he (Abramoff) had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties.And:
Several stories, including one on June 3 by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, a Post business reporter, have mentioned that a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff campaign money.On Sunday, January 22, 2006, her column stated:
I wrote that he gave campaign money to both parties and their members of Congress. He didn't. I should have said he directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.On Saturday, January 21, 2006, Paul Farhi wrote in the Washington Post
Howell wrote in a column published Sunday that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff "had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties." That is incorrect.His article was in fact titled, "Deluge Shuts Down Post Blog:
Ombudsman's Column Had Sparked Profane Responses". It stated:
The newspaper company has temporarily shut down Post.blog -- a section of Washingtonpost.com that invites reader comments -- after receiving hundreds of posts, many using profane or sexist language, responding to columns by The Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell......readers had begun flooding Post.blog with comments, most of them criticizing Howell. Many of them used language unsuitable for a public forum. Unable to keep up with a stream of more than 1,500 postings, editors of the Web site decided to close it down until order could be restored.The same story was apparently spread by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. According to Media Matters:
On the January 23 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly modified a false claim he made three days before that former lobbyist Jack Abramoff donated money to both Democrats and Republicans, saying: "His personal donations were to Republicans." In modifying his claim, however, O'Reilly made no admission of his previous error, nor did he apologize for having berated a caller to his nationally syndicated radio show for correctly noting that Democrats received no money directly from Abramoff.That an error published by the Washington Post is comparable to that of the Fox News is surprising! In an earlier post on this blog today, an anonymous comment questioned the relative merits of The Financial Times (UK) versus the Washington Post -- and not to the advantage of the WaPo. Not long ago, following the Judy Miller affair, the Jayson Blair affair, and the Times coverage of Wen Ho Lee, some observers suggested that the Washington Post had now replaced the New York Times as the most trustworthy paper in the United States. Perhaps that was too early a judgment. I would further note that the stories on why the Washington Post blog was shut down seemed different to me in the broadcase of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (Tuesday, January 24, 2006) and that published by the WaPo.
I am impressed by the power of the Internet, as demonstrated in this case. Stories such as that in The Daily Kos clarified the facts in the case. I am equally impressed that thousands of feedback emails poured in to the Washington Post blog, that they had an effect, and that the blog comments themselves became a story! While the original error, coming as it did from the Ombudsman, was very disappointing, the willingness of the Post to open itself to criticism is commendable. Too bad it blotted the copybook by handling the comments badly.
So why am I addressing this matter in a blog dedicated to discussions of knowledge for development? So much of our knowledge of key current events has in the past come from the media, and especially from newspapers, that it is important to recognize that the papers can get it wrong. Moreover, the story suggests that free discussion in cyberspace has the potential to improve the quality of knowledge on important matters that becomes available to the public.
It is important in the upcoming election for the public to know whether the Abramoff scandle is a Republican scandle or a generalized Congressional scandle. Perhaps the public will have a better chance "to throw the (right) bums out" as a result of the Washington Post blog and the furror in cyberspace.
4 comments:
Great post; I think you're right to raise the issue of mainstream/traditional media and the emergence of new media (blogs, news-wikis, and the like)- One of the blogs you mention (I'll admit to being an avid reader), DailyKos, is struggling precisely with dated definitions and terms like "mainstream media". (Rather than paste a lengthy link address, just search for "mainstream media" at DailyKos and its the first result: "Time to retire MSM"
In my comment earlier on the integrity of the WaPo vs. FT...you're right...I was getting at the controversies involving the ombudsman and other recent articles. As a disclaimer, I'm much more inclined to side with the liberal stance taken by the WaPo, than the FT's conservative bent. Nevertheless, what I found so particularly disturbing about the WaPo's recent actions was the Howell's calcitrance on the matter and the eventual lock-down of the commentary. --I do agree, however, that once the commentary boards become flooded with personal attacks and other non-constructive commentary it reduces the effectiveness of the tool.
The stiffling of the dialogue that these new feedback loops (blogs, commentary forums, etc.) may just be a product of how new they are and how little time we have had to come to terms with such massively open lines of communication (think of the recent wikipedia controversy)...and it may take time for us to figure out how best to filter out the noise.
That said, I think that with respect to the developing world there is a very urgent need to grant the citizens (and potential netizens) of developing countries a voice -- empowering them to contribute to things like the news-wikis or personal blogs...
All of this, of course, doesn't even being to scratch the surface of the mainstream media v. blogs issue. Issues of qualifications and expertise -the blogger as pijama-clad-guy typing away at the computer vs the reporter-out-in-the-field argument- issues of accountability, and numerous others are still very much open to debate when we consider how these new forms of media and communication will impact existing modes and models.
Great comments; Terminology is a problem. We used to be able to talk about the "press media" and the "broadcast media", but newspapers have websites as do television and radio stations and networks. I agree that DailyKos is big enough to be "mainstream", whatever that means, but not this K4D blog which only gets a little traffic -- it definitely is not mainstream in audience or intent.
I suspect that the WaPo will do a lot better with its blog technology in the future. Certainly it will have a better obsenity filter, and I hope a visible policy on civil discourse. Maybe we will even see a reader-based comment evaluation feature that will help get through to the good stuff. Technology will help, but it will take time to develop a civil culture for online dialog on incendiary issues (look how long it took the newspapers). And that is just repeating your comment on the newness of the online media.
Decades ago DeSola Pool commented on the magnitude of the change as point-to-point media became cost-competitive with mass media. I think we are only just beginning to live through the social changes that that technological breakthrough will engender.
I could not agree more about the need to give people in developing countries voice! Indeed, the need is almost as great to give voice to poor people in developed nations -- as Katrina demonstrated so clearly!
As to the final comment, Amen! Sometimes the guy in PJs at home knows a lot more than the reporter, or at least has a lot more expertise into which he can interpret new information, but how does the reader know that? One thing reporters can do legitimately is ask questions of busy people; I hope we will never empower the average netizen to expect responses from any official he/she chooses to query. But how do we empower netizens not only with voice, but also with hearing and vision?
Thanks Christopher!
more on the journalistic integrity and professional vs. citizen journalism via Howard Rheingold's blog, SmartMobs (great blog, by the way): Here's a link to the Post:
http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2006/01/26/the_witness_con.html
As part of the response to the furor discussed above, this panel discussion was convened by WaPo to "open the discourse about how reader-submitted comments should be handled". WaPo invited the following prominent bloggers to join the panel: Jeff Jarvis, Buzz Machine; Jane Hamsher, firedoglake; Jay Rosen, PressThink; and Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit. Jim Brady, Executive Editor of WaPo, lead the panel. The transcript of the discussion should be generally interesting for those working on the problems of how to use Internet mediated feedback for the traditional media.
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