Tag Results for Washington Post

Sorry, Andrew, it's not "gossip crap" in quotation marks. It's just crap.

I was encouraged when I saw the headline of Andy Alexander's Ombudsman column in Sunday's Washington Post: "How much Salahi news is too much?" Prodded by some disgruntled readers, Alexander set out to examine who the paper was serving by running 11o stories and columns in 7 months by 30 different reporters  about White House party crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi.

His conclusions were a mixed bag. Some coverage, he wrote, "struck me as excessive" - especially the June 15 edition of the paper that featured not one, but three photos of Michaele Salahi, including a front-page teaser, that ran with a Style section story about her selection for Bravo's "Real Housewives of D.C."

But mostly it was more excuse-making of the "the readers made us do it" variety that we typically hear when news editors take a pass on excercising self-control. I was particularly struck by this paragraph:

Ned Martel, an editor of the Style section, believes the Salahis fascinate readers because "they are a couple that says a lot of things about a lot of things . . . about society, about pop culture and reality television, about social climbing, about people who feel included or excluded, about falsity and overextension in terms of personal finance."

What about people whose names begin with M or T? And what exactly needs to be said about pop culture and social climbing that we haven't heard a thousand times already? The sheer pseudo-profundity of it reminded me of my favorite "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey" from the old SNL: "The face of a child can say a thousand things ... especially the mouth part."

In his conclusion, Alexander tries to convince us that it's a good thing for nation's political paper-of-record to remain firmly within the infamy-notoriety-reality-tv feedback loop. He writes:

"... the Salahi's offer an entertaining -- if often maddening -- break from the steady died of grim and gloom that so often dominates the Post. There's a place for their 'gossip crap.'"

There is, Andy. It's a place inhabited by People, US weekly, TMZ, Perez Hilton, and a thousand soulless reality TV producers. And they don't need any help.

The always-lively segment where our panelists bring a variety of their own short topics to the discussion. Rants and raves include: CNN's Ed Henry parties with VP Joe Biden; Outside magazine alters its cover of Lance Armstrong; a feisty governor's debate on WRKO; Google News adopts a human touch; and The Washington Post ombudsman criticizes the paper's use of anonymous sources.

"Beat the Press" panelists sound off on their rants and raves of the week: the media elevates the tragedy of a murdered 14-year-old; a blogger accuses Howie Kurtz of cross-promotion; Playboy magazine goes 3-D; critiquing the New York Times' coverage of bloody unrest in Thailand; and predicting online news and advertising trends.

Here's to going out on a limb.

In a daring op-ed in the Washington Post, CNN regular Donna Brazile writes that partisan punditry hurts the political landscape - a fascinating claim since Brazile herself is a pundit on CNN, ABC, and NPR.

Why, then, does Brazile turn on her own?

"This sort of opinion-mongering is not only boring and predictable," she says, "it is destructive of the truth. If your only credentials are "GOP shill" or "Democratic hack," you've no business cluttering up the airwaves or the op-ed pages. My momma always told me that if you don't know what you're talking about, it's best to keep your mouth shut. That's good advice."

Instead, Brazile suggests purely-partisan pundits be replaced by those with expertise: academics, professionals, and other experts. (However, she does wrap up on a bit of a weak, self-preserving note, arguing that "[s]ome pundits could remain as political analysts. (I'm not crazy, am I?) There is insight to be gained from the dark, secret knowledge they hold from their decades pacing the political corridors.")

To me, this feels exactly right. I have longed cringed - and turned the station - when a Sunday-morning host announces that the heads of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee will be joining him. Gee, I wonder what they're going to say? Or who they think will win in November?

Partisanship is OK, but predictability is not - which is why David Brooks and Mark Shields work so well together on PBS.

On a separate note, kudos to the Washington Post for the series in which Brazile's piece appears: "Twelve things the world should toss out," which includes pieces on "Fine print," "Virginity," "High-stakes tests," and "Washington Week." As a "Washington Week" devotee, I'm sorry to say I can't get on board with that last one.

Co-posted on the "Culture Club" blog on Boston.com.

Civil War: Washington Post columnist David Broder slammed colleague Dana Millbank for a column that characterized President Obama as a dope for not following Rahm Emmanuel's advice. Millbank insists that the column wasn't an Emmanuel plant, but the dustup has the Post airing it's dirty linen in public. Again.

Just when you thought it was safe to read the Washington Post again, there's been another example of editors falling asleep at the ethical switch.

This time, the story in question is a Dec. 31 report published in the Post, but written by The Fiscal Times, a new internet financial news start-up based in Washington D.C. The article was the first in what The Fiscal Times calls a "partnership" between itself an the Post.

According to the New York Times, the story reported support for "a proposed deficit reduction commission" but contained one glaring omission:

The primary expert quoted in the article is from the Concord Coalition, whose mission is also balanced budgets and limits on safety-net spending. But the article did not mention Mr. (Peter G.) Peterson, his backing of The Fiscal Times, that he was a co-founder of the Concord Coalition or that his foundation was a major underwriter of the coalition.

According to the Times, Peterson is a conservative billionaire investment banker who advocates deficit reduction and restrictions on entitlement programs. He is also the financial backer of The Fiscal Times and his son Michael is a top executive in the company.

The Post later ran a correction to the story, which said editors should have disclosed Peterson's connection to The Fiscal Times and the Concord Coalition.

Oh, and in case you missed my retweet of Dan Kennedy earlier in the week, this video appears to show that the Post didn't learn much from this.

Just when you thought things couldn't get worse inside the Washington Post, the paper of record for our nation's capitol has given itself another black eye.

Washingtonian magazine and other inside-the-Beltway media outlets are reporting that Pulizter-Prize-winning feature editor and ex-Marine Henry Allen got into a fistfight with reporter Manuel Roig-Franza. The fracas apparently started after Allen called a story Roig-Franza had co-written with reporter Monica Hesse "the second-worst story I have seen in Style in 43 years."

Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli, whose issues with credibility in connection with the Post's recent pay-to-play scandal, was qouted in Politico saying: "We take this incident seriously and will address it appropriately."

It turns out that the Heene family wasn't the only group pulling the wool, however briefly, over the eyes of the media this week.

The Yes-Men, a group of liberal activists that recently put out a fake edition of the New York Post, managed to fool Reuters, CNBC, and Fox Business News into reporting that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had dropped its opposition to climate change legislation. The New York Times and the Washington Post online sites were apparently caught in the net as well, due to their systems for automated posting of stories on Reuters.

The elaborate hoax was extremely well planned, with a web site, a realistic-looking press release, and actors playing both officials of the Chamber and members of the media during a "press conference" at the National Press Club.

My question is: Aside from the obvious child-exploitation angle and the danger and expense associated with giving a false report to emergency officials, is the Yes-Men's hoax so different from what Richard and Mayumi Heene allegedly did?

Washington Post columnist Robert Novak's death marks the further erosion of that most perishable commodity in the blogosphere/punditsphere that drives today's political news: a primary source.

So says Boston Herald Editorial Page Editor Rachelle Cohen. Cohen knew Novak, whose column with longtime writing partner Rowland Evans ran in the Post for 45 years, and often hosted him when he was in town.

"Most of the blogosphere is derivative," Cohen told me in an interview this morning. "He was the one with the sources, he was the one breaking the news."

First and foremost, she said, "he was just one of the best damn reporters in all of Washington, it wasn't just a matter of ideology. He was the quintessential Washington skeptic. He just did his homework and it's the kind of thing I wish more people did."

Much of the reporting about Novak's death has emphasized his July 14, 2003 column that blew CIA agent Valerie Plame's cover and the ensuing scandal that erupted after it became clear that the leak of Plame's identity was part an orchestrated campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

To his harshest critics, the Plame column was an ideological hatchet job, but others - notably Jack Shafer in Slate - have taken a more nuanced view, maintaining that it was more a product of Novak's journalistic competitiveness than his political conservatism.

Cohen said it isn't necessarily fair to judge Novak by "one story in a 50-year career," but added that the Plame scandal can't be easily dismissed either. In the end, she said, it served a useful purpose.

"It did raise the whole discomfort level of confidential sources and how they use you," she said.

There must be something in the water over at the Washington Post.

First there was hideous "salons" idea where the Post nearly sold access to their journalists for cash at cozy, off-the-record dinners with corporate CEOs at the publisher's home. Now there's this.

After watching this video, I have two questions:

1. Who thought it would be funny to put Dana Millbank and Chris Cillizza in smoking jackets? And, 2. What exactly were they smoking?

(Note: Thanks for this one, Mark.)