Why Lewis’ checkbook journalism in the U.K. will taint The Washington Post

Roy Moore. Video clip (cc) 2017 by Folsom Natural.

Everything you need to know about why Will Lewis can’t stay as publisher of The Washington Post. And this is about one of his lesser scandals: his paying £110,000 to a source in return for information about a parliamentary spending scandal. The Atlantic’s Stephanie McCrummen writes (free link):

Hours after my Washington Post colleagues and I published the first of several articles in 2017 about the Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore’s history of pursuing teenage girls, the Republican nominee’s powerful allies launched an elaborate campaign seeking to discredit the story.

The best-known of these efforts was an attempt carried out by the far-right activist group Project Veritas to dupe us into publishing a false story, an operation we exposed. But there were others, perhaps none more insidious than the spreading of false rumors across Alabama that The Washington Post had paid Moore’s accusers to come forward, and were offering thousands of dollars to other women for salacious stories about him.

So now Robert Winnett is out and Lewis, his enabler in the pay-to-play scheme, remains in his job, at least for the moment. This will not stand.

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