Washington Post’s Erik Wemple Questions ‘Why Readers Should Trust the Post’ After Taylor Lorenz Controversy

Erik Wemple called out fellow Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz Friday in an opinion piece in which he essentially questioned his employer’s editorial practices.

Peculiarly, Wemple questioned why readers should trust the Post in a piece that was published by the Post.

Wemple recounted Lorenz’s reporting last week about social media influencers who cashed in on the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation trial.

Lorenz filed a report on money made by social media influencers who covered the trial. Initially, her reporting stated she had reached out to two people for comment on the story.

Both denied they were contacted by her before it went live. The line was removed from her reporting without a note to readers informing them it had been scrubbed.

The Post issued a correction to note the removal of the line violated its corrections policy.

Meanwhile, Lorenz blamed her editor for the dustup in a Twitter thread. She also admitted she did not reach out to her story’s subjects until after her piece was published.

The story’s correction now reads as if it is its own story:

Friday afternoon, Wemple published a piece headlined, “Taylor Lorenz said an editor was to blame. Is that okay?”

He questioned her decision to pass the buck, writing,

Blaming editors for mistakes sounds like a craven act, and indeed it can be. But it also happens occasionally at prominent U.S. media outlets. Lorenz’s pointed tua culpa is at odds with the spirit of Post policy, however. And in this case, it received approval from The Post’s masthead, according to a source at the paper. A Post spokesperson says, “We provided input that we asked she take into consideration.”

Wemple added Lorenz’s admission that she did not reach out to the people in her story until after publication is “in conflict with the editor’s note,” which it is.

He added,

We’ve asked The Post for clarification on this point, because it matters: If The Post can’t nail down the facts in an editor’s note, where else should we trust it to do so? “That stands as is,” says a Post spokesperson. “We won’t be able to get into what the internal discussions were.”

Wemple continued with a lengthy takedown of the Post’s correction policy – and correction policies in general. He also quoted Lorenz’s Twitter thread. She claimed criticism from two CNN reporters over her errant report made her the victim of a “smear campaign.”

He concluded, “That outrage works much better when a 135-word editor’s note isn’t hanging over your article.”

The Post-on-Post drama bubbled up a day after the paper fired reporter Felicia Sonmez after she spent a week deriding her coworkers on Twitter.