John Solomon Sighting! Takes Shot At Liberal Blogospheric Critics
January 28, 2008 -- 11:07 AM EST // //
Updated below.
Via Romenesko, our old pal John Solomon starts today as editor of The Washington Times. He kicked things off with a shot at the liberal blogs and a rather questionable defense of his record in an interview with The Connecticut Post:
"All the stories the liberal blogs have attacked have never been questioned by my own editors. They stood by them," Solomon says. "The blogs point to no factual errors but complain that I highlighted something they didn't care for or preferred that I would have focused on something else."That's a pretty convenient way to recount things. What Solomon neglects to tell you is that Washington Post editor Deborah Howell actually sided with the liberal blogospheric critique on not just one, but both of the Washington Post stories by Solomon that attracted the most criticism. Howell, obviously, is a more impartial observer than Solomon's own editors, since they worked on the stories in question.
Here's Howell on Solomon's story front-paging the bogus insinuation that there was something wrong with Edwards' house sale:
I kept waiting to read about the connection between the Klaassens and Edwards that would make this sale unseemly; it wasn't there... 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.Meanwhile, Howell also lambasted Solomon's piece insinuating that Edwards' work for a hedge fund rendered his anti-poverty work hypocritical. Her column attacked the tone of the story for "falling short on fairness."
Solomon's claim that "the blogs point to no factual errors" is also a dodge. The issue with Solomon isn't so much the botching of individual facts, but his artful arrangement of them to insinuate all sorts of wrongdoing that just never happened.
Indeed, it seems obvious that this is precisely why the Washington Times hired him -- because he's very skilled at taking available facts, arranging them into hit pieces, and passing them off as real news.
At any rate, it's kind of appropriate that Solomon kicked off his new gig with yet another excursion into bamboozlement -- this time about his own record.
Update: It's actually worse than I thought. Solomon's claim that the blogs didn't question him on the facts is just false. See TPM's own Paul Kiel here and Media Matters here for more details.
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