Washington Post staffers fume at owner Jeff Bezos as UK Telegraph’s Robert Winnett declines top editor role

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos faces growing unrest from the newspaper’s staffers — and the latest casualty is a British editor who had been slated to become their next boss.

Robert Winnett, the deputy editor of the UK broadsheet Telegraph, will not be taking the helm of the Washington Post, the paper said on Friday. That’s after former Washington Post editor Sally Buzbee abruptly stepped down earlier this month after just three years at the paper.

Washington Post Chief Executive William Lewis confirmed the change in a note to staff, adding that the paper will launch a formal search for a new editor.

“It is with regret that I share with you that Robert Winnett has withdrawn from the position of Editor at The Washington Post,” Lewis wrote. “Rob has my greatest respect and is an incredibly talented editor and journalist.”

A CNN report on Friday indicated that Washington Post staffers are growing impatient with Bezos’s hands-off leadership style — particularly amid the uproar over his decision to entrust the paper to Lewis.

Bezos on Tuesday sent a terse, 138-word memo to top editors at The Washington Post in which he expressed his “full commitment on maintaining the quality, ethics and standards we all believe in.”

But staffers at the newspaper said Bezos will need to do more given that Lewis, who has been on the job for just six months, has alienated the newsroom and is unlikely to win the respect of his charges.

Staffers are reportedly eager for Bezos to take “meaningful” action — namely dismissing Lewis.

“I don’t think the mood will change until something else changes,” a CNN staffer told CNN.

A Washington Post spokesperson referred The Post to a statement from the newspaper which included Lewis’ memo.

Separately this week, the paper faced fresh controversy as the Washington Free Beacon reported that six members of the Washington Post’s foreign desk had previously reported for Al-Jazeera, the news outlet backed by Qatar, which is currently sheltering Hamas’ top leaders.

Washington Post staffers, meanwhile, told CNN that the Lewis hiring has triggered a morale crisis in the newsroom that has distracted journalists from their work.

Washington Post staffers were particularly worked up over a recent Guardian report according to which Lewis advised then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his aides to “clean up” their phones while they were under scrutiny over violations of COVID-era lockdown measures, also known as the “Partygate” scandal.

Lewis reportedly made the recommendation while in his capacity as an informal adviser to Johnson from late 2021 to July 2022.

“This story is categorically untrue,” a spokesperson for Lewis told Guardian. A spokesperson for Johnson also denied the story as “untrue.”

The installment of Lewis and subsequent reports digging into his past as well as his ties to Winnett have enraged Washington Post staffers who say their hiring compromises the newspaper’s integrity.

Winnett, who was due to take on the top editor role at The Washington Post after the November election, decided to stay in his deputy editor position at Telegraph.

“I’m pleased to report that Rob Winnett has decided to stay with us. As you all know, he’s a talented chap and their loss is our gain,” Telegraph Editor Chris Evans said in an email to staff.

He was picked for the job by Lewis, another Brit who recently was named chief executive and publisher of the paper, which has been hemorrhaging cash in recent years.

Last weekend, The Washington Post published an investigative piece digging into Winnett’s journalistic past.

The story alleged that Winnett had close ties to a trained actor who used subterfuge and illegal means to obtain information, including an attempt to steal a soon-to-be-released copy of a memoir by former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A New York Times article last week reported that Lewis and Winnett both used fraudulently obtained phone and company records in newspaper articles while they worked as journalists in the UK two decades ago.

Lewis assigned the article based on stolen information when he was business editor of The Sunday Times, according to the report.

Winnett’s byline appears on another story that is alleged to have been based on information that was fraudulently obtained, according to The New York Times.

At the time that Lewis and Winnett were working for The Sunday Times, the newspaper was relying on the services of a private investigator who later acknowledged that he obtained information using deceptive means.

The Sunday Times, however, has denied that it ever paid anyone to break the law. The Sunday Times is owned by Times Newspapers Limited, which is a subsidiary of News Corp, The Post’s parent company.

The New York Times also reported last week that Lewis paid more than 100,000 British pounds — which was equal to around $160,000 — to a source in exchange for information while he was editor of The Daily Telegraph.

Most American newspapers adhere to a policy that bars payment to sources.

News of the appointment of both Lewis and Winnett outraged newsroom staffers at The Washington Post, who say that these alleged ethics lapses by the two British journalists disqualify them from a position of leadership at the venerable paper.

David Maraniss, an associate editor at The Washington Post who has won two Pulitzer Prizes, wrote a Facebook post demanding that Bezos dismiss Lewis.

“I don’t know a single person at the Post who thinks the current situation with the publisher and supposed new editor can stand,” Maraniss wrote.

“There might be a few, but very very few.”

Scott Higham, another Pulitzer-winning journalist at the newspaper, seconded Maraniss’ argument, writing in reply on Facebook: “Will Lewis needs to step down for the good of The Post and the public.”

“He has lost the newsroom and will never win it back.”