Did Fred Hiatt Ignore His Own Op Ed Policies?
April 13, 2007 -- 12:01 PM EST // //
Okay, this is pretty interesting. I think I've found something which reasonably suggests that Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt may have broken his own stated Op-ed policies by publishing a piece yesterday by Liz Cheney attacking Nancy Pelosi without identifying Ms. Cheney as Veep Cheney's daughter.
When I asked Hiatt about this yesterday, he justified it with an email to me (again, I appreciate his willingness to answer) saying that she'd been selected to write the piece based on her professional qualifications alone and that there was thus no need to disclose her relationship with dad.
But now take a look at this column unearthed by commenter Drew below that Hiatt wrote in January of 2005. The column was called "The Rules of Punditry." Though it was in the context of a different conflict of interest pundit situation, Hiatt appeared to lay out his general rules on these questions. Here's Hiatt's key graf:
We are trying to learn from this episode here. When we publish a letter to the editor, we formally ask writers whether they have any conflict of interest that should be disclosed. By that we mean any relationship -- financial, family, employment or otherwise -- that a reasonable reader might consider relevant. We try to ascertain the same from op-ed writers, though the question has not been part of our official acceptance process. From now on it will be.
This is a bit murky, but I think you can reasonably read it as saying that "from now on" the Op ed page would see a family relationship as info a "reasonable reader might consider relevant" and "should be disclosed." Hiatt clearly didn't follow his own policy here with yesterday's Cheney Op ed. Why not? And this has happened before, too. As Matthew Yglesias recently pointed out, the Post trotted out writer Robert Kagan to defend the "surge" without mentioning that his brother Frederick Kagan was one of the leading "surge" authors.
One other point. While virtually all of you commenters have been leaning heavily against Hiatt on this, a few folks suggested that it wasn't a big deal. Here's my take: Right now Veep Cheney, the administration and the GOP is desperately trying to weaken Pelosi to undermine her ability to confront the White House on Iraq. The attack on the Syria trip has been central to this larger effort. The Post published a piece by his daughter that was obviously politically helpful to her dad's administration, in however limited a way, without mentioning the family link. While D.C. insiders know who she is, surely many Post readers don't.
Given this obvious conflict of interest potential, why not disclose the relationship? This is the key -- there's simply no downside for the reader to have full disclosure here. Of course, full disclosure did carry a downside for those trying to push the piece's anti-Pelosi argument: Knowing that it had been penned by Veep Cheney's daughter might lead readers to take it less seriously. Which may explain, of course, why the paper did this in the first place.
Update: Don't miss what may be the crowning absurdity of this whole affair.
Update: Incidentally, Liz Cheney was also an advisor to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign.
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