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But Surely They Are Reasonable People!
Even with all of the evidence compiled above, one hesitates to charge the Post with bias. Each of us has political biases that make it difficult to see the other side of the story. One should be slow to anger, slow to accusation. We want to believe that the journalists and management of The Washington Post are reasonable people. But certain episodes make it clear that the Post has, at least in cases, failed to meet the professional ethical standards of journalism [21], that the management has failed to respond to specific complaints of behavior inconsistent with the ethical code and that the journalistic establishment as exemplified by the Society of Professional Journalism coddles this behavior.
The episodes are described in correspondence presented below. Briefly, I complained that Spectator employee Bruce Bawer had been engaged to perform a book review on David Brock's "Blinded by the Right", that Bawer had a conflict of interest that should have been reported, and that Bawer produced a "review" that flung ad hominem but did not meaningfully discuss the contents of the book. This was the second similar episode. The Post had previously assigned the review of "The Hunting of the President" to -- Washington must be swarming with the creatures -- a writer for the American Spectator, who wrote a hatchet job. That episode earned the Post a dart from Columbia Journalism Review, so it was absolutely astonishing that the Post should have repeated the behavior.
Then, Post reporter Susan Schmidt, angered by critical mail she received, tried to get two writers of letters fired. Actions like that tend to bring the whole profession into discredit. I wrote to her about this egregious violation of basic standards, and copied her supervisors and the Columbia Journalism Review. The Post refused to answer, suggesting to me that the ethics deficit originates up on management levels. Hearing that editor Len Downie was speaking at the Society of Professional Journalists, I wrote to point out that these episodes violated SPJ standards. The SPJ informed me that ethics are voluntary in journalism.
Voluntary?
I think they meant there are no standards at all.
Certainly, SPJ didn't argue that the Post had any.
At last Ombudsman Michael Getler produced the following [22]:
…Some of the stuff coming into electronic mailboxes here in recent weeks is simply vulgar. Some is threatening, some is hateful. Some e-mails seem to have their origin in the controversial presidential election of November 2000 and others in the brutal war raging in the Middle East.
Today [attacks on the media] come via e-mail, in the hundreds, even thousands, over the course of a few days. Frequently, they are coupled to campaigns and special-interest Web sites ...
The point of this column, however, is not to turn the clock back or to argue that the substance of the criticisms is always wrongheaded. There are some good points, and legitimate questions, lodged in these campaigns. And many of the e-mailers are, indeed, polite and undoubtedly sincere....
Last month, a review of a new book by David Brock, formerly with the anti-Clinton American Spectator magazine, was written by another former Spectator contributor, who was also mentioned in the book. This was the second time an issue had been raised involving books about Bill Clinton reviewed by former Spectator writers. The Book World editor explained that the section was unaware of the Brock book reviewer's previous association and unaware he was mentioned in the book, which had no index.
These kinds of missteps happen, and the Post acts when they do. But the mail in both these cases, and a third involving another staffer who had long been a target for her reporting on Kenneth Starr's investigation of Clinton, has been heavy and organized, and the language of too much of it, unfortunately, falls into the crude to obscene bracket…
Oh, heavens to Betsy. Mail is "heavy and organized". What will the dastards think of next?
Now, if it were true that much of the e-mail were obscene trash -- considering what passes for entertainment on cable nowadays, it's difficult to believe that this plaint would be presented seriously -- Getler should have been able to whiz through the chaff and answer the "good points, and legitimate questions" posed by those rare "polite and undoubtedly sincere" readers. In fact, Getler and The Washington Post have answered nothing and stonewalled everything. Getler has not even conceded that Susan Schmidt tried to get some of her readers fired, an action that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune Ombudsman had no trouble calling "reprehensible". One of the bigger laughs of the Getler piece (not included in excerpt): it attempts to blame reader harshness on sexism. How will he pitch the following conclusion?
With so many employees behaving unethically, and with a failure of the Ombudsman to respond to charges of unethical behavior, the ethics deficit can only be ascribed to the examples set by the Managing and Executive Editors.
Must be reverse sexism -- right, Mr. Getler?
And In Conclusion….
Well, the Post's behavior has been pathetic and despicable. What else can one say? If the schools of journalism or the professional organizations had an ounce of integrity, they would tell the world that behavior such as is described herein been dishonest and even unethical. Moreover, professors would tell their students to look at the pattern of abuse and emphasize that when so many lower-level employees have ethics deficits, the problem originates up the ladder.
There are two lessons readers can take home. First, don't swear, at least not in e-mails. You can cause a lot more pain by quoting the SPJ code to journalists. Second, remember Venezuela. People who want to control a country usually start by corrupting the media. The coup almost succeeded because the plotters did not have to worry about contrary views from Venezuelan and American media. People got the word out by other means and voiced their discontent. That's the only reason they kept their freedom. When the Democrats lay down in Florida in 2000, the heartbeat of the first American republic stilled. If we want to have a second democratic republic, now is the time we must earn it, by speaking out and standing up for justice.
The author
Charles Utwater II is a real person, but that is not his real name. He has produced commentary on the war on Terra and on the collapse of integrity in American life. See http://www.americanpolitics.com/20010930Utwater.html,
http://www.americanpolitics.com/20010920stopthespin.html and
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Utwater040802/utwater040802.html. He can be reached at CharlesUtwaterII@aol.com.
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