Internal Conflict at the Post

Over the weekend, the Washington Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, aired the following internal grievance about columnist Dan Froomkin.

Political reporters at The Post don't like
WPNI [Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive]
columnist Dan Froomkin's "White House
Briefing," which is highly opinionated and
liberal. They're afraid that some readers think
that Froomkin is a Post White House reporter.

Today, Froomkin responded.

There is undeniably a certain irreverence to
the column. But I do not advocate policy,
liberal or otherwise. My agenda, such as it is,
is accountability and transparency. I believe
that the president of the United States, no
matter what his party, should be subject to
the most intense journalistic scrutiny
imaginable. And he should be able to easily
withstand that scrutiny. I was prepared to
take the same approach with John Kerry, had
he become president.

This column's advocacy is in defense of the
public's right to know what its leader is doing
and why. To that end, it calls attention to times
when reasonable, important questions are
ducked; when disingenuous talking points are
substituted for honest explanations; and when
the president won't confront his critics -- or
their criticisms -- head on.

The journalists who cover Washington and the
White House should be holding the president
accountable. When they do, I bear witness to
their work. And the answer is for more of them
to do so -- not for me to be dismissed as highly
opinionated and liberal because I do.

Later in the day, the Post's Political Editor, John Harris, posted his own comments. After noting that many readers are confused by the title of Froomkin's column, he wrote:

Given that there is such confusion, the
question is whether this is a problem. For me
it is a problem. I perceive a good bit of his
commentary on the news as coming through
a liberal prism--or at least not trying very
hard to avoid such perceptions. Dan, as I
understand his position, says that his
commentary is not ideologically based, but
he acknowledges it is written with a certain
irreverence and adversarial purpose. Dan
does not address the main question in his
comments. He should. If he were a White
House reporter for a major news
organization, would it be okay for
him to write in the fashion he does?

With this final question, Harris (unintentionally) identifies the real problem here. It's not that Froomkin's style of reporting is inaccurate or less than faithful to the truth. Neither Howell nor Harris even alleges as much. The problem is that Froomkin's columns don't conform to the artificial format now followed religiously by nearly every mainstream White House reporter. In an effort to avoid accusations of bias, the political reporters at all the major news outlets (except, of course, Fox) rigidly adhere to the so-called "balanced narrative" style of journalism. All issues are presented in a 'Republicans say X, Democrats say Y' format. This is true even when X or Y is patently absurd, or when anyone of even moderate intelligence can see right through the claims being made by one side or the other. Needless to say, this style of political journalism has some fairly major flaws. Most significantly, it makes it nearly impossible for journalists to call a lie a lie. It's an open invitation for the unscrupulous (*cough* Rove *cough*) to make a joke of our political discourse. When all that readers are presented with is differing narratives, suddenly even the facts are up for grabs; the very concept of objective truth all but disappears.

Froomkin's job is to discuss the message being put forth by the White House, a message which everyone acknowledges is steeped in spin. What people like Harris find so jarring about Froomkin is that he actually takes it upon himself to debunk some of the most disingenuous White House talking points rather than relying exclusively on quotes from Democrats and liberal commentators. This once commonplace practice is now considered taboo among the White House press corps. Notice that Harris' primary concern is not so much that Froomkim is liberal, but that he is "not trying very hard to avoid" being perceived as liberal. Because so few journalists are willing to call a spade a spade, Froomkin's willingness to do so (and the fact that he's covering a Republican White House) makes him appear very liberal. If you read through Froomkin's columns, however, you notice that he almost never strays from his core mission of assessing the transparency and public accountability of the White House. He doesn't opine about policy matters; he simply gages, as best he can, the degree to which the White House is leveling with the American people and engaging its critics. Given this particular administration's obsession with spin and extreme reluctance to address even its most reasonable critics, it's not surprising that Froomkin's assessment is often critical. That doesn't mean it's "liberal," however. Even most conservatives will concede that this White House has been remarkably stubborn when it comes to addressing critics or admitting error (remember Harriet Miers?).

So what exactly does Froomkin write that bothers Harris so much? Here's what I think is a fairly typical example; Froomkin wrote the following regarding Dick Cheney's Iraq speech a few weeks ago:

Rather than substantively address any of the
allegations against the administration,
however, Cheney used a handful of straw-man
arguments and dubious assertions to make his
point. And he took no questions.

Harris is certainly correct to suggest that this sort of writing would never be found in an article written by one of the Post's White House correspondents. But what exactly is so objectionable about it? Cheney's speech, as a matter of fact, did not substantively address any of the actual allegations of pre-war deception being leveled against the White House. And a number of his assertions were demonstrably misleading, particularly those that purported to describe the positions held by the administration's critics. Moreover, there is no question that this was obvious to every single White House reporter who covered the speech. The fact that it wouldn't "be okay"--as Harris puts it--for true White House reporters to point out this obvious truth is an indictment not of Froomkin, but of the "real" White House press corps. (For all of Froomkin's recent columns, click here).

What we need are more journalists like Froomkin who are willing to act as gatekeepers. We need journalists who are willing to debunk absurd talking points on their own, rather than printing bogus claims alongside correct ones and hoping the reader is able to tell who's lying. That's not "balance"; it's abdication of responsibility. Political journalists are supposed to referee the game, not just do the play-by-play. It's their reluctance to step in and call fouls that has allowed our political discourse to degenerate to its current sorry state. In the absence of effective referees, political discourse is governed solely by the honor system, and that type of a system inevitably rewards dishonesty. If politicians and political operatives knew that they could no longer count on political reporters to print their spin uncritically, the quality of our political discourse would improve dramatically overnight. As Digby put it:

The right has spent the last quarter century
in an organized campaign to work the refs
and push the dialog to the right. . . . We
[liberals] have no organized campaign and
we don't see the media as being politically
biased. We see it as abdicating its duty to
sort out the important from the trivial and
connect the dots in these confusing times
that are ruled by spin, PR and marketing
on all sides.

Harris and his colleagues in the Post's political division could learn a lot by following Dan Froomkin's lead. They should be flattered that people mistakenly believe he is one of them.

UPDATE: Editor & Publisher has a new post up discussing this issue. It carries the following quote from Post Executive Editor Len Downie Jr.:

We want to make sure people in the
[Bush] administration know that our
news coverage by White House reporters
is separate from what appears in
Froomkin's column because it contains
opinion.

Please. While I'm willing to believe that some casual readers of the Post's website have, from time to time, mistaken Froomkin for a member of the White House press corps, no one who is at all familiar with Washington politics would make that mistake. Certainly no one in the Bush administration would. Froomkin's work stands out precisely because he is not a member of the White House press corps and, therefore, does not feel compelled to conform to their silly journalistic conventions.