Glenn Kessler, the man who spent more than a decade handing out “Pinocchios” to politicians — mostly Republicans — is officially out at The Washington Post.
He took a buyout this week, joining a growing wave of senior staffers abandoning what used to be one of the most influential newsrooms in the country.
“Much as I would have liked to keep scrutinizing politicians in Washington, especially in this era, the financial considerations were impossible to dismiss,” Kessler wrote on Facebook.
Kessler’s departure is part of a broader collapse at the Washington Post, which is now bleeding talent, readers, and credibility. Veteran columnists like Jonathan Capehart and Philip Bump are gone.
The opinion section is in chaos. The obituaries desk is reportedly on life support. And the paper’s “Fact Checker” — once positioned as a nonpartisan truth-teller — has become as fake as the wooden boy he wielded against his political adversaries.
“In 2018, when the Fact Checker team was compiling a database of more than 30,000 Trump claims, I told the New York Times that ‘I have the best job in journalism.’ I still believe that,” Kessler wrote. “I’m sorry to leave without a replacement lined up.”
He’s not the only one sorry. Kessler’s exit leaves a vacuum in what was already one of the most compromised and partisan ‘fact-checking’ operations in the national press — an enterprise that gave Joe Biden four Pinocchios after the 2020 election for false claims about Georgia’s voting law, only to watch the Post later water it down. Or that insisted, repeatedly, that Hunter Biden’s laptop had the hallmarks of Russian disinfo — only to fall silent after those claims were fully debunked.
Even more damning? Kessler and his own household reportedly donated over $6,000 to Biden and Harris campaign efforts, according to public records — while maintaining the posture of impartiality.
So when critics say Glenn Kessler was the biggest Pinocchio of all, they’re not spinning fairy tales.
But the Kessler story isn’t just about one activist-journalist. It’s the symptom of a terminal condition inside The Washington Post — a paper struggling to survive its own ideological rot.
This week’s buyouts were part of a final warning from new CEO Will Lewis, who made it clear in a staff memo: adapt or leave.
“I want to ask those who do not feel aligned with the company’s plan to reflect on that,” Lewis wrote. “And if you think that it’s time to move on to a new chapter, the [Voluntary Separation Program] helps you take that next step.”
That plan, according to insiders, includes a shift away from the Post’s longtime role as a left-wing echo chamber and toward what owner Jeff Bezos now calls a focus on “personal liberties and free markets.”
The ideological re-centering has sent longtime editors into panic mode. David Shipley, the opinion editor, walked out. Others resigned. Subscriptions from liberal readers cratered.
It didn’t help that Bezos also reportedly blocked the paper’s 2024 endorsement of Kamala Harris — a last straw for many on the left.
The end result? A fraying, rudderless newsroom in freefall. Staffers who spent years lecturing half the country are now reading their own buyout offers. Even Kessler tried to stay on as a contractor to help with the transition. Management declined.
No replacement has been named. None may come.
The decision not to even fill the position — in an election year, no less — says more than Kessler’s resignation letter ever could. The Post may finally be learning its lesson after adopting the “Go Woke, Go Broke” model of reporting. But don’t hold your breath.
Once hailed by mainstream media as the gold standard of accountability journalism, the Post’s “Fact Checker” became little more than a messaging arm for the Democratic Party. It ran cover for Biden, spun for Fauci, and soft-pedaled major scandals until they were safe to acknowledge. Its credibility was shot long before the buyouts began.
In an age when trust in institutions is already near record lows, the fall of Kessler’s desk is not just symbolic. It’s necessary.
“There was a time when ‘fact-checking’ meant something,” said one former Post staffer who took a buyout last year. “Now it’s a euphemism for narrative control.”
And control is something The Washington Post no longer has — over the facts, over the newsroom, or over its own fate.
Kessler may be writing books now. But the real story is being written without him: the collapse of legacy media’s moral authority, one buyout at a time.
It turns out, truth really does matter.
Just not the way Glenn Kessler thought it did.
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Author: Kyle Becker
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