January 27, 2007 -- 4:23 PM EST // // Post a Comment
POST OMBUD DEBORAH HOWELL ON JOHN SOLOMON'S EDWARDS PIECE: "MISLEADING"; "GOTCHA WITHOUT THE GOTCHA."
As promised, Washington Post ombud Deborah Howell has addressed Post reporter John Solomon's hit piece on John Edwards' home sale in her column. She's pretty tough on him:
Accurate stories can be misleading. Two recent Page 1 stories -- one on the Fairfax County libraries and the other on the sale of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards's Georgetown house -- brought complaints that there was less there than met the reader's eye....I kept waiting to read about the connection between the Klaassens and Edwards that would make this sale unseemly; it wasn't there. Edwards spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said Edwards "has never met or spoken with them; nor have they contributed to his campaign."
The story was interesting, but it was more of an item for the Reliable Source or In the Loop -- and not worth Page 1. It seemed like a "gotcha" without the gotcha.
This is a point I'd hoped Howell would make. Solomon and his editor have insisted again and again that the story didn't say Edwards had done anything wrong. But the real problem, which Solomon and his editor have refused to address, wasn't necessarily that the story said outright that Edwards had done anything wrong, but that it implied through innuendo and suggestion in various questionable ways that there was something untoward about his house deal, when there wasn't. There were other problems, too, but this was a key one.
Through its placement and tone, the story did imply that there was something "unseemly" about the deal. And as Howell suggests, this was "misleading," pure and simple. No amount of protestations that the story never said outright that Edwards did anything wrong will change that obvious fact. It was indeed "gotcha without the gotcha."
Howell says more about the piece, but for now I wanted to focus on this aspect of her analysis -- because it cuts right to the heart of the major flaw with Solomon that the Post is now saddled with. After all, this is hardly the first time Solomon has used innuendo, implication and suggestion to smear his frequently-Dem subjects. Nor was it the first time that even a cursory analysis of his "story" revealed that there was little to nothing there.
Will this chasten Solomon at all? Almost certainly not. He's got his M.O., and he's sticking to it. The key remaining question now is whether Post editors will be more careful and on their guard when looking over Solomon's efforts -- or whether they're simply incapable of acknowledging or even hearing criticism of their editing and news judgment, no matter how obviously justified that criticism is.
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