{"id":3354,"date":"2012-01-23T20:47:37","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T01:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3354"},"modified":"2012-01-23T20:47:37","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T01:47:37","slug":"iron-men-at-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3354","title":{"rendered":"Iron men at the Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some classic iron manning from the Washington Post's Ombudsman <\/a>(via Media Matters<\/a> and Atrios<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

When President Obama has a bad day, or more specifically, on days when the economic news has been bad, I get a slew of feedback from conservative readers that go like this:<\/p>\n

“See, you liberal media nincompoops, this is all your fault, you treated Obama like a saint when he was running in 2007 and 2008 and you didn’t vet him, investigate him, report on him skeptically. You were so fawning (and adoring of his blackness), you missed that he was a (pick your adjective), radical, socialist, Muslim, inexperienced, dangerous, corrupt, weak Chicago politician with no track record of accomplishment, whose only talent is giving speeches.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Those e-mails usually employ much harsher language, and some are filled with expletives.<\/p>\n

If you watched the Republican debate<\/a> Thursday night<\/a>, you heard a muted version of this criticism of Obama from Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. (Although Ron Paul almost never mentioned Obama, he criticized the entire system of government instead.)<\/p>\n

Deborah Howell<\/a>, Post ombudsman from 2005 through 2008, said at the end of her tenure that “some of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt [at The Post] are valid.”<\/p>\n

I won’t quibble with her conclusion. I think she was right. I read all of The Post’s lengthier, meatier stories on Obama published from October 2006 through Election Day 2008. That was about 120 stories, and tens of thousands of words, including David Maraniss’s<\/a> 10,000-word profile about Obama’s Hawaii years, which I liked. <\/span><\/p>\n

I think there was way too little coverage of his record in the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate, for example, with one or two notably good exceptions. But there were hard-hitting stories too, even a very tough one on Michelle Obama’s job<\/a> at the University of Chicago Medical Center.<\/p>\n

And that’s what The Post needs to do in covering his reelection campaign this year: be hard-hitting on his record and provide fresh insight and plenty of context to put the past three rough years into perspective.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I suppose it's a factual question (to some extent at least) as to whether the Post's coverage of Obama was light on skepticism.  (My guess is that it was as bad as their other work–they pay George Will for petesake).  The funny thing here, however, is the occasion for this moment of self-reflection. <\/p>\n

A person full of conspiracy-driven blather about Obama's race, religion, and socialism (Goldman Sachs style I can only guess) alleges that the Washington Post <\/em>failed to be skeptical about Obama's race, religion, socialism is for the Ombudsperson a reason to reconsider its coverage of Obama.  Why?  Because he turned out to be a socialist?  Sheesh. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some classic iron manning from the Washington Post's Ombudsman (via Media Matters and Atrios): When President Obama has a bad day, or more specifically, on days when the economic news has been bad, I get a slew of feedback from conservative readers that go like this: “See, you liberal media nincompoops, this is all your fault, you … Continue reading Iron men at the Washington Post<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1214],"tags":[1014,1126,1283,453],"class_list":["post-3354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iron-man-straw-man","tag-iron-man-arguments","tag-iron-man-fallacy","tag-patrick-pexton","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3356,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions\/3356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}