Washington Post

The Washington Post: Embarrassed into Covering the News

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander wonders why it took his paper so long to cover a story with obvious importance and disturbing implications: the seeming race-based decision of the Obama Justice Department to avoid pursuing a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers, even though a YouTube video showed persuasive evidence that an offense was real and substantial. Ethics Alarms, for example, wrote about the story more than two weeks ago.

Alexander is to be saluted for raising, though his conclusion is unsatisfying and more than a little weaselly. Continue reading →

Journalistic Ethics Cluelessness: Weigel, Outrageous Bias, and the Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

There can be no doubt : the main-stream media is so ideologically biased that it can’t recognize obvious bias anymore, even when it undermines its credibility. That is the only conclusion one can reach from the amazing story of David Weigel, who was awarded a Post website blog to write about “inside the conservative movement.” David Weigel, as his recently leaked e-mails to a mailing list shows, detests conservatives, conservatives views, positions, commentators and leaders. He does so not in a possibly manageable “there are evident problems with the extremists in this movement and some of its underlying philosophy” fashion, but it a “I hate these morons and wish they’d all die” way, which is exactly the sentiment many of his messages convey.

Giving someone like Weigel the role of reporting on conservatives is exactly as responsible and fair as letting Michelle Malkin cover the progressive movement, asking Senator Inhofe to cover climate change developments, asking Gloria Allred to keep us up-to-date on the life of Tiger Woods, or giving Helen Thomas the assignment of covering Israel. And yet that is exactly what the Washington Post did. Continue reading →

Ethics Blindness: Why Is The Media Minimizing the Etheridge Assault?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Bob Etheridge street mugging story seems poised to join the coverage of Van Jones and ACORN as another depressing example of the mainstream media’s abandonment of objectivity, responsibility and ethical priorities.

Today, the day after a video surfaced showing North Carolina Congressman Bob Etheridge grabbing, restraining, and wrapping his hand around the neck of a young man who dared to ask him a question on a Washington D.C. sidewalk, “The Daily Beast’s” #4 story was the revelation that former Ebay CEO and current G.O.P. candidate for governor of California once shoved an Ebay subordinate in a moment of anger and paid six figures in damages. The story about a sitting U.S. Congressman assaulting a U.S. citizen without provocation on a public street doesn’t appear anywhere in the liberal-leaning news aggregation site’s news summary. Continue reading →

More on Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s Lying Attorney General

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Now that we know a little bit more about Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Attorney General whose pursuit of a U.S. Senate seat has him periodically masquerading as a Vietnam War veteran, it is clear that simply defeating him at the polls isn’t enough. He should be impeached as Attorney General, and deserves professional discipline from the Connecticut Bar as well. Why? Well, he’s an unrepentant serial liar on a grand scale. Lawyers, including Attorney Generals, are prohibited from engaging in dishonesty, misrepresentation, fraud and deceit, and it is professional misconduct when this rises to a level that calls a lawyer’s trustworthiness and fitness to practice law into question. Does pretending to have credentials, especially military combat experience, that you do not have in order to get a job reach this level?

Of course it does. Continue reading →

More Ethics Confusion at The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Washington D.C. theater scene blogger and critic John Glass has caught the Washington Post with its ethical pants down. He alertly notes that a line in a recent Post story about the appointment of a new Artistic Director for the prestigious Studio Theater reveals that interviews for the position took place in Washington Post offices. Studio is an active Post advertiser that, like all D.C. area theaters, is significantly dependent on the paper’s theater reviews for its audiences. In this regard it is also in competition with other theaters for the Post critics’ approval. Doesn’t this situation require objectivity and an arm’s length relationship between the newspaper and the theater? Why is the Washington Post actively involved in a professional theater’s choice of artistic leadership? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: President Barack Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I am old-fashioned, I guess: I really do not like to criticize this President, or any president, for being intentionally unethical. His is the most difficult job in the world, and requires more ethical dilemmas, more trading off of interests, and more responsibility, than a human being can be fairly expected to navigate with anything approaching perfection. Balancing the interlocking requirements of politics and leadership alone are virtually guaranteed to create ethical missteps

President Obama’s direct campaign appeal in his just-released video to “young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again” has to be criticized, however, because it is clumsy, offensive, a startling breach of integrity and a dangerous one at this time in America’s history. More than that, it has to be condemned. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

“I know how the “tea party” people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their “Obama Plan White Slavery” signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.”

——Washington Post columnist Courtland Malloy

That’s it, Courtland, just the ticket for helping to cool the inflammatory rhetoric, encourage mutual respect and restore civil discourse. As long as it makes you feel better, go ahead and use your space in the Washington Post to be just as hateful as those whose conduct you deplore. Next step: call anyone a Cro-Magnon racist who takes you to task for it.

Any journalist or columnist who stoops to this kind of irresponsible and emotional name-calling needs to be taken off the job and given a nice, long paid vacation in the Bahamas to get his perspective back. There is too much primal screaming in print already, and it only raises tensions and entrenches both bad feelings and bad conduct. Malloy has been simmering for a long time, so his outburst comes as little surprise. A responsible newspaper, however is foolish to print such a column.

Ethics Heroes Odd Couple: Sen. Jim Bunning and the Washingon Post

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

“The point Mr. Bunning was trying to make was a reasonable one: At some point, Congress has to stop borrowing and spending, even for worthy purposes.”

This wasn’t Rush Limbaugh talking, or some Fox News talking head. This was the Washington Post, in an editorial, validating the Kentucky senator’s lonely stand in which he single-handedly placed a five-day “hold” on a $10 billion bill to pay for extended unemployment benefits and other popular programs.

Bunning’s symbolic protest was vilified by the Democrats and disowned by most Republicans. As the Post editorial pointed out, it was “spectacularly bad politics,” giving the Democrats a perfect foil to symbolize the heartlessness of “the Party of No.” Courage and principle are often, and perhaps, sadly, always bad politics. Continue reading →

The Citizens United Opinion and the Post’s Unethical Poll

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Is the Washington Post story on  the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court opinion and the public’s reaction to it  dishonest, sinister, or just incompetent? I’m not sure, but I am sure of this: it is a classic example of why polls are a terrible way to guide national policy and lawmaking. The Post article begins…

“Americans of both parties overwhelmingly oppose a Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations and unions to spend as much as they want on political campaigns, and most favor new limits on such spending, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.”

The statement is false and misleading. Whatever the merits or deficiencies of the Citizens decision may be, the vast majority of the American public has no idea what the Supreme Court ruling was, or why it was made. Continue reading →

When the Police Lie to Convict the Guilty

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Gene Weingarten, the Washington Post columnist, wrote about his recent experience as a juror. It was a trial of a man accused of selling $10 of heroin to an undercover officer. Weingarten professed to be annoyed that such a small amount would justify an arrest and trial; he’s just wrong about that. Dealing a dangerous prohibited drug is still dealing, no matter what the amount. I know this is the kind of case that gets the legalize-drugs-so-we don’t-put-so-many-people-in-jail crowd all self-righteous, but “a smidgen of heroin dealing” still supports a destructive social problem, and law abiding citizens don’t deal even a little smack.

That’s not really the issue here, however.

Weingarten was convinced that the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He was also convinced that the police were lying. Continue reading →