Considering the fact that a newspaper usually prints a selection of reactions on its
Letter to the Editors page, balancing pro and con, the reader reaction to Howard Kurtz's mea culpa piece must have been a landslide of "puh-lease." I love that the paper gives the letters the headline "
Reflections on The Post's Self-Evaluation" when what the readers rightly have given them is a brisk spanking.
No, the voices of protest weren't lonely. Yes, a paper has an obligation to print all the facts, even if it doesn't think the outcome of the debate will change (can you believe Kurtz even tried that argument?). No, the complexity of a reporter's work is not a reason not to print it (as one letter writer put it, "what are they paying you for, anyway?). No, it isn't true that the war was inevitable.
And yes, that was one sorry-ass piece of self-"reflection."
Commenter Dan Perreton correctly points out that it is the WaPo editors, not Kurtz himself, who justified their decisions with the "it wouldn't have changed anything" defense.