When the Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel retweeted an off-colour, offensively misogynistic joke last Friday (3 June) he set off a firestorm of criticism, inside and outside the newsroom. Weigel swiftly un-tweeted the offending post and apologised, but it was too late. On Monday he was suspended without pay for a month.
It’s hard to look at Weigel’s suspension and not see it as fundamentally a case of a company throwing one staffer under the bus in an attempt to squash an unpleasant story. The Post‘s reaction shouldn’t be seen as an example of “cancel culture” or “the woke mob”. Weigel was not suspended because socially liberal Twitter users have disproportionate power but because the newspaper, owned by Jeff Bezos, is trying to smother bad news and put all the blame on one of its staffers.
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