Soopermexican at The Right Scoop reported how The Washington Post was exposed on conservative Twitter for a complete lack of professionalism. On Friday, Post "Reliable Source" gossip columnist Emily Heil made this fake story her top item of the day: Georgetown Prep is creating a position for alumni relations to handle the damage from the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
There was just one problem. It's not a new position, and they posted a job notice in July, not "this week." Heil was told this, and yet this was what the paper published on Friday:
When graduates of your school are getting name-checked on Saturday Night Live, (oh, hey there P.J., Timmy and Squi!) it might be time to . . . um, reach out to them, maybe?
Seems Georgetown Prep thinks so: The elite Bethesda school, famously attended by Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, posted a job listing this week for a director of alumni relations. According to the want ad, the Jesuit high school is looking for someone to take on the role of "identifying, engaging and cultivating alumni."
The listing went up after Georgetown alumni were very much in the news: Kavanaugh, of course, dominated the headlines during his confirmation hearings, which were filled with talk of his high school days because of the woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were both teens. Many of Kavanaugh's classmates were of interest, too, because of their proximity to the alleged incident and to Georgetown Prep's reportedly hard-partying culture, a topic that was raised repeatedly in the Senate hearings....
A spokesman for the school responded to our query about the alumni relations job by pointing to public statements by school leaders disputing the characterization of the school's culture. "It is a challenging time for Prep," reads a letter sent last month from the Rev. James Van Dyke, president of Georgetown Prep, to the school community. "But in this time too there is a grace, and I am proud of the way our faculty and staff are responding."
"AG_Conservative" posted an email exchange on Saturday that showed how Heil somehow ignored what she was told by a Georgetown prep spokesman. This reflects badly on her, and badly on whoever edits her in the Style section:
When Heil was exposed, she tried to laugh it off on Twitter with an "oh well, have a nice weekend!" If you read this story in Friday's newspaper, you might never look it up again to see how fraudulent it was.
"I read right over the date in haste?" She read right over the first two sentences? "Thank you for your note. The job was posted in July 2018"? Who would hire a reporter that's this careless in reading replies?
Jim McCarthy (@JMacNYC) then got in on the thread with more e-mails. "You are still being dishonest. Here's proof."
Heil could only tweet that gee, she didn't mean to sound so flippant about this journalistic pratfall. She insisted she would have run with this story no matter how the school answered. But that doesn't make much sense, does it, as a hot gossip item?
Earlier: WashPost's Emily Heil Mocks Mike Pence for Valentine's Day Gift, Gushes Over Obama Tweet
