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October 01, 2006
Piling On
Perhaps the folks at the WaPo should consider checking into the Betty Ford Center for a little well deserved "rest". The half vast editorial staff is tempted to take this sort of statement as an admission of deep, unresolved impulse-control issues:
We hope the present discussion won’t drown out a broader debate about what each candidate would seek to accomplish as a senator.
Jon Henke points out that the "drowning out" phenomenon is hardly beyond the Post's control:
Yes, if only there was some sort of media outlet — I don’t know, a newspaper or something — who could tell us about the important issues.* Stories the Washington Post has done involving ‘macaca’ in the past 60 days:
156
* Stories the Washington Post has done involving George Allen’s major energy policy proposal:
1
What kind of hard-hitting piece did the Washington Post do on Senator Allen’s Energy Policy proposal? Six sentences in an article about Nancy Reagan asking the Webb campaign to pull an ad. The Washington Post and WashingtonPost.com have published as many sentences on Senator Allen’s energy policy proposal as they published stories involving ‘macaca’. . .today alone.
Seems like the only flailing going on is the Post, drowning its readers in one-sided trivia meant to damage Allen in the polls. Interestingly enough, as Clarice notes, it doesn't seem to be working too well:
After countless front page Washington Post stories overplaying Sen. Allen’s “Macaca” remark, and extensive coverage of charges against Allen, obviously orchestrated by Professor Sabato (who seems to have retreated from claims suggesting he had personal knowledge of Allen’s racism), a story has emerged about Webb’s racism which is more direct and damning.The effort to tar Allen has backfired. A recent survey shows his appeal has strengthened among Virginia voters.
The title of her post reveals the hidden subtext behind most of the WaPo's reporting: "Stop us before we damage the Democrats more!"
Update: Interestingly, despite a flood of mail from readers Deborah Howell, the Post's ombudsman, doesn't think the Post overplayed the story. Oddly, she never answers one reader's question:
John Burpo of Springfield asked: "Why did The Post violate its own guidelines and standards to allow anonymous sources to attack Senator Allen with unsubstantiated allegations?" Using quotes from two anonymous sources who said that Allen had used the racial epithet added nothing to the story.
Her defense amounts to essentially "there are five weeks for this story to die down", which is hardly a response to objections to the impropriety of a major newspaper relentlessly hyping anonymous and unsubstantiated allegations about a candidate in the runup before an election. If the accusation is untrue, she should address and refute it. If not, the Post's readers (and Mr. Allen) deserve a public retraction.
Either way, one can't help wonder whether the surfacing allegations that James Webb may have similar incidents in his past will receive as prominent treatment by the Post.
Somehow, we suspect not. Meanwhile all this one-sided mudslinging just seems like a distraction from what is really important: the candidates' records on the issues.
Posted by Cassandra at October 1, 2006 12:37 PM
Comments
Despite its shrinking habitat, the fishwrap monkey will occasionally go apeshit, behaving much like its cousin the bonobo in an orgy of self-gratification and feces flinging.
Posted by: Pile Goodall at October 1, 2006 02:21 PM
So who ever said that the liberal left-wing main-stream media was ever interested in the truth?
Posted by: Dirty Bird at October 1, 2006 08:21 PM