Bloggers Keep MSM's Feet to the Fire

The Washington Post Ombudsman, Deborah Howell, tried to tell the world that the Abramoff pay-to-play scandal was a bipartisan scandal. Unfortunately, she was caught repeating GOP talking points and refused to acknowledge that she had her facts wrong.

According to Georgia10, a blogger over at DailyKos, the Washington Post received over 700 messages trying to correct the error. Rather than face the inquiries, the blog was shut down. Washington Post Executive Editor Jim Brady lamented that although "[t]ransparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture," his paper disabled the reader comments feature on its blog "after several comments containing personal attacks, profanity and hate speech were posted."

Later, the Post put 198 of the comments back up, saying it had "blocked" or "removed" others that were profane.

Unfortunately for Ms. Howell and the Post, alert bloggers had saved the messages before the blog was taken down. Still other bloggers noticed that when the Washington Post "restored" 198 of the deleted messages, at least 42 messages had been taken out. The fascinating thing is that almost none of the 42 messages the Washington Post removed contained profanity. Read them over and decide for yourself whether profanity was the issue.

Bloggers claim the 42 deleted messages contain mainly serious, well-researched and well-reasoned queries as to why Ms. Howell was not doing her job as an independent journalist. The Post was finally forced to admit that Howell had been wrong about the Abramoff scandal being bi-partisan.

This episode illustrates three things:

1. Get your facts straight.


2. When you make an error, get a correction out there right away.


3. Don't try to play "hide the evidence." It is too easy to find things on the Internet.