AlterNet: MediaCulture: Roasting the Post

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Roasting the Post

When Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell published the false claim on Jan. 15 that Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to Democrats, the paper got a loud, swift and public lesson in the new realities of online interactivity and instant accountability. It was like watching a woolly mammoth being hauled shrieking and dripping with ice-age detritus into the 21stt century.

This lesson came in large part from the blogosphere, in the form of comments made on the newspaper's website and in posts made to political weblogs, such as DailyKos, Eschaton, and my own blog, Firedoglake. The collective daily readership of the largest political blogs now runs in the millions. We are news and politics junkies, instantly able to recite the last six jobs of Senate staffers and the names of reporters who cover every beat. We follow politics in real time and have zero tolerance for the kind of sloppy mistake Howell made. Hundreds of us swarmed to the site and immediately made our feelings known.

The paper's insistence on remaining silent in the wake of this was a clear indication that management did not understand that the days of one-way "we speak, you listen" information flow are over. It is no longer possible for a newspaper to simply publish erroneous information and then stonewall critics as they wait for everything to blow over.

In the face of Howell's continued silence, the paper's online readers stepped up their insistence that she post a retraction. After four days Howell wrote another article, but rather than apologize for her original mistake, she stated that she had intended to write that Jack Abramoff "directed" his clients -- the Indian tribes -- to give money to Democrats.