For years, Prince Harry has been accused of trying to bring down the monarchy. But what if he ends up bringing down the Washington Post? That was not on my bingo card. It all started when Prince Harry’s legal team won a motion, in his long-running lawsuits against British media outlets, to name names of editors and journalists who hacked him and used criminal means to get information on him. One of those names is Will Lewis, who worked for the Times and the Telegraph during the pre-Leveson heyday of British phone hacking. Lewis spent years engaged in business-as-usual in the British press system, then he was transferred to the Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert Murdoch), and from there, Lewis was appointed the new CEO of WaPo. We’ve heard that Lewis tried to kill/minimize the Post’s reporting on Harry’s lawsuits. We’ve also heard that Lewis has tried to kill other outlets’ reporting on his lengthy history of criminality. In recent days, Lewis’s behavior has led to a Streisand-effect where the NY Times and other major outlets are investigating his past work and discovering just how thoroughly compromised he is. Well, the Daily Beast has a deep dive on Lewis and here’s one small excerpt:
But there are questions haunting Lewis. They center on his time working for Murdoch between 2010 and 2012. Those years are a black box in an otherwise open and apparently illustrious career. Lewis says there is nothing to them. A court case in London suggests otherwise.
The case is seven years in the making and due to go to trial in January. It is being brought by Prince Harry against Murdoch’s British tabloids, which Harry and around 40 other plaintiffs are suing for phone hacking. The suit also alleges a conspiracy to conceal and destroy evidence. Lewis, who is running the paper that uncovered Watergate, is described in the lawsuit as being at the center of that cover-up.
A spokesperson for the Washington Post said that Lewis declined to comment to the Daily Beast regarding the allegations, or any other aspect of his career.
“He really wants power and success,” says the journalist who has long known him. “The fact he is alleged to have been involved in covering up phone hacking doesn’t surprise me at all.”
CNN has a story about how Will Lewis’s position at the Post is “increasingly untenable” from an ethical journalism standpoint. CNN also points out that the Post’s newsroom is “reeling” following the new reporting on Lewis’s history, plus Sally Buzbee’s sudden retirement (she retired in part because Lewis pressured her to kill the coverage of Prince Harry’s lawsuit).
The Post is now trying to cover itself as well – on Monday, they published a piece on their incoming managing editor, another British editor with a shady f–king past, Robert Winnett. Winnett has been appointed by Lewis to take over the Post’s newsroom in November. Robert Winnett has a similar history of all kinds of criminal sh-t, including collaborating with a con artist to steal Tony Blair’s memoir before it was published.
“A vast chasm divides common practices in the fiercely competitive confines of British journalism and what passes muster in the American news media.”
Troubling times ahead for the Washington Post (via @davidfolkenflik at @NPR):https://t.co/atZ4G1jsZV
— Omid Scobie (@scobie) June 18, 2024
Photos courtesy of Getty.