Abominable Ombudsman

Mediamatters.org is a very prominent site and Atrios is on this, so this post is pointless.

However there is a level of utter idiocy which makes me want to scream. It is 12:26 AM here so I better blog instead. I think it is possible that Howell's aim is to convince people that blogs are useless and is deliberately typing nonsense in her internal weblog (also I wonder why mediamatters.org links to media bistro and not www.washingtonpost.com).

In the alleged post in her internal weblog, Howell allegedly refered to mediamatters.org as mediamatters.com (oops. She that mediamatters.org refused to identify the author of a piece criticizing a Washington Post reporter, which piece was, like all mediamatters.com posts signed with the initials of the mediamatters writer. Finally she claimed that mediamatters.com is hard to contact as can be seen here.

Howell's alleged post in her internal weblog is also clearly wrong on the original issue.




In a January 4 article about the Bush administration's domestic spying operation, Post staff writer Dafna Linzer reported:

The NSA program operated in secret until it was made public in news accounts last month. Since then, President Bush and his advisers have defended it as legal and necessary to protect the country against future attacks and have said Congress was repeatedly consulted.

Linzer's article did not include a single word, in either her voice or anyone else's, pointing out that the administration's claim that "Congress was repeatedly consulted" is misleading at best.

[snip]

According to a post on MediaBistro.com, Howell posted an entry on her weblog for Post employees to address the Media Matters criticism of Linzer's article:

The e-mail campaign of the week _ a weak one _ is from mediamatters.com [sic] and says that Dafna Linzer in a Jan. 4 story "repeated the much-disputed White House claim that the Bush administration 'repeatedly consulted' Congress about its domestic surveillance program."

It was clear if you read the story that she was simply giving the administration's point of view as well as others. Linzer tells me she has called the blog (not easy to reach) and demanded a correction that she "uncritically" wrote her story. The spokesman for Mediamatters.com would not tell her who wrote the story and said that no one involved in the story would talk to her. The website lists David Brock as the president and CEO. Brock is the conservative-turned-liberal who wrote "Blinded by the Right."

But Linzer's article did not give readers any point of view that rebutted the administration's claim that Congress was "repeatedly consulted." That misleading claim was simply printed without challenge.

[snip]


Howell wrote that Linzer said she "demanded a correction that she 'uncritically' wrote her story." The Media Matters item in question did not say Linzer "uncritically wrote her story." It said she was guilty of "uncritical repetition of the Bush administration's claim." She did, in fact, uncritically repeat a misleading Bush administration claim and included no information countering that claim. Media Matters stands by the item.

Thus Howell demonstrates that among her and Linzer no competent journalist was available. She also demonstrates that she can not grasp the difference between claiming that one false claim was uncritically reported and that the story contained no criticism. The second issue is relatively important. The idea that criticism of other claims balance uncritical reporting of a demonstrably false claim shows the terrible consequences of considering balance equivalent to objectivity. If it is known that the Washington Post will not call the Bush administration on more than 3 or 4 lies in a given article (and it is) then the Bush administration can get lies in the Post unchallenged by telling 5 or more lies when interviewed by a Washington Post reporter). Since the Post offers anonymity to liars, this strategy does not bear a havy cost.

The claim that congress was extensively consulted is demonstrably false. The Post has a responsibility to either refrain from reporting the claim or to report it and report the easily available evidence that proves it is false. The mechanical rule of counting lines devoted to quoting this side and that side makes the Post vulnerable to an obvious (in retrospect) strategy of overwhelming its defences with deceit.

I don't think any Washington Post journalist (or any regular reader) can really have failed to notice that the Bush administration uses exactly this strategy. The indignat refusal to recognise that there is an alternative to counting lines for and against in the article is a promise made by the Post to the Bush administration to continue to print falsehoods unchallenged.