Bizarro journalism
Froomkin clearly has a lot of dedicated fans, and therefore does not really need me to chime in here. But I'm a-gonna anyway.
Jay Rosen has a piece on the whole "Post White House reporters are a bunch of whining sissies" flap. Watch as John Harris betrays that his concern is for his sources, not his readers, and be amazed as he contradicts himself in the span of only three sentences! (My emphasis added.)
John Harris: I don’t keep a running log, but I regularly run across people who think Dan is one of our White House reporters. One of them was a very news-saavy source of mine who actually runs campaigns. That tells me there is a large chunk of readers—I’m not saying most but a lot—who are not clear who he is and that he is writing as a commentator and not a White House reporter.
...
John Harris: They have never complained in a formal way to me, but I have heard from Republicans in informal ways making clear they think his work is tendentious and unfair. I do not have to agree with them in every instance that it is tendentious and unfair for me to be concerned about making clear who Dan is and who he is not regarding his relationship with the newsroom.
...
...This is probably why my comments caused such a stir: People bridled at what they interpreted as my view that challenging the White House on evasions, misstatements, or contradictions is evidence of “liberalism.” By no means is that my view.
So my reservations about “White House Briefing” are not in theory but in practice. It seems to me that if you read his column over time he is presenting a pretty standard liberal critique of Bush.
He's not sayin', he's just sayin!
Reading the whole thing, both Harris and Brady agree that Froomkin is a liberal, but refuse to take Rosen up on his request for specific examples. Sorry, Mr. Froomkin, you've been found "liberal" without any evidence - you may now be dismissed as a partisan. Thanks for trying, though!
Jay Rosen has a piece on the whole "Post White House reporters are a bunch of whining sissies" flap. Watch as John Harris betrays that his concern is for his sources, not his readers, and be amazed as he contradicts himself in the span of only three sentences! (My emphasis added.)
John Harris: I don’t keep a running log, but I regularly run across people who think Dan is one of our White House reporters. One of them was a very news-saavy source of mine who actually runs campaigns. That tells me there is a large chunk of readers—I’m not saying most but a lot—who are not clear who he is and that he is writing as a commentator and not a White House reporter.
...
John Harris: They have never complained in a formal way to me, but I have heard from Republicans in informal ways making clear they think his work is tendentious and unfair. I do not have to agree with them in every instance that it is tendentious and unfair for me to be concerned about making clear who Dan is and who he is not regarding his relationship with the newsroom.
...
...This is probably why my comments caused such a stir: People bridled at what they interpreted as my view that challenging the White House on evasions, misstatements, or contradictions is evidence of “liberalism.” By no means is that my view.
So my reservations about “White House Briefing” are not in theory but in practice. It seems to me that if you read his column over time he is presenting a pretty standard liberal critique of Bush.
He's not sayin', he's just sayin!
Reading the whole thing, both Harris and Brady agree that Froomkin is a liberal, but refuse to take Rosen up on his request for specific examples. Sorry, Mr. Froomkin, you've been found "liberal" without any evidence - you may now be dismissed as a partisan. Thanks for trying, though!
posted by albany layman at 12/14/2005 09:21:00 AM
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