioned whether the newspaper’s communications team, led by Kathy Baird, was “gravely incompetent” or instead “quietly manipulating the situation to side with their newsroom.”
He declared the Post’s newsroom was “nakedly trying to nuke not only Winnett but also (publisher Will) Lewis.”
Byers also accused Post staffers of leaking their inner turmoil to Politico and the New York Times in an “ostensible attempt to ethics-shame” billionaire Bezos off his $500 million superyacht in the Mediterranean where he was vacationing with his lover, Lauren Sanchez.
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"It is with regret that I share with you that Robert Winnett has withdrawn from the position of Editor at The Washington Post," the paper’s embattled CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, told staffers.
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, the Post has been at the center of a withering storm of scandal in recent weeks after former executive editor Sally Buzbee resigned when she was sidelined from the top job.
In the wake of that move, Byers reported, journalists on the Post’s foreign desk discussed a plan to dig for unflattering information on their new publisher and editor.
He revealed: “A group of Post journalists began scheming a plan to dig up dirt on their publisher and his new top editor. The Post newsroom had been on edge for days over the shake-up, and a new, somewhat nebulous plan to build a ‘third newsroom’ of soft content to grow the Post’s audience.”
Chaos due to the editorial shakeup and questions about Lewis' leadership have reportedly led morale at The Post to plummet.
Byers said Post journalists “decided to take matters into their own hands.”
“During a meeting of the foreign desk early that week, led by Post international editor Doug Jehl and his deputy Jennifer Amur, journalists discussed a plan to investigate both Lewis and Winnett to see if they could unearth unflattering information about the two men’s history in the U.K., where they once worked together as journalists at the Sunday Times and The Telegraph,” he reported.
“At least one staffer present at the meeting later brought the issue to Lewis’s attention, said it was a shameful reflection on the Post’s own ethics—a hit job masquerading as journalism—and encouraged him to take action. Lewis instead referred the matter to human resources.”
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Byers concluded the reporters who set out to “save” the paper “inadvertently set it back — which, given the current state of the business, they can hardly afford to do.
He said: “For all their rage, the Posties seem to have an insufficient understanding of the gravity of their business challenges.”