After departing The Washington Post, fact-checker Glenn Kessler did what seemingly every major journalist who has recently left a major outlet has done: he joined Substack. On Tuesday, Kessler took to his new platform to claim that he left the Post because publisher Will Lewis wanted to expand the paper’s audience to include Fox News watchers.
Even before Kessler began his article, the subheadline was a bit pretentious, ‘“Democracy Dies in Darkness’ — but what if the lights are going out from within?”
As a former State Department reporter, Kessler is almost certainly familiar with the famous words of Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary during World War I, who said on the eve of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
Such an observation better have a good analogy, or else it looks hysterical. Unfortunately for Kessler, he failed:
My decision to leave The Washington Post after nearly three decades began with a quixotic mission — reinstate the ombudsman. That’s an in-house critic who responds to reader criticism, investigates how a story was reported and assesses whether the complaint is valid.
That quest earned me a one-hour meeting in April 2024 with Will Lewis, the then-new publisher of The Post. During our discussion, he asked me: 'What should The Post do to appeal more to Fox News viewers?'
It’s odd that Kessler says he wanted to reinstate the ombudsman while his media colleagues claim that CBS getting one represents the end of the First Amendment. As for Kessler, he admits to not liking the idea, “I used to cover diplomacy so I knew how to keep a poker face even as the hair on the back of my neck prickled. ‘We have to remain true to our journalistic principles,’ I said. ‘We have to tell the truth.’ I paused, and added, “They may not like that, because it would conflict with what they’ve been hearing.”
Kessler then spends several paragraphs worried about the economics of such decisions, which could be summarized by the idea that “there’s a conundrum: if most of your readers are liberal, how do you attract conservatives without losing your existing base?”
According to Kessler, the problem is that Fox viewers already read his articles. Just as in his farewell article at the Post, he claimed hypocrisy was afoot. “I certainly knew when Fox News viewers read my fact checks — if I gave Pinocchios to Democrats. Whenever I did, right-wing news organizations would rush to post articles saying I had determined Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi was a liar.”
The problem is that Kessler thinks this is proof of his impartiality and proves his critics, such as this website, wrong. However, the more accurate take would be to say that if Kessler takes a break from his heavily disproportionate focus on President Trump and Republicans to go after a Democrat, then whatever the Democrat said must have been really bad. Kessler’s Pinocchio count from 2024-2025 was 148-28 against Republicans.
Later Kessler would return to his decision to quit. After his ombudsman goal failed to materialize, he lamented, “The question about Fox News gnawed at me. I admire many Fox News reporters, but the network’s main impact comes from its opinionated, late-night conservative hosts who wholeheartedly support Republicans. The implication was that The Post website might need to lean right. I told my two immediate editors about my conversation with Lewis; they have since left The Post.”
Kessler wrapped up by claiming he stuck around while the Post looked for a successor, “When I drafted the staff notice that I was taking the buyout, I included a line about leaving shoes to fill — as a way to indicate The Fact Checker would continue. By the time the announcement emerged from [executive editor Matt] Murray’s office, that sentence had been stricken.”
Finally, Kessler declared, “Working at The Post feels like being on the Titanic after it struck an iceberg — drifting aimlessly as it sank, with not enough lifeboats for everyone. The Carpathia (i.e., Bezos) appears too far away and too distracted to help. And the captain is shouting commands that the solution is a different ship.”
If Kessler wants to use the Titanic analogy, let’s take it further. The iceberg is the paper’s liberal bias. The current ownership is trying to do damage control, but the evasive maneuvers may be too little, too late.
