I love Dan Froomkin’s farewell column in today’s Washington Post. I love it for its detailing of the failures and abuses of the Bush presidency. I love it for the way it mercilessly abuses those in the traditional media who dropped the ball. But I love it most of all for sticking a shiv in the heart of the Post’s most beloved journalist.
How did the media cover it all? Not well. Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long. The handful of people who did exceptional investigative reporting during this era really deserve our gratitude: People such as Ron Suskind, Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, Murray Waas, Michael Massing, Mark Danner, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (better late than never), Dana Priest, Walter Pincus, Charlie Savage and Philippe Sands; there was also some fine investigative blogging over at Talking Points Memo and by Marcy Wheeler. Notably not on this list: The likes of Bob Woodward and Tim Russert. Hopefully, the next time the nation faces a grave national security crisis, we will listen to the people who were right, not the people who were wrong, and heed those who reported the truth, not those who served as stenographers to liars.
It’s not like Woodward didn’t cover the Bush White House. He had extraordinary access and produced three large books on the Bush administration. But he was mainly a stenographer to liars, and Froomkin called him on it.
In fairness, Froomkin justly credited several Post reporters: Walter Pincus, Dana Priest, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker. They were, indeed, some of the best reporters in the country during the Bush era. There is still hope for the Post, but the paper is in the worst shape that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Fred Hiatt is destroying a once proud newspaper by making one poor decision after another. Firing Froomkin for being right, while his editorial board has been consistently wrong, is just one step in a long path leading in the wrong direction.
