Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander came out swinging in his Sunday column. He called the plan to sell sponsorships for a dinner of journalists and power brokers in the publisher’s home an “ethical lapse of monumental proportions.”
According to Alexander, publisher Katharine Weymouth and Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli have “now taken full responsibility.”
Bless their hearts.
Brauchli had this to say: “The Washington Post prides itself on its coverage of the intersection of monied interests and people who guide policy or make laws. And we should not be facilitating that intersection. We should be covering it.”
Yes, covering it. Or how about throwing so much light on it that the K Street minions scatter like cockroaches?
The “intersection” of moneyed interests and elected representatives is, after all, corruption. Since the Post’s version of “covering” didn’t do much to slow the crooked bookkeeping on Wall Street or prick the housing bubble before it wrecked the whole country, perhaps the Post should step it up a little.
Charles Pelton, the original fall-guy for the pay-to-play dinner parties, sounds like he’s not feeling the shame, referring to the public relations disaster as a “stumble.” He goes on: “I strongly believe that journalism must support more than a newspaper and a set of Web sites. It needs new avenues of expression – and revenue – and live events are just one of these.”
Ummm, Mr. Pelton, maybe you should shut up about live events for a while.
Pelton works in sales, so it’s understandable that he’s still talking about revenue streams at a time when the rest of the Post staff appears to be shattered and groping for answers.
“I wish I had the perspective I now have of understanding how people would perceive an event like this,” said Weymouth in Alexander’s column. “I didn’t perceive it.”
But how hard can it be to read the ethics policy of the newspaper she helms? It must be posted on the Web site.
A five-minute search of washingtonpost.com got me nowhere. Exasperated, I clicked on Help. Surely I can find the ethics policy there! But typing the keyword “ethics” got me this screen:
Maybe Weymouth gave up in frustration, too.
Actually, I’m starting to feel sorry for her. And I do believe her: That is, I believe she really thinks it’s all about perception.
I gotta quote All the President’s Men: “Nothing’s riding on this except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country,” says actor Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee, the executive editor under Weymouth’s grandmother Katharine Graham.
I’ve always thought both the Post and The New York Times had such a wealth of talent and tradition that they would survive the plague that’s visiting just about every other newspaper in the nation.
And I still believe The Washington Post is a great newspaper. At least it has an ombudsman, which these days are as rare as brass spittoons.
[originally published by Politics Daily in 2009]
