By Bob Gaydos

The Post staff rebelled against a proposed new editor with a questionable ethics past.

    Score one for the good guys.

   In a time when (1.) “fake news” is thrown around routinely as a way to delegitimize real reporting by real journalists while (2.) social media is awash in actually fake news produced by fake journalists and (3.) the airwaves are polluted by well-funded “media” outlets pushing outright lies, all to support the propaganda machine of the Trump Republican Party, The Washington Post recently provided a lesson in what has historically been considered basic journalism ethics in America.

  Actually, The Post staff with major help from The New York Times gave Post management a lesson in basic American journalism.

    In brief, they forced the ordained new editor of  The Post to change his mind about taking the job because, well, it’s always more pleasant to work with people who like you and who share your principles and ethics. Or, in this case, lack thereof.

     Robert Winnett, the Post editor-to-be, announced that he’s decided to stay in England, where his brand of “journalism” is accepted and (by some) even admired, rather than come to The Post, whose staff was in revolt over his selection.

     That’s because Winnett was involved in a scandal that engulfed British newspapers years ago in which stories based on hacked or stolen phone and business records or records purchased from a data information company were published to embarrass prominent politicians and celebrities. Lawsuits followed.

      Those practices are frowned upon by legitimate American news organizations and have been for a long time. Winnett denied taking part in those activities, but both The Post and The Times published articles quoting individuals involved in those sensationalized stories saying Winnett was in it.

      Indeed. So was his almost new boss, Post CEO and publisher Will Lewis, who was, in fact, Winnett’s actual boss at The Sunday Times, a Rupert Murdoch newspaper across the pond. Lewis was reported to have assigned Winnett to do one of those hit jobs.

    Still, Lewis did manage to get hired as the top dog in Washington. Apparently, The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, didn’t notice or didn’t care that the British style of “journalism,” as practiced most outrageously in America by Murdoch-owned Fox News on TV and to a lesser extent The New York Post, wasn’t acceptable for major American media, especially those with a reputation for fairness and ethical practices, like The Washington Post.

     Bezos, who turned Amazon into a mega profit machine, is understandably concerned that The Post is losing money. Maybe he never considered all the advertisers that newspapers lost when businesses flocked to the Internet to companies like Amazon to promote their products.

   In any event, Bezos wants The Post to establish a third news-gathering wing, presumably centered on the Internet. Lewis wanted Sally Buzbee, the Post’s former top editor, to take over that new job, but she properly took it as a demotion and resigned. The Times and Post stories story on Winnett followed. Hence, the search for a new editor. (A new publisher wouldn’t be bad either.)

     Back in London, Chris Evans, top editor at The Daily Telegraph, Winnett’s current newspaper, sent a message to his staff saying, “I am pleased to report that Rob Winnett has decided to stay with us. As you all know, he’s a talented chap, and their loss is our gain.” 

     Well, chaps of a feather do stick together.

     In any case, the hope here is that Lewis and Bezos and others at The Post who maybe were thinking of taking part in some form of UK “hit job“ journalism get the message: The First Amendment protection afforded the press in this country in the Constitution is not a license to lie, cheat, steal or in any other unethical way ruin people’s lives for the sake of selling more newspapers or getting more clicks on social media.

    Not yet at least.

(Editor’s note: The author worked for more than 40 years at three daily newspapers, all of which followed the basic ethical principles of American journalism. Two of them — The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton and The Times Herald-Record in Middletown — were tabloids in size, but not in the practice of journalistic sensationalism. The Evening Capital in Annapolis, a standard broadsheet, was no less rigorous about ethical practices.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

       By Bob Gaydos 

Justice Clarence Thomas, the reason for the code.

     There used to be a regular newspaper feature called “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not,” which some younger people might not be aware of, given (1.) the rapid disappearance of community newspapers across the country, but (2.) there are still about 20 museums of the same name scattered across the United States in tourist areas, from New York to Los Angeles, although (3.) the ones in Atlantic City and Baltimore have permanently closed, presumably because of economic factors, not the absence of unusual stories people might have trouble believing, or, in this era of “fake news,” simply accepting as true, which would be the case with (4.) the U.S. Supreme Court making a big deal recently about finally adopting a code of ethics for the nine justices, who hitherto have been bound only by their own sense of morality in rendering opinions, unlike all other judges in the country, the code being a step the high court took only because of real news stories about (5.) Justice Clarence Thomas getting expensive gifts, vacations, education expenses for a young relative, all from individuals with issues coming before the court and (6.) his wife, Ginny, being financed by ultra-conservative groups as she actively fought the phony Trump fight to undo the legitimate 2020 election results, (7.) which did not stop her hubby from sitting in court and hearing cases about the legitimacy of the “stop the steal” campaign, apparently not seeing any conflict of interest, which was the most glaring, but not only, reason for a need for a code of ethics for the justices, which would be legitimately good news if it were, well, real, which (8.) it is not because there is no official process for an individual citizen to file a complaint nor any clear way given for justices to enforce the code among themselves, relying strictly on each justice’s own, ahem, sense of honor to recuse him or herself from a case in which there could be a conflict of interest or to avoid accepting expensive favors or doing anything else that could cast doubt on the court’s independence, all of which (9.) argues for Congress to set some legitimate ethics standards for the justices, given its power of approval of appointments to the court and control of its budget, two factors which apparently didn’t matter (10.) to the geniuses at OpenAI, the makers of the artificial intelligence product ChatGPT, when the non-profit board that governs the for-profit company (a system set up supposedly to protect against greed driving the new technology into dangerous territory) voted (11.) to fire Sam Altman, the genuine brain behind OpenAI and the company’s chief executive, a decision that was unexpected and laid to Altman not being fully forthcoming with the board, but not even AI could predict that (12.), in less than a week, Altman would be back as the boss of OpenAI and the nonprofit board of directors had been replaced by a whole new board, a development that was inevitable when Microsoft, sensing a way to dominate AI, quickly hired Altman after his firing and the next top Open AI executive and a bunch of employees all quit, also being hired by Microsoft, leaving the non-profit board with pretty much nothing to direct, so the members resigned and Altman and everyone else came back to OpenAI, signaling (13.) a victory for greed over prudent concern and (14.) giving more credence and urgency to the Biden administration’s creating a team to study how to deal with artificial intelligence before it’s too late and the whole human race winds up (15.) as an exhibit in an AI robot-built version of Believe It or Not.

    It’ll be big on AI Tik-Tok.

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.