Media critic Erik Wemple bashed The Washington Post, his employer, for giving The New York Times an opportunity to break the story about an upside-down American flag flown in Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's front yard.
Alito said his wife was responsible for flying the flag in that position amid a dispute with a neighbor who put up a "f--- Trump" sign about 50 feet away from a children’s bus stop. Though the Times broke the story and tied upside-down flags to connect the Jan. 6 riots, the Post passed on the scoop over three years ago.
"The Post … sat back and watched the New York Times nail down a precious exclusive whose epicenter is a leisurely drive from its K Street newsroom," Wemple wrote in an op-ed Wednesday. He called it a "black eye" for his paper and criticized the Post for "inaction."
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Wemple pointed out that no one from the paper appeared to have reached out to Emily Baden, the neighbor who got into an argument with the Alitos, "until after the Times's May 16 story was published."
"All signs point to a failure of The Post to publish something about this fracas, whatever its focus or takeaway," Wemple wrote.
Cameron Barr, the Post's managing editor when it first had the scoop, said he regretted not publishing the story. Barr also said the neighborhood dispute would have involved the Post's Metro section, but Wemple wrote that he found no evidence that Metro was consulted.
"When I asked Martin Baron, who served as executive editor at the time, about how things proceeded, he responded, 'I don't know how things proceeded. I never knew about any of those discussions. I only learned about them when The Post inquired about the story.'"
"Against that backdrop, the Times’s flag scoop — and The Post’s breakdown — became a big story," Wemple continued. "The episode has left The Post in the position of having to play second fiddle on a story that it should have owned from the start."
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Wemple also argued that the "Alitos received deference to which they were not entitled." He wrote that Baden called the Alito family's explanation of the neighborhood argument "absolutely ridiculous and everybody knows it."
The Washington Post did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox News' Shannon Bream and Greg Norman contributed to this report.
