They Just Don't Get It

It took a near riot by disgruntled readers of the Washington Post but Deborah Howell, the Post's Ombudsman, finally admitted she made a mistake in saying that Jack Abramoff contributed to both parties. Unfortunately apparently neither she nor the paper understood why it took a near riot for the newspaper to respond.

Instead the Post should have seen this coming. Howell had made a series of errors and questionable statements in previous columns, raising readers hackles, but when readers complained to anyone at the Post who would listen, they were told they should give her a chance.

The problems started in December when she criticized Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing column, calling it highly opinionated and liberal. The resulting tussle was played out on media blogs but Hit-and-Run Howell never addressed it again.

Next up she apparently didn't like, or responded to conservative critics of a Post story that the poor were overly reprented in the military because of a lack of other economic opportunties. In The Whole Story on Military Recruiting she accepted the Pentagon's and Rand Corp claim that the data in the story, part of which supplied by the National Priorities Project, was based on only 20 counties and so 'the data are clearly not representative.' The NPP said "Ms. Howell was told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that the people she spoke with were wrong, that the NPP analysis was based on the entire population of recruits, not just a sample."

Next up on Howell's Hit Parade was A Few New Year's Resolutions, where she said "The liberals seem to expect The Post to be the house organ of Moveon.org." This is a standard conservative talking point, more fully examined previously.

To date, the only error she has addmited was her comment in Getting the Story on Abramoff that Abramoff "had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties."

But she didn't take back her statement that Post articles had said "that a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff campaign money."

Apparently she could admit to one mistake. But the bigger mistake was hers and Post missing the point the bigger point, that as Bloomberg pointed out, that Abramoff's tribal clients gave money to Democrats after he began representing them, but in smaller percentages than in the past.

So, shouldn't the story have been "Abramoff helped cut tribal donations to Democrats."