I really have to question the judgment of Terrence McCoy and the Washington Post news editors. Why would they use the occasion of Charles C. Johnson’s decision to reveal the identity of an alleged rape victim to profile the man? For a publicity hound like Johnson, this is an enormous reward for some very bad behavior. And it’s hard for me to see this as not being complicity on the Washington Post‘s part.
I can envision certain circumstances in which the sheer size of the media event would warrant an article that basically answers the question: “Who is the guy who broke this story?” I’m thinking back to when Matt Drudge broke news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
But this is a much smaller media event than l’affaire Lewinsky was, and Johnson didn’t break the story that there were problems with Rolling Stone‘s reporting. That Johnson revealed the identity of alleged victim isn’t even front-page news, and very few people care or will be edified to learn that Mr. Johnson lives in Fresno, once wrote a book about Calvin Coolidge and likes to “get scalps.”
When you weigh what is provided to the public by reporting on Mr. Johnson’s biography against the downside of giving this man free publicity and helping increase his notoriety (and fundraising), it shouldn’t be a hard call. The editors should have declined to run this piece.
The MSM goes tut-tut-tut as it duly publicizes whatever rightwing scumbags such as Drudge, O’Keefe, and Johnson dredge up.
WaPo is much too invested in protecting elite white men (preferably politically similar to Rockefeller Republicans) and UVA, and trashing RS to have credibility in investigating the RS article. Stooping to citing Johnson makes WaPo’s agenda more obvious.
That could and probably is part of their investigation.
However, I think another (larger) part is that this is a turf war, and it’s personal. Word has it that WaPo interviewed “Jackie” and had a story to run, but RS scooped them.
If true that RS scooped WaPo on “Jackie’s” story, WaPo has done a crappy job of “correcting the record.” Doubt it’s true. However, as UVA has been under Title IX investigation for sexual violence since 2011, WaPo would surely have kept a file on this.
Bezos’s Bozos strike again.
I would investigate whether there is the national organization of one of the fraternities silently backing the placement of Johnson in the Washington Post. The fraternity lobby very much wants the UVa story to go away, and what are fraternities but post-collegiate networks.
By the way, what fraternities were Johnson and McCoy in?
No frat listed for Johnson. Would guess that he gets the same sort of funding as O’Keefe does.
Maybe Terrence McCoy is the only one at WaPo will no direct links to any issue or institution that could easily raise questions about his objectivity. (Not that WaPo generally cares about that.) But he’s burnishing his creds for crappy journalism. He should go far.
Considering Bezos’s politics, I’m sure he doesn’t mind. Besides, only DFH’s are saying anything and no one listens to them anyway.
Learned yesterday that Bezos has funded a Long Now clock – to the tune of $40 million. Conceptually, I love the Long Now perspective. So, it seemed odd to me that Bezos would be an investor until I thought it through. It appears that he’s into the tech aspect but not the concept. Plus the 10,000 year clock always seemed to me like more of a distraction than critical to advancing the perspective. The tech oriented rich guys prefer to focus on how to get off this amazing planet rather than investing in keeping it amazing. Which was the whole point of Long Now — long term sustainability and not capitalist/human short term plundering.
Also, McCoy hasn’t posted anything on Twitter since he got called out for being a shit-for-brains.