WaPo’s Conservative Blogger Turns Out To Be A Liberal

The Washington Post hired Dave Weigel to be its “conservative” blogger but recent events show that Weigel is not conservative at all and used a journalist forum to routinely bash conservatives. I have not read this guy in the past and only know who he is because of the flap created when he said that Matt Drudge should set himself on fire. This, of course, was linked on Drudge and became a major story.

Why would the Washington Post hire a liberal to blog as a conservative? That would be like hiring a woman to blog about men’s issues or a white person to blog about how things affect the black community. I guess hiring a liberal to blog about conservative issues is what the Post calls reasonable. Unfortunately for Weigel, his antics ended in his resignation and while he is responsible, the Post set him up to fail.

The current flap over Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel has its roots in a fact that suprised me when I learned of it earlier this year: The Post appears to have hired Weigel, a liberal blogger, under the false impression that he’s a conservative. The new controversy over the revelation that he’s liberal is primarily the Post’s fault, not his, except to the degree that he allowed the paper’s brass to put him in an unsustainable position. Politico

This guy would have been more successful if the Post would have hired him as a liberal blogger and allowed him to spew his vile words against the right. Liberals in the media are expected to do this so it would have been no big deal but the way things were done ensured that it was just a matter of time before the whole thing imploded.

Perhaps the Post was hoping to increase circulation by including a conservative point of view.

It might have helped if they had actually done that.

Related:
The Atlantic
Washington Post Ombudsman

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