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When the Media sells out
Post ombudsman is shocked! Shocked to learn reporters can
get political pressure and abuse
Deborah Howell, ombudsman for the once-proud Washington Post, started her latest
column thusly: “Nothing in my 50-year career prepared me for the thousands of
flaming e-mails I got last week over my last column, e-mails so abusive and many
so obscene that part of The Post's Web site was shut down.”
Apparently, in her 50 year career, she did nothing to tick off the right. If she
had, she might have found her home address posted on the internet, and efforts
to convince the world that she was mad, a dangerous radical, a partisan liar, or
all three.
But somehow, in 50 years, she never managed to tick off the right wing. Truly
amazing. She might want to talk to Dan Rather, who is routinely accused of
deliberately fabricating evidence against Putsch and his national guard record.
Or more recently, Walter Cronkite, who drew ire from the right when he said that
the war in Iraq could not be won the other day. “Senile old buffoon” was one of
the kinder remarks.
She might pay a visit to Free Republic, where junior brownshirts discuss how
best to intimidate, pressure, coerce and smear journalists seen as having a
leftist tilt. This would include such “leftists” as CNN, and yes, the Washington
Post.
Indeed, in the past 50 years, the drive to intimidate and manipulate the media
started with a campaign against the Washington Post, in the form of Spiro Agnew,
who complained incessantly about “the liberal media” and their “nattering nabobs
of negativism.” Some papers blinked, and the right realized they had a valuable
weapon: the media could be tamed and turned into something the right could ride.
We’re at the point now where reporters for once-mighty CBS news talk about “our
brave troops fighting for our freedoms in Iraq.” It isn’t far removed from
reverential references to “Our Glorious Leader” as some news outlets continue
their practice of passing along stories from GOP fax machines as news stories.
Fifty years, and somehow Ms. Howell avoided all of this. Amazing.
The complaint is that leftists besieged the Post webside, and left posts that
were vulgar, and personal attacks. Are we supposed to believe that this never
happened to the Post blog, or just that leftists had never done it before?
She said that Abramoff gave to both parties, and admits that was wrong. She says
that Abramoff directed some of his clients to donate to both parties, a claim
that is unproven, but also creates the impression that people got all het up at
her over a technicality. Her exact words were; “I should have said he directed
his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress
from both parties.”
It isn’t just a technicality; the campaign donations from the clients are legal,
and nobody is investigating them. The ones from Abramoff are not legal, and
therein lies the crux of the matter. I’ve pointed out myself that the line
separating legality from illegality in campaign donations is a very thin one,
and is one which permits a lot of ethically questionable behavior. But you
didn’t mention that one act was legal, and the other illegal. You just tried to
slough it off as a technicality.
The second part that caused the uproar, caught by the media watchdog group Media
Matters (and yes, the left now has media watchdog groups too) was an effort by
Howell to placate Republican readers. She wrote, “The second complaint is from
Republicans, who say The Post purposely hasn't nailed any Democrats. Several
stories, including one on June 3 by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, a Post business
reporter, have mentioned that a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff
campaign money.”
Well, more and more liberals have noticed that just because the Post said it
doesn’t make it so, and they were rightfully derisive of Howell’s effort to prop
up the mischaracterization of the donations by pointing out that the Post had
made the same claim before.
Suppose, Ms. Howell, a story like this had broken eight years ago, and instead
of Republicans being the recipients of largess from a crooked lobbyist, it had
been Democrats, and Clinton, not Putsch, was the president? Think the Washington
Post might have taken a slightly different stance? Perhaps a bit harsher? Might
not have tried to foist it off as a bipartisan scandal? (Oh, I know, Howell
apologized for saying that. But didn’t say why she said it in the first place,
tried to make it a technicality, and tried to make the focus the behavior of
some people – behavior that we’ve been seeing from the right for years.).
I think you would have seen a difference. Just as you see a difference between
the way the media treated Clinton, and the way they treat Putsch. Clinton only
had one scandal worthy of the name, a minor sex scandal, and all the rest turned
out to be nothing but right wing smoke and mirrors, and no, the Post never did
bother to determine the exigency of those stories for themselves.
Monica. Compared to Iraq, domestic spying, Medicare, Abramoff, FEMA, the
Environment, the Social Security debacle, and literally hundreds of other
scandals, all more important than Bill Clinton’s libido. And all the lies this
administration has told. Thousands of lies. Lies that got thousands of people
killed. Lies that cost America trillions of dollars. Compared to one little fib
about a consensual affair that wasn’t illegal in the first place. Which drew
more ink and more outraged squawks from the Washington Post.
Which, do you suppose, got more coverage, more strident coverage, and which
played up demands for impeachment? Has the Post even admitted that a majority of
Americans want impeachment, assuming that the stories that Putsch is spying on
people without a warrant are true? (And since Putsch has openly bragged that
this is exactly what he’s doing, that seems a rather low hurdle to get over for
any prosecutor).
Ms. Howell, there’s a reason why you got the response that so surprised you, and
it has little to do with you as a person. It is the media as a whole. It is
widely seen as being bought out by the same interests that control the GOP, and
as having divorced itself from serving the needs of the people to serving the
needs of the corporations – which makes it an appendage of the GOP.
People are angry, Ms. Howell. They are angry at what has become of what was
their media, they are angry at the lies, the evasions, the efforts to smooth
over the corruption and deceit of this vile administration.
This anger is not going to go away. Mainstream media has brought it down upon
itself, by deserting the people it is supposed to serve.
You want to make it right?
Start doing your job, and encourage the Washington Post to do the same. And stop
coddling the Republicans.
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