Is my title fair and balanced? We report, you decide (Faux style, with my editorial comments in brackets and italics) -- the Editor of the Washington Post Online gives an interview to
Moving from an interview with the Vice President to an interview with Jim Brady, executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, the phenomenally successful online edition of the Washington Post. Mr. Brady, welcome. Before we get to the meltdown yesterday, and your response today, you were a very fine sports for many years, and you were covering sports at the Post from '87-'95, correct?
JB: Correct.
HH: And you were the sports editor there from '95-'99, correct?
JB: On the website.
HH: Yup. So I think you'd have to agree that the Cleveland Indians of '97 and '99 were perhaps the best team ever not to have won the World Series?
JB: Well, as a Long Island native, I'd have to go with the '86 Mets, but that's just me. [From Armando - the 1986 Mets of course WON the World Series. Here's a hint for Mr. Brady - Bill Buckner]
HH: Well then, well, we hope you're a better web editor than you are a sports judge. [Well it appears neither of you know much about sports]
JB: (laughing)
HH: Jim Brady, you had a meltdown...A) congrats on going online today and answering your critics, and congrats for coming here. Explain to the audience what happened yesterday.
JB: This actually all started on Sunday when the ombudsman of the newsman, Deborah Howell wrote a column about the Abramoff scandal, and in that column, made a reference to both Republicans and Democrats being the beneficiary of Abramoff donations. And what she should have said, and what she put up on the blog on Thursday was that he directed...he did direct contributions to Democrats, which is undeniable. [ Note from Armando - Not only is it deniable, the record is clear that Abramoff tried to direct his Native American client to NOT give money to Democrats.] There's lot of documents that show that. [Note -- there are NO documents that show that.] But when she wrote it in the column, it was phrased in a way that made it seem like he was personally giving money to the Democrats[It was a factual error that the Washington Post to this day has not corrected in proper fashion], of which there isn't proof of that at this point [Because Brady knows there WILL be proof soon. Yes, Deborah Howell wrote similar words.]
. . .
HH: The central fact which seemed to upset the critics of the column, is that the Post has reported that between 1999 and 2004, Jack Abramoff's Indian clients contributed to 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats, tens of millions of dollars to both, correct?
JB: Correct.
HH: And so, why do people object to your publishing that fact?
JB: Well, they...they objected originally to the fact that she...that when she stated it, she made it seem as if he personally was donating to Democrats [She did NOT make it seem, she wrote it expressly.] But what she meant to say was that he was directing money to Democrats [And this too is false], which as I said, is beyond any kind of argument [it is beyond any argument a falsehood.]. . . . There's a real...this group that has been going after Deborah all week, I don't think, would have been happy no matter what she said. But she was clear about that, we put links up that have documents that show that [ Yet again, this is simply FALSE. The documents show that some Indian tribe clients gave to Democrats, but DO NOT SHOW that Abramoff directed the contributions. Indeed, if Brady had done even a modicum of work (and I have not paid much attention to the story and I know more about it than he does), and given the appalling string of errors, it behooved him in the most compelling fashion to STOP making errors), he would know that the contributions to Dems of many of Abramoff's Indian tribe clients went down when they retained Abramoff, at Abramoff's EXPRESS URGING.]
HH: Jim Brady, who do you think these people are? Because I run into them in this business, but we have a six second delay, goodness knows why. Who do you think they are? Why are they so fundamentally unhappy?
JB: Well, I mean in this case, there was very much a concerted effort to...when Deborah wrote her column on Sunday, a lot of the bloggers on the left side of the spectrum really...they got together and they said let's go to the Post blog and tell them how unhappy we are with this column.
HH: Was there an epicenter of that effort?
JB: It looked like it was in a bunch of different blogs. I mean, it certainly was getting a lot of attention on Atrios and Daily Kos, and some other places. [From Armando -- The Deborah Howell story was NOT front paged at daily kos until the comments were shut down. Daily Kos got together with NO ONE and did nothing to the Washington Post Online and Jim Brady . . . Until now. I call Jim Brady a liar. A bald faced liar for making up this story of a concerted effort involving daily kos. That is FALSE. So I mean there did seem to be...you know, it wasn't a campaign in the sense of a really organized campaign, but it was kind of a grass roots campaign to...
HH: Well, you've just named the two central islands in the fever swamps. So I'm not surprised. When you write on...in your online edition today, I think it goes to basic human decency. Are you saying protecting Deborah Howell? Or are you saying...I hope you're saying both, you're protecting your readers from it as well?
JB: Yeah, and we've been clear about that, that we're not going to tolerate anybody being called these names, whether they're employees of the Washington Post or other commentors. And this was more directed at Deborah than it was at other commentors. But that was certainly part of the equation, and it's just...you know, as I said in the discussion, if you can't make your point without calling people some of the names they were being called, then you don't have a point in my opinion.
Jim Brady goes on the program of the despicable Hugh Hewitt, makes gross errors regarding the Abramoff Scandal and then flat out lies about daily kos and implicitly agrees with Hewitt's venomous invective against daily kos all the while whining about how mean people are to the Washington Post!!!
With a record like this, I think it is clear what the future holds for Jim Brady . . . he is being groomed to replace Fred Hiatt.