Signs of life at the Washington Post
April 12, 2009 12:21 pm ET by Jamison Foser
When the Washington Post hired Greg Sargent a few months ago, I wrote this about Sargent:
He has demonstrated both an understanding of many of the ways political reporting has failed its consumers, and a willingness to write about it -- a rare combination among professional journalists, as Bob Somerby frequently points out.
Here's a good example of that: On Friday, Sargent called attention to the odd disparity in David Broder's level of outrage about Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
It's hard to overstate how revered the Washington Post's David Broder is among the Establishment media. He's known as the "dean" of the Washington Press corps; he has won the Pulitzer; he has been described as the best and most respected political reporter in the country.
Needless to say, Washington Post reporters simply do not publicly criticize David Broder. When he was at the Post, Jim VandeHei (now at Politico) described him as "the best of the best." Post reporter Chris Cillizza placed Broder alongside the late David Halberstam as "titans of journalism." In short, your typical Post reporter is probably more likely to ask Broder for his autograph than to question his perspective.
Which isn't to say Broder's work doesn't deserve criticism; it often does. (Those interested in examples can find plenty in a column I wrote two years ago examining Broder's inconsistencies and shortcomings.) But he doesn't get that criticism from his peers and colleagues -- many of whom reflexively agree with his narrow Establishment views. Others probably just don't want step on any toes.
In light of that, Sargent's post on Friday is a reminder that his hiring is one of the more encouraging moves the Post has made in years.
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Great item, and great post by Mr. Sargent.
That website, "whorunsgov" ("who exactly is it that's running our Federal Government", is I guess what whorunsgov is supposed to mean), and the Plum Line blog, it all has an awesome state-of-the-art look, very slick and pleasing to the eye... I'm looking forward to examining it all more closely.
For now, thanks for the reference to it: it looks promising at first glance (or course I've said the same thing about a lot of things in my life, and found that first glances are like the covers of books, and you know what they say about judging a book by it's cover).
Hey, as an off topic aside: In just the past hour or so, the Somali pirate thing involving Capt. Richard Phillips seems successfully resolved. And so the media (CNN is what I'm seeing on the boob tube, and the AP Wire and the New York Times online) is understandably running with that story. And of course, this reflects well, even greatly, on all those concerned, most notably the U.S. Navy, and perhaps to some degree also, the FBI (and I say perhaps, because at this early stage I can't possibly know just how much influence they may have had in resolving this matter). And so all is well it seems, at least in this singular case of Capt. Richard Phillips being taken hostage, and now having been rescued.
This is what I want to note about the media: I can already see a strange angle being pursued both by CNN and the AP also, online... the strange angle of focusing on the captive pirate, who apparently either abandoned his pirate brothers, and saved his life that way, or otherwise tried to negotiate with the Navy, and going over to them, inadvertantly worked instead his own capture... whatever the case may be, I can see something taking shape here: call me suspicious, but the strange focus on the captured pirate seems to me to be simply a distraction from what is otherwise a proud moment for the U.S. Navy, and perhaps also the DOJ and FBI and even the Obama administration... already, both CNN and the AP are emphasizing custody, and charges, and prosecution, and even sentencing: this is a strange distraction to make right now, in light of what should be and is truly a celebratory moment... and watch, this talk of prosecution etc., can and will (I believe) turn into talk about being "soft on piracy", or coddling pirates, or (I kid you not) "pirate's rights": you see what I mean here? The media may well turn this good news into yet another difficulty and problem and even failure, of what to do with a captured pirate (it's the same old "detainee" nonsense, recycled into a guy wearing an eye-patch and flying a skull and crossed bones flag, and maybe with a parrot on his shoulder too: I don't know what those pirates actually look like, outside of the illustrations in Robert Louis Stevenson novels)...
Anyway, heads up and watch out, we may be in for an awful lot of recycled "detainee" crap, in the form of a captured Somali pirate: and all of it for the purposes of distracting from something that may reflect very well on the Obama administration, and to turn it into a difficulty and problem, about "pirate's rights" (I'm not joking) about being "soft on piracy".
My personal advice of what the U.S. Navy should do with the captured Somali prate?
Ask him where he lives in Somalia, the exact neighborhood (where maybe all his brother pirates live also), and then board him on a U.S. Navy helicopter, and fly him home, to that exact neighborhood, and drop him off there...
Drop him off from an altitude of about five hundred feet.
That'll show them.