Rachel Weiner

WashPost Dismisses Teen-Tapping Virginia Legislator as a 'Fleeting Sideshow'
By Tim Graham | December 23, 2014 | 8:01 PM EST

The affair of Virginia State Delegate Joseph Morrissey – the 57-year-old legislator bedding a 17-year-old legal aide – was a juicy story the late Ben Bradlee might have adored. But the Post didn’t put a news story on the front page of the Metro section until last Friday, December 19, five days after they buried it on C-7.

The story underlined why the Democrat-backers at the Post found this salacious tale so boring, what with their fascination with putting former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell behind bars for a decade or so.

WashPost Does Pro-Choice Va. Democrat a Solid, Promoting His Campaign Ad
By Ken Shepherd | September 16, 2014 | 4:24 PM EDT

In an 11-paragraph piece in today's Washington Post, staff writer Rachel Weiner did Democrat John Foust a favor, promoting his new campaign ad savaging Republican opponent Barbara Comstock. Foust and Comstock are competing to win the approval of voters in Virginia's 10th Congressional District.

WashPost Obsesses Over Pro-life Legislator's Remark, Buries Real Democrat Scandal
By Ken Shepherd | February 26, 2014 | 7:40 PM EST

Judging by the coverage, the Washington Post thinks a pro-life Republican state senator's sharply-worded rebuke of abortion-rights absolutists is twice as newsworthy as an ethically-challenged nominee to the Democratic governor's Cabinet.

How else do you explain the 16 paragraphs which Post staffer Rachel Weiner devoted to Virginia State Sen. Stephen Martin (R) compared with a mere eight paragraphs to Gov. Terry McAuliffe's (D) pick to head the state commerce department, Maurice Jones? Mr. Jones, Weiner noted citing an inspector general's report, "appears to have violated anti-lobbying law as well as internal HUD policy" when he was the deputy secretary for the federal department of Housing and Urban Development.

Yet Again, WashPost Omits Illegal Immigrant Status of Vanessa Pham's Murderer
By Ken Shepherd | November 18, 2013 | 5:44 PM EST

On Friday, convicted murderer and illegal immigrant Julio Blanco Garcia was sentenced to 49 years' imprisonment for the June 2010 murder of northern Virginia resident Vanessa Pham. True to form, in covering the story, the Washington Post's Rachel Weiner and Justin Jouvenal completely omitted the fact that Blanco Garcia was an illegal immigrant.

But in addition to omitting Blanco Garcia's illegal status, the Post reporters left out another nugget noted by at least one other local media outlets: local prosecutors believe that Blanco Garcia's motive initially was to rape Pham, contrary to his insistence he was merely driven to a moment of homicidal rage in a fit of PCP-fueled paranoia. Reported WTOP.com:

WSJ Omits Jackson Jr.'s Party Affiliation; NYTimes Leads With It, But Paints Chicago Dem as Tragic Figure
By Ken Shepherd | August 15, 2013 | 3:45 PM EDT

Of the East Coast's most prestigious papers -- The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post -- only the Journal today failed to note Jesse Jackson Junior's Democratic Party affiliation, with staff writer Devlin Barrett failing to mention that fact in his 11-paragraph story. For their part, Washington Post staffers Ann Marimow and Rachel Weiner did mention Jackson is a Democrat, but that came 13 paragraphs into their 32-paragraph front-pager in the August 15 paper.

But of the three major newspapers, it was the Times's coverage which gave readers the most biased coverage. Reporter Ashley Southall immediately noted Jackson's Democratic Party affiliation, but she painted his demise as a tragic fall from grace, not a run of the mill crooked politician-gets-his-just-deserts story:

WaPo Writer Calls Chalian Smear a 'Joke,' But Called Romney's Birther Joke a 'Comment'
By Matt Vespa | August 29, 2012 | 11:22 PM EDT

Last night, Yahoo! News Washington Bureau Chief, David Chalian, slandered Romney by saying that the Republican nominee and his wife, Ann, were "happy to have a party with black people drowning."  These remarks were made during ABCNews.com's webcast of their coverage of the RNC convention.  As a result, Mr. Chalian has been fired by Yahoo!, but some liberal journalists aren't happy about it.

Gwen Ifill of the taxpayer-subsidized Public Broadcasting System (PBS) tweeted this today.

WashPost Editorial Misleads Readers About Florida Voter Roll Cleanup Effort
By Ken Shepherd | August 24, 2012 | 6:09 PM EDT

The Washington Post editorial board today set out to slam Florida's Republican governor for "threaten[ing] the integrity of elections" with his voter "purge" effort and for enforcing the state's new curtailed early-voting hours.

But in their editorial on the matter, the Post misled readers with deceptive language about how the state undertook its voter roll cleanup effort (emphasis mine):

WaPo Asks: Was Obama's Jonas Brothers Drone Joke Offensive?
By Noel Sheppard | May 4, 2010 | 1:12 AM EDT
President Obama's Correspondents' Dinner joke about using a predator drone to kill the Jonas Brothers if they touched his daughters has inflamed some liberals, so much so the Washington Post is running an online poll about the matter.

"The Jonas Brothers are here, they're out there somewhere," the President said Saturday evening (video right).

"Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys, don't get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I'm joking?" 

As the Post's "44" blog noted, Adam Serwer at the liberal American Prospect was none too pleased about this as he expressed in a piece he wrote Monday:

Conservative Bible Project Draws Predictable Liberal Scorn
By Colleen Raezler | October 6, 2009 | 6:56 PM EDT
As NewsBusters' Ken Shepherd noted in an October 5 post, some conservatives have undertaken an online Conservative Bible Project to rid the Good Book of "translational bias" and correct the "lack of precision" in both original and translational language. As Shepherd also noted, Time Magazine's Amy Sullivan wasted no time heaping derision on the effort.

Unsurprisingly, others on the left have joined the fun. Harpers Magazine titled a blog post on the project, "From the Department of Self-Parody." "Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal," wrote Rachel Weiner at the Huffington Post. "And it needs a little editing."

And the hooting could be heard in many of the lesser precincts of the left-wing blogosphere - most of it a variation on Weiner's sneer: "Yes, even scripture is not orthodox enough for the modern conservative."