Just recently after
WaPo Ombudsman Deborah Howell said she would no longer respond to critics, she did just that. Attempting to excuse her erroneous Abramoff reporting, she got it wrong again:
I've heard from lots of angry readers about the remark in my column Sunday that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both parties. A better way to have said it would be that Abramoff "directed" contributions to both parties.
Lobbyists, seeking influence in Congress, often advise clients on campaign contributions. While Abramoff, a Republican, gave personal contributions only to Republicans, he directed his Indian tribal clients to make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.
The rest inside.
Records from the Federal Elections Commission and the Center for Public Integrity show that Abramoff's Indian clients contributed between 1999 and 2004 to 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats. The Post has copies of lists sent to tribes by Abramoff with specific directions on what members of Congress were to receive specific amounts.
One of those lists can be viewed in this online graphic, while a graphical summary of giving by Abramoff, his tribal clients and associated lobbyists can be viewed here. The latest developments in the Abramoff investigation are available in this Special Report.
So Howell says millions to both parties and has only one request list of donations, her first link, to back up her claim (and a partial one at that). She also ignores the fact that not all of the donations she listed were ever completed as requested.
Her second link makes no distinction between the tribes themselves and the donations they supposedly made at the request of Abramoff.
So after repeating the talking point that Abramoff gave to both parties, it's more of the same factually incorrect, misinformed drivel. Debby, you're doing a heck of a job.
The WaPo readership (link now disabled) tends to agree.
Some of the highlights:
While there was perhaps some debate over whether your initial false statements that Jack Abramoff gave money to Democrats were based in partisanship or based in incompetence, there was some small hope on the part of this Post reader that you might get it right this time around.
No such luck. Your defensive and again - factually baseless - response only reinforces the belief that you have no business working as ombudsman for the East Podunk Mailer-Courant, let alone The Washington Post.
Congratulations, you are now officially a one-woman credibility wrecking crew.
There are only two outcomes here: Either your superiors at The Post realize that you are a total liability and jettison your incompetent personage, or the paper sinks out of sight (hopefully with great speed) as it is dragged down by the cumulative effect of your "reporting" and earlier damage self-inflicted during the run up to W's Adventure in Iraq.
Frankly, at this point, I could care less which happens, but I imagine that Post leadership cares, and hopefully your very public dismissal is at hand.
Ms. Howell, your recent writings and the tone of them have been false, and demonstrably antithetical to shareholder value.
Mr. Abramoff is one of the most powerful men in the country. He is also a stridently partisan Republican, even once holding the coveted office of President of the Young Republicans, the well-known college drinking club for political aspirants. In the main, such an individual does not nor ever will "direct" his clients to give contributions to Democrats; if rare exceptions occurred, they were likely the result of shoddy vote calculation on the Republican side of the aisle. This fact should already have been obvious to a keen legal mind before it was abundantly amplified by thousands of concerned subscribers protesting your disastrous columns.
Well outside your personal area of expertise, your remarks above fail to mend fences, as should have been their purpose, and I believe they cause much further harm. You have helped your management in what appears to be a scurrilous campaign to deceive a distressingly shrinking readership on the decidedly partisan nature of the Abramoff scandal, but you have not helped well.
I believe it scant coincidence that the Washington Post Company's shareholders are now suffering as a result of what has become an obvious prostituting of journalistic integrity once of such proud repute, with share prices having fallen sharply. I believe this fall in price is highly correlated with the purposeful intent to disseminate falsehoods. In order to avoid further loss, I have instructed my family's trust to end what has been a long and profitable relationship, and to take appropriate steps to eliminate our WPO holdings.
Ms. Howell hasn't quite yet mastered the art of 'truthiness' because the essence of that is avoiding the appearance of 'wronginess'. She's being called out by the readers by her inartfulness. We need an ombudperson for the ombudsperson!
Gilligan, the Skipper, The Professor and Mary Ann all voted you off the island.
Thurston Howell III says he wants a divorce.
Better start looking for a raft.
Ms. Howell, one journalist to another, you're just wrong on this. You need to admit it, apologize and move on, because that hole you're still digging is never going to get any shallower.
As a longtime reader of the Washington Post, I am appalled at Deborah Howell's performance as the paper's ombudsman. I am a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and I can not imagine an editor at my former paper allowing such poorly researched material to get into print--whether as a news story, opinion column, or God forbid, an ombudsman's essay.
There is NOTHING of an ombudsman in Deborah Howell's approach to her job. An ombudsman's role is to represent the voice of the reader in the paper; to examine the paper's--and its writers'--intentions in the articles that the paper prints. Ms. Howell does none of this; she has a palpable agenda, and her tone is authoritarian (certainly not authoritative). I can only imagine how she came to be hired for this position, but it reflects very poorly on the Post that she has performed in such a careless and biased way so soon in her (one hopes, brief) tenure.
The Post need a REAL ombudsman, not some hack who sees her job as lecturing readers on the errors of their points of view, and whose own point of view is so transparent and partisan.
...An ombudsman nobody believes. Congratulations Washington Post.
Please take this to heart. Your whole tenure as Post Ombudsman has been characterized by a culture of defensiveness.
Your mistakes were no minor deficiency in wording. You made false statements that have no doubt misled many Post readers of your Sunday column.
You can contact Howell at ombudsman@washpost.com or (202)334-7582. You can also write a letter to the editor, by e-mailing letters@washpost.com along with your name, address and daytime phone.
Update [2006-1-19 17:0:5 by jorndorff]: As bink noted, the WaPo has turned off the ability to comment.
Their rationale:
At its inception, the purpose of this blog was to open a dialogue about this site, the events of the day, the journalism of The Washington Post Company and other related issues. Among the things that we knew would be part of that discussion would be the news and opinion coming from the pages of The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com. We knew a lot of that discussion would be critical in nature. And we were fine with that. Great journalism companies need feedback from readers to stay sharp.
But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being. It's a shame that it's come to this. Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about.
We're not giving up on the concept of having a healthy public dialogue with our readers, but this experience shows that we need to think more carefully about how we do it. Any thoughtful feedback on that (or any other issue) is welcome, and you can send it to executive.editor@washingtonpost.com.
In light of this, I'd urge everyone to contact the above e-mail address expressing your concern over Howell's conduct and their recent actions. Not only have they disabled comments from being made, but they've effectively deleted those that were available (such as the above) from being read.