Mediaite's Michael Triplett writes of my criticism of Washington Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander's New Black Panther Party column:

Paul Waldman at the American Prospect's TAPPED said Alexander didn't know what he was doing as ombudsman while Jamison Foser at Media Matters for America accused Alexander of "promoting" another right-wing attack while ignoring “race-baiting.”

Apparently, allegations that the Justice Department dropped the ball or didn't pursue a case should be examined among ideological opponents but not by the Washington Post. If the story is a hit-job on the Obama administration, who better to ferret that out than the Washington Post as opposed to the ideological bomb throwers.

Who better to ferret that out than the Post? Anybody could do it better! The Post did a lousy job! That has been my central point all along, in blog posts that Tripplet linked to and criticized (and that I would therefore hope he read.) My posts have spelled out the fact that the Post and Alexander omitted a ton of factual information that completely undermines the NBPP story. That's how the Post and Alexander failed: They repeated the right-wing attacks, and failed to include essential information that demonstrates the emptiness of those attacks. That's what I criticized Alexander and the Post for doing.

And yet Mediaite's Michael Triplett thinks I shouldn't have done so because if the attacks are bogus, “who better to ferret that than the Washington Post”? Is he kidding?

My former colleague Paul Waldman is quite capable of defending himself, so I'll just note that Triplett completely missed his point, too. Waldman didn't say Alexander shouldn't have written about the story; he offered a number of questions Alexander should have addressed but didn't.

Previously:

Does Mediaite understand what the New Black Panther story is about?

Fox News guest Krakauer calls on media to cover bogus Fox News story