Tonight on MSNBC's Hardball, there was a very revealing exchange between Dana Priest, lead foreign affairs reporter for the Washington Post, and Chris Matthews. Matthews questioned the wisdom of giving a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Paul Bremer, Tommy Franks, and George Tenet, given the obvious failures during their tenure. He especially cited Tenet's false claims that Iraqi WMD was a "slam dunk." He wisely asked if a Presidential Medal of Freedom is the prize for being wrong, what do you get for being right? And wasn't Bush just giving himself a self-congratulatory Medal of Freedom by honoring appointees that carried out his policies?
Priest's bias is evidence of a broader shift at the Washington Post, toward a neo-con, right-wing philosophy. And this is at a paper which is very influential on American policy.
At every possible moment, Dana Priest jumped in to defend Bush, and insisted that George Bush believed in the nobility of the Iraqi cause, and he was honoring the hard work of these men. She also insisted that Tenet had done a lot of good work on intelligence in Iraq (I can't figure out what she was referring to, there), and shouldn't be blamed for the Iraqi WMD issues. When Matthews tried to suggest that Tenet had prepared a "sales pitch" for Powell to present to the UN, she insisted that all mistakes were honest, and shouldn't focus upon blaming people.
Putting aside the Presidential Medals of Freedom, Priest is evidence of the bias that is creeping into the Washington Post. Dana Priest has actually fought the editors to increase coverage of intelligence failures and other issues. So, she's about the best we got at the WaPo, and she ain't much.
The Washington Post has consistently trumpeted every falsehood perpetuated by the Administration. Its star reporters have blatantly courted favor with the Administration, from Priest's defense of every Bush move on Hardball tonight to Bob Woodward's lovefest with Bush.
The right wing has been waging a very effective campaign of harassment against these newspapers for a decade, and the journalists and managements have responded by shifting right. So we need to be fighting back, and calling out their bias as well as story placement.
A great commentary on the shift at the Post:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030929&s=berman
There are a lot of newspapers in this country, but the Post is probably #2 to the NY Times in influence on politics. We need to win the battle here.
I will post a transcript from Hardball when it becomes available tomorrow. Her segment will also be rerun on MSNBC at 11:45 PM (ET).