Dan Froomkin is the center of a controversy.

His brother Michael has links here and here.


The alleged issue is that Washington Post White House reporters consider Froomkin to be an opinion columnist and claim that the title "White House Briefing" creates the impression that he is one of them.

Since reporters write articles and a briefing is, by definition, a summary of information which was previously available, this argument seems to me to be total nonsense.

I think part of the problem is that print journalists resent the competition from www.washingtonpost.com and have noticed that many bloggers criticise them, praise Froomkin and say his column is one of the few redeeming features of the Post. That is, this is partly a turf war and partly over the status associated with the phrase "White House". I think that most of the problem is that someone in the White House has said that he will leak to another paper unless Froomkin is leashed.

This is more or less openly confessed by Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., in an interview in Editor and Publisher when he almost forgot about the readers "We want to make sure people in the [Bush] administration know that our news coverage by White House reporters is separate from what appears in Froomkin's column because it contains opinion," Downie told E&P. "And that readers of the Web site understand that, too." Downie clearly said that the opinions honest or more likely otherwise of peopl in the White House should be a factor in Washington Post editorial decisions.
I think that he now has only one honorable option -- to resign.

Also astonishing is the interview of John Harris, national politics editor of the Washington Post at "Press Think." As noted by Jay Rosen at Press Think and Brad DeLong, Harris cites the stated opinion of a political operative in response to a question about Froomkin's column. Harris does not tell "Press Think" that the person he cites is an operative. Harris calls him a "conservative blogger". To me this casts an interesting light on www.washingtonpost.com's effort to add a conservative blogger. I hope that www.washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady is unlike Harris in that he knows the difference between an independent conservative and a Republican party operative.

I was also amazed that neither Harris nor Downie named any of the people who complained about Froomkin. Harris didn't even mention their party affiliation. Nor does he seem to have even considered the possibility that someone might be other than totally frank and honest with him. He claims that he demonstrates the incorrect belief that Froomkin is a WaPo White House reporter by the fact that an un named campaign manager brought up Froomkin when arguing that the post was biased. I will go out on a limb and hazard the wild guess that the campaign was managed on behalf of a Republican. here's the quote " I don’t keep a running log, but I regularly run across people who think Dan is one of our White House reporters. One of them was a very news-saavy source of mine who actually runs campaigns. That tells me there is a large chunk of readers—I’m not saying most but a lot—who are not clear who he is and that he is writing as a commentator and not a White House reporter.

The ombudsman says she regularly gets comments on the theme of how can you pretend to objectivity when your White House reporter writes “insert Froomkin quote here.”"
It appears that Harris believes that assertions of bias from political operatives can only be the expression of sincere opinions. He doesn't seem to be able to grasp the possibility that operatives complain of bias because they are working the refs. Now, of course, Harris is not that stupid, but he seems to hope that readers of "Press Think" are.

To me the extent of grants of anonymity is striking. There has been a lot of discussion of whether reporters should grant anonymity in exchange for quotable opinions as opposed to verifiable facts. Harris grants anonymity to people who complain about the Post. What possible useful purpose could be served by such a practice ?

I personally don't like MSM bashing. It is an old prejudice. Obviously it is impossible to defend Downie or Harris.