Democracy died a little this week after the Washington Post allowed pro-President Trump campaign ads to appear on its website, according to distraught members of the press.
“THE RADICAL LEFTIST TAKEOVER OF JOE BIDEN IS COMPLETE,” read the big, splashy Trump 2020 advertisements that appeared Thursday morning on the Washington Post’s website. A small caption at the bottom of the ads notes, “Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President.”
The Washington Post has a Trump campaign ad dominating its homepage right now: pic.twitter.com/REgT7pTxLa
— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) August 20, 2020
The deeply aggrieved reaction from certain reporters and journalism professors was swift.
“What a completely horrible error of judgement,” tweeted Columbia Journalism School’s Emily Bell. “*Any* issue-based advertising takeover of a masthead or homepage should by default be against the rules of a news publication.”
Journalist and Emory Human Health senior fellow Maryn McKenna added elsewhere, “This is a shocking error of judgment on the part of [Washington Post]. No journalistic news source hoping for credibility should accept any such banner advertising from either side.”
The Washington Post’s own Hamza Shaban, who covers business, sought to shame his employer over the ads, alleging a double standard between how the paper raises revenues and its policy dictating that employees should refrain from making asses of themselves on social media.
“Reporters at the Washington Post aren’t supposed to express themselves,” he complained on social media, “in ways that may embarrass the newspaper, harm its reputation or call into question its public interest mission of fair-minded and truthful news reporting.”
“Meanwhile,” Shaban added, linking to an image of the ad, “this is the Washington Post’s homepage.”
The business reporter had to be reminded by his own colleague, healthcare reporter and Washington Examiner alumnus Paige Cunningham, that paid advertising is “how newspapers have paid the salaries of reporters like you and me for decades.”
But the most frantic, and funniest, reaction Thursday came from City University of New York journalism professor Jeff Jarvis, who demanded apologies and other forms of satisfaction from the Washington Post for allowing Trump campaign ads to appear on its website.
“No, [Washington Post], no, no NO. How dare you?” he asked in a lengthy tirade posted to social media. “Were these pieces of silver worth the price of your soul? The Post not only sold its front page but also sold a takeover. Who the f— decided this? I am so ashamed of you, [Washington Post].”
He adds, “I just retweeted people in a half-dozens languages across the world expressing their shock at what the [Washington Post] did this morning. This harms the reputation of an institution we deeply depend upon.”
It goes on like that for quite a while longer. There is a part where Jarvis says the paper’s publisher, Fred Ryan, “must be held to account for the ads. The professor also says the Washington Post must “return the money.”
“It is tainted and now so is the newspaper,” he wrote, presumably while screaming.
Jarvis continued, working himself into a lathered frenzy, “And they let Trump shit on the pages of the [Washington Post] and its journalism throughout. Shameful. This bilious insult to democracy darkens The Post’s home page four times. Democracy dies in darkness, indeed.”
How it is an attack on American democracy for a privately owned news organization to run ads for a major political campaign during an election year is beyond me. Then again, I am not a journalism professor.
