Yesterday a group of Washington Post reporters went out for dinner and one of them tweeted a photo with the message “Merry Impeachmas from the WaPo team!” That generated some outrage on Twitter because the photo and the tag made it sound as if the reporters were celebrating impeachment. The reporter who tweeted the photo has since deleted the tweet and put out this explanation. I’m including the response so you can see the original tweet:
https://twitter.com/steph93065/status/1207529143010648064
Today, Brian Stelter wrote about the story, giving Washington Post editor Marty Baron a chance to deny the reporters meant anything by this.
“What they were doing is that they were celebrating being able to go off the clock after a long day of covering impeachment. And that’s what that’s what she intended to convey,” Baron said. “It’s unfortunate that this has been distorted into celebrating impeachment.”…
In reality, Baron said, the reporting team had a very long day, and the photo showed when, “finally, they were able to relax.”
Stelter also quotes Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch mocking the idea that the reporters said anything wrong:
Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch defended the group of reporters in an overnight tweet: “Some right-wing folks on here are gunning after some WaPo reporters for tweeting ‘Merry Impeachmas’ as if that wasn’t trending on Twitter earlier this week and didn’t inspire numerous articles already.”
This has to be the dumbest argument you could possibly make in defense of this tweet. It’s true that Merry Impeachmas was in there air weeks ago and even more so yesterday. What Stelter doesn’t point out is the reason this was so. Fortunately, CNN published a story yesterday explaining why:
Christmas isn’t for another week, but political Washington — especially on the liberal side — spent much of Wednesday celebrating a holiday of its own: “Impeachmas.”
Throughout much of Wednesday morning, the hashtag “#MerryImpeachmas” was a top trend in Washington and nationally on Twitter…
“#MerryImpeachmas is trending #1,” tweeted artist and activist Bree Newsome Bass. “Expect more commentary today about how this social media app doesn’t represent the real world, how impeachment is backfiring for Dems and how Trump is a stable genius who writes historic letters on par with Lincoln.” (Bass is known nationally for climbing a flagpole outside the South Carolina state capitol and removing the Confederate flag in 2015.)
So Merry Impeachmas is a liberal celebration of Trump’s impeachment on Twitter. That’s why it was trending this month. Therefore pointing out that it was trending doesn’t make a very good defense of these reporters’ objectivity. On the contrary, it sort of confirms that this is the progressive equivalent of a high five.
So when some reporters casually say “Merry Impeachmas” after a hard day’s work, it’s not a non-partisan sentiment. It’s communicating that they are, without even thinking twice about it, part of a certain group with a certain outlook.
Ultimately, this isn’t that big a deal but if Stelter and Marty Baron are going to defend this I’m going to point out that their excuses are dumb. The bottom line is that Washington media is a big liberal bubble and occasionally that fact is going to slip out as it did here.
