The Washington Post should not get off lightly for their role in confusing and deceiving the public. Allowing one of their editors -- Robert Woodward -- to opine that the Fitzgerald investigation is silly and will lead to nothing, while concealing his role in the whole scandal, that's very crooked.
The Washington Post should be tagged with this for forever, or until they get a bit better, whichever happens first. When the Post reports something, are they reporting what they know, or what they want you to think?
Here is my effort to let them hear about it - a letter to the editor I just sent the Washinton Post.
November 17, 2005
Dear Editor:
The Post's Assistant Managing Editor, Robert Woodward, is not in the business of finding the truth and sharing it with the public. He is in the business of propagating the versions of the truth that the powerful want the public to believe.
Mr. Woodward has minimized the importance of obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury. This take on ethics and law does not conform with what most Americans believe, but it is in the interest of his confidants. Woodward has publicly disparaged an important and urgently needed federal investigation involving lies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. He is kicking sand into the eyes of justice, and into the eyes of the public.
And while kicking that sand, he dishonestly concealed from us, the Post's readers, information that shows him to be a participant in the matter being investigated, rather than the observer he pretends to be. The secret sources he defends are not valiant endangered whistleblowers. They are administration bullies using secrecy as a tool to harm the public interest in favor of special interests.
Every day that Mr. Woodward is part of the Washington Post team from now on will call into question the true mission of your corporation. The Post may claim that mission is to inform the public. Still, your editors and publishers are likely to understand why to many of us your mission appears to be to disseminate Bush and Cheney propaganda under color of journalism.
Alex Winter