Arizona Republic Boss Won’t Explain Colleague’s Libelous Trump Tweet

The Arizona Globe reported yesterday that Elvia Diaz, the editorial page editor of the Arizona Republic, falsely accused President-elect Trump of having acknowledged a plan to “weaponize the feds against political enemies.”

Ms. Diaz declined to comment on the Globe’s story, ignoring emails and direct messages.

Today, the Globe reached out to the Republic’s top editor, Greg Burton, to ask how Ms. Diaz’s false assertion on X comports with the Republic’s policies.

The Globe asked for answers to two distinct questions: why Ms. Diaz would post something false and malicious, and also whether the Republic has rules governing the partisan positions its journalists take on social media, akin to other large media organizations.

The Globe wrote to Mr. Burton to say, “Ms. Diaz states that President-elect Trump is ‘making it clear he will weaponize the feds against political enemies.’ The passage she is referring to seems to say no such thing.”

The Globe’s inquiry also asked for clarity “regarding your editorial employees posting on social media” and noted that “other reputable newspapers frown on strongly partisan opinions by their editors and reporters.”

The Washington Post, for example, has a social media policy that states “Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.”

The Republic is owned by Gannett and thus follows USA Today Network’s “Principles of Ethical Conduct For Newsrooms” — it is 1500 words long and doesn’t appear to contain a similar prohibition on its journalists exhibiting social media bias. That’s lucky for Ms. Diaz, though presumably her employer is not thrilled that she’s not only biased, but in this case just plain wrong.

Equally troubling is the fact that Ms. Diaz, and now Mr. Burton—who did not respond to emails sent last night and today—simply refuse to answer queries from a reporter. The third law of the “Principles of Ethical Conduct For Newsrooms” calls for “explaining to audiences our journalistic processes to promote transparency.”

In America today, confidence in the mainstream media is at never-before-seen lows. Just this morning, one of the topics trending on X was “Legacy Media Under Fire: Distrust Grows Among Social Media Users.” It’s fair to expect an editor who posts a malicious untruth about a public figure to explain her point of view. And for her boss to explain not only the falsehood, but his paper’s policy on staking such ground, even if it were true.

The Republic is among the premier newspapers in the Gannett empire and the executive editor spot that Burton has occupied since 2018 is seen as a launch pad for the company’s prestige roles. Burton’s predecessor, Nicole Carroll, became editor in chief of USA Today after leading the Arizona Republic. So what’s so hard about answering two simple questions: Why did Diaz conclude that Trump had threatened to “weaponize the feds against political enemies”? And does it compromise the public’s faith in the Republic’s journalists when they stake out highly partisan positions on social media?

If two top journalists at the state’s largest paper cannot abide simple questions about accuracy and bias, it’s only a matter of time before the Republic’s readers conclude that they’re not getting the full story.