How many journalists could $5.2 million fund? That’s one of the biggest questions surrounding The Washington Post’s decision to spend that much money on a Super Bowl ad talking about how important journalism is today.
The Post conveniently leaves out all the stories it has completely bungled over the past two years, like the story about Russia allegedly invading the U.S. electric grid or the claim that hundreds of websites published Russian propaganda or the claim that Catholic school teens harassed a Native American man or the breathless coverage of flimsy sex assault accusations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
It also leaves out some details about Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote some columns through the Post (via a translator) but is referred to by the outlet as a Washington Post journalist.
The Super Bowl ad includes a short list of journalists who have been killed or, in the case of Austin Tice, kidnapped and missing, while covering the news. Tice was kidnapped in Syria while working as a freelance journalist for several news outlets, including the Post.
Marie Colvin’s murder was also listed in the ad. Colvin was murdered in Syria in 2012 while reporting on the civil war there.
Both Tice and Colvin were American citizens kidnapped or murdered while doing their jobs as journalists. Their stories are tragic and horrifying and show the dangers that journalists face in other countries around the world.
Khashoggi was not killed while reporting a story, nor was he an American citizen. Those things don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, but he was included in a list of American citizens who actually died doing their jobs.
It’s also surprising that the Post would include Khashoggi when it reported on December 22, 2018 that the Saudi National was actually a propagandist for Qatar. Sure, the Post buried this information in an article published three days before Christmas, but there it is:
Perhaps most problematic for Khashoggi were his connections to an organization funded by Saudi Arabia’s regional nemesis, Qatar. Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government. Khashoggi also appears to have relied on a researcher and translator affiliated with the organization, which promotes Arabic-language education in the United States.
That’s 19 paragraphs into the story, but the Post admits its editors did not know about this connection when it ran Khashoggi’s translated op-eds. Salem said the Qatar Foundation International didn’t pay Khashoggi or seek to influence him.
“He and I talked about issues of the day as people who had come together, caring about the same part of the world,” Salem said. “Jamal was never an employee, never a consultant, never anything to [the foundation]. Never.”
Sure. The fact that Khashoggi’s articles aligned with Qatar’s values and against its Middle East rival, Saudi Arabia, surely were not the result of one country translating his writing.
Khashoggi was also seeking millions of dollars from the Saudi government to start a think tank, even though he wrote against the Kingdom.
Some on the Left have tried to drag me on Twitter over pointing out Khashoggi’s Qatar ties, claiming this means I must be fine with his death. I am not. The way he allegedly dies sounds brutal, whether he was a journalist or not. The point here is that the Post’s ad is supposed to be about journalism and journalists dying while doing their jobs. Including Khashoggi on that list takes away from the brave work of Tice and Colvin, who actually did suffer as journalists.