*sigh* -- "personality profiling" the executive office...

[acroyear]

I realize its in the "fashion" section, but is it really necessary for The Washington Post to run a column on the fact that Bush gives cheek-kisses to the female members his cabinet (and *only* the female members)?

sheesh, what a fucking waste of print.  guys if you want to get rid of the label of being the "liberal" media, you have to stop making every stupid issue of the President one that requires a front-page placement (this was in page 1 of section "C"), much less one that has to be printed.

Comments

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Although I still read it, the Post pretty much lost my respect when they didn't fire Novac for using their pages to commit treason. I'd switch subscriptions if the only alternative wasn't worse.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

please cite or describe this. google isn't coming up with anything connecting a "novac" with "washington post" except in reference to the northern virginia astronomy club.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Typo. I meant Robert Novak, who was the one who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in his attempt to discredit her husband's accurate information about the lack of weapons in Iraq.

Novak is syndicated

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

he's not a direct employee of the 'Post. He's also a right-wing pundit right along there with Hannity, Coulter, and Limbaugh. He's also the right-wing side of CNN's Crossfire every day.

And the question remains, who leaked it to him, because he wrote it in there so freely as to imply that he thought it was common knowledge, or was unaware of the consequences.

In any case, that the 'Post keeps publishing him is partially a nod to trying to appear more balanced. At this point, they probably let his stories in un-edited, less they get criticized openly for bias (it might also be part of their contract with him or his syndicate).

I would surmise in this instance, for example, the editors simply didn't read the column to enough detail to bother to check the facts.

However, the letter there goes on to imply that because the Times caught it, the Post should therefore be more embarrased. The reality is that the Times had all the time in the world (no pun intended) to research that after publication, but when a paper gets the column days or even just hours before publication, there's no time to verify everything.

On the leak, his comments were published a few months after the column in question. I'm prepared to take his word that the CIA contacts he had didn't bother to tell him that publishing such info was a bad thing, though I'm not so sure about his descriptions of how casually the CIA contacts confirmed the fact.

At any rate, he's just a columnist, a syndicated one at that, and as such is easily ignored. I won't criticize a whole paper just because they publish the writings of a jerk or two. Judgement should be more reserved to the work of their own employees.

In addition, Slate's followup story shows the problem to have been far deeper than this one jerk. Someone in the CIA was going out of their way to try to get this leak published; that Novak was the first is only the tip of it.

Again, I'm not prepared to blame the 'Post for not catching that; the post has limited control over editorial content from syndicators, and the fallout from that would certainly mean that Novak (or any other) is unlikely to do a similar thing again.

Finally, until the leak got all the attention it got, *weeks* later, nobody in the general public (and i'm sure not some lowly syndication editor @ the 'post) really even knew it was classified as "treason" in the first place.

Re: Novak is syndicated

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Now, how did I get it in my head that the Post was Novak's "home" paper? I knew he was syndicated, but I still thought he was on Post staff.

I know they have to be fair and balanced - and to *be* fair, they do a better job out there than many, but I'm still not all that happy with the Post. I've been reading the NY Times on Sundays and while both papers have had their problems, on the whole, the Times is a lot more interesting and witty a read.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's the Style section. They decided to get somewhat silly in discussing different types of greeting kisses, and pointing out that high level public congratulations of women is a somewhat uncharted water.