There's a fine line between writing a story with a point of view and slanting a story to fit a point of view. In the last couple of years, I've been feeling more and more that Huffington Post (HuffPo) has forgotten about that line.
A particularly bad example: Right now on HuffPo's front page is this headline:
Biden's Standing in White House in Question After Afghan Decision
Sounds scary. Only it's no such thing - except you have to read to the end of the article to realize that. The headline - a news headline - appears crafted not to fit the story, but to pursue an agenda.
And that's even more troubling, for reasons I'll explain below.
The story is by Sam Stein, a HuffPo reporter (and in fairness to him, he may not have written that headline; reporters often have no say about that). Still, here is how he starts out:
On the most fundamental matter at stake in the recent debate over the war in Afghanistan, Vice President Joseph Biden ultimately lost. ...
[Biden] asked, quite simply, whether further escalation made "strategic sense".
The president decided that it did. And as a result, questions have surfaced about Biden's standing within the administration.
Questions from whom? The only people quoted in the article by name all say Biden's doing a great job. The most specific Stein gets is to quote "[o]ne Democratic foreign policy strategist" who felt it was "disheartening" to see Biden's experience passed over.
If it was.
Even by Stein's own account, Biden had a lot of influence on the details of the plan. Biden was at Obama's side when he phoned McChrystal with the decision. Biden was booked on all the morning shows on Wednesday explaining and defending the decision. (By the way, the linked article also goes out of its way to dismiss rumors that Biden's standing has slipped.)
Then there's the final paragraph from the Stein piece:
"My impression is that the president highly values Biden's contributions on foreign policy and, in particular, raising tough questions about the recommendations from the military on Afghanistan," said Thomas Mann, a government affairs expert at the Brookings Institution. "Those questions prompted a more serious review and more nuanced, less open-ended commitment. Biden is providing Obama with honest reactions and complete loyalty. I think his standing in the administration will remain strong."
So where's the evidence, even the suggestion, that Biden's star is sinking into the White House fountain?
Stein may be playing the usual Washington insider game, where half (or more) of the objective is to score points by tattle-telling. But here's the real problem: last month Arianna called on Joe Biden to resign if the president decided to escalate there.
Joe Biden met with CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus this morning to talk about Afghanistan -- an issue that has pushed the vice president into the spotlight, landing him on the cover of the latest Newsweek.
I have an idea for how he can capitalize on all the attention, and do what generations to come will always be grateful for: resign. Arianna Huffington in HuffPo 14 Oct
Now her site has posted a headline saying Biden is in trouble, when he's not. Which is why I feel they have crossed the line.
HuffPo used to be like Daily Kos - a blog for comments and expressions with a particular political point of view. And that's fair. But HuffPo now represents itself as a news site, not just a commentary site; it calls itself "the Internet newspaper." Yes, it's "opinion" as well as "breaking news," but the layout of the front page puts opinion on the side and news in the center column. This story was in the center column.
This isn't the first time HuffPo has caught me by surprise, where the headline implied one thing and the story - when I opened it - said the opposite. And that led me to be skeptical when I saw this headline tonight.
It's a shame. They have been a good resource; they have real reporters who do this as a full-time job, and they have cultivated sources and get good leads. But it seems they - or maybe it's the editors - haven't mastered the basic ethical rule of good news, whether it's the newspaper or the internet: Keep the news page and the editorial page at arm's length.
What's even more troubling is that HuffPo is now part of the White House press pool. Yes, so is the Wall Street Journal - which has also forgotten about the wall between news and opinion - but if two wrongs don't make a right, then certainly a left and a right don't make a center.