12/11/2005
A Voice Crying In the Wilderness
In the beginning there was the Froomkin. And, it was good. In the night there were the Bushies, but then day followed night, and the light overcame the darkness.
Which pissed off his colleagues, apparently. WaPo Ombudsman Deborah Howell:
Political reporters at The Post don't like WPNI columnist Dan Froomkin's "White House Briefing," which is highly opinionated and liberal. They're afraid that some readers think that Froomkin is a Post White House reporter.Where to start? The reason that Froomkin's White House Briefing exists and takes the form that it does is that you respectable WaPo political reporters are not getting the story out. Out of your belief in false balance you've convinced yourselves that the truth is the arithmetic mean of freerepublic and democratic underground. No, the truth is simply the truth whether it is critical of Bush or not. Or perhaps you believe that the facts themselves have a liberal bias?
John Harris, national political editor at the print Post, said, "The title invites confusion. It dilutes our only asset -- our credibility" as objective news reporters. Froomkin writes the kind of column "that we would never allow a White House reporter to write. I wish it could be done with a different title and display."
Harris is right; some readers do think Froomkin is a White House reporter. But Froomkin works only for the Web site and is very popular -- and Brady is not going to fool with that, though he is considering changing the column title and supplementing it with a conservative blogger.
Oh, and you know what's really hurting your credibility? Folks like Krauthammer, psychoanalyzing Democrats from his armchair, Steno Sue mixing up Iran and Iraq, or Cizilla's editor adding names of corrupt Democrats to create pseudo-balance.
If you read this, I beg you: post, email, whatever to the WaPo ombudsman.
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