A letter to the Washington Post
Rathergate.com
Filed under: General— Kevin Craver @ 2:31 pm
A lot has transpired regarding The Washington Post and its coverage of the fishy “talking points memo” that for all purposes intents can be ruled as a fraud.
Rather than regurgitate it all, please read the following letter I sent to the main players at the WaPo who were responsible for this story:
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DearMr. Allen, Mr. Getler and Mr. Kurtz:
For the record, I do not think that The Washington Post had the intentional goal of bamboozling the public with its coverage of the “talking points memo” that appears to be a fraud. Regardless, the Post is guilty of two cardinal journalistic sins, namely printing wrong information and not promptly correcting it. Both need to be addressed immediately.
It has been 12 days since writers Mike Allen and Manuel Roig-Franzia broke this story. Despite statements by Allen and media writer Howard Kurtz, the Post has indeed distributed stories that explicitly state that the GOP authored and distributed the one-page memo. A partial list includes the Seattle Times, the Oakland Tribune, and Yahoo! News, all of which carry a Post byline. Two Reuters stories with the error can still be found on the Post’s website.
As a journalist and a blogger, I know that the media’s job is to present the facts without fear or favor. The GOP has wrongly taken a public relations black eye for something that was not their doing, and the fault lies squarely with the Post and ABC News, which also has done nothing to retract GOP authorship of the memo.
Kurtz’ column of March 30 misses the point. I have covered village boards in towns of 200 people that have produced more believable memos than what was acquired by the Post. From spelling errors to the wrong bill number to the very nature of the talking points, any journalist worth his paycheck would have investigated the very real possibility that the memo was a fake. “Covering the issue” was a convenient shield for the Post not doing its homework.
Allen is hinging the legitimacy of this memo on an anonymous source. You will understand me if, in the wake of Memogate, I consider anything from an off-the-record source to be highly suspect at the least.
Nonetheless, the Post has committed several errors that need to be publicly corrected. They are as follows:
1) The story distributed by the Post’s wire service incorrectly stated that the GOP wrote and distributed the memo. That conclusion cannot be supported by fact.
2) Howard Kurtz’ column of March 25 incorrectly identifies the memo as a “GOP talking points memo.” That too cannot be supported by fact.
3) Allen’s quote in Kurtz’s column of March 30 is inaccurate. Allen told Kurtz that, “We simply reported that the sheet of paper was distributed to Republican senators and told our readers explicitly that the document was unsigned, making clear it was unofficial. We stuck to what we knew to be true and did not call them talking points or a Republican memo.” Post wire stories, some of them with Allen’s byline, proves that this statement is not accurate.
If you wish to respond to explain your position, please do not hesitate to e-mail me. I will post your responses in their entirety on my blog at Rathergate.com.
Gentlemen, 12 days is 11 days too many to not admit that a mistake was made. After tomorrow, you will be sticking to this story longer than CBS stood by its discredited piece on President Bush’s military service. And although fraudulent, the CBS memos were more believable than what your newspaper presented the nation.
I look forward to hearing from any of you gentlemen. However, I also look forward to the Washington Post running the aforementioned corrections unless Allen can report concrete proof from an on-the-record source that the memo is legitimate.
I’m not shilling for the GOP – I just want the truth. If Allen has the proof, however unlikely, that this childish and sloppy memo was concocted by GOP leadership, I’m all ears.
If no correction is to be run, the blogosphere will do it for you, and the fragile credibility of the mainstream media will show yet another crack.
Sincerely,
Kevin P. Craver
Rathergate.com
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Courtesy of Michelle Malkin, here are their e-mail addresses in the event you wish to follow suit. Once again, I implore you to keep it to the point and keep it civil. No name-calling.
Mike Allen, White House reporter, allenm@washpost.com
Michael Getler, ombudsman, getlerm@washpost.com
Howard Kurtz, media critic, kurtzh@washpost.com
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