More leaked Weigel emails June 25, 2010
David Weigel’s tough week continues. A day after Fishbowl DC published emails he wrote to the off-the-record list serve JournoList disparaging various conservatives, the Daily Caller digs up even more emails from the same source, suggesting a similar pattern of disdain for the people he covers.
In them, he wishes for the death of Rush Limbaugh, accuses pundits and Republicans of “racism” and calls Matt Drudge an “amoral shut-in.”
Weigel was hired this spring by the Post to cover the conservative movement. Almost from the beginning there have been complaints that his coverage betrays a personal animus toward conservatives. E-mails obtained by the Daily Caller suggest those complaints have merit.
“Honestly, it’s been tough to find fresh angles sometimes–how many times can I report that these [tea party] activists are joyfully signing up with the agenda of discredited right-winger X and discredited right-wing group Y?” Weigel lamented in one February email. In other posts, Weigel describes conservatives as using the media to “violently, angrily divide America.” According to Weigel, their motives include “racism” and protecting “white privilege,” and for some of the top conservatives in D.C., a nihilistic thirst for power.
Weigel talks to the Daily Caller arguing that he has always believed he could be both a journalist and someone with an opinion. Fishbowl DC’s Betsy Rothstein responded to the piece saying that when she called Weigel for comment on her post yesterday, he told her he would get right back to her, then published his own apology on his blog before responding.
UPDATE: The link to the Daily Caller site above doesn’t work – at least at the time of writing – because the Drudge Report linked to the story this morning just as the website’s tech team was changing web hosts, according to Becca Glover Watkins, the publication’s spokeswoman.
“It’s kind of the perfect storm,” she said. “It’s killing us. It’s an incredible gift when Drudge links to your site, and we are really bummed
