Dan Froomkin: Fool Me Over and Over and Over Again

by Dan Froomkin, Niemanwatchdog.org

Our elite media has been repeatedly suckered into trumpeting glaringly unsupported assertions about the number of Guantanamo detainees that have “returned” to the battlefield. This was quite a week for it.

The most blatant and distressing previous object lesson came early last summer, when New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt appropriately spanked reporter Elisabeth Bumiller and her editors for a top-of-the-front-page story in late May that was “seriously flawed and greatly overplayed.” Hoyt wrote that the story, which appeared under the headline 1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds “demonstrated again the dangers when editors run with exclusive leaked material in politically charged circumstances and fail to push back skeptically.”

Entirely by coincidence, of course, Bumiller’s article, based on a secret Pentagon report, provided a handy talking point for former vice president Cheney later that day, when he snarlingly attempted to rebut President Obama’s major address on national security speech later.

Bumiller’s reporting failure also earned her an editor’s note appended to her story, and a scolding op-ed.

And yet, amazingly enough, eight months later – now in the midst of attempts by Gitmo dead-enders to turn the aborted Exploding Christmas Underpants plot into a political cudgel – Bumiller is at it again, though this time chasing Bloomberg, et al., rather than leading the pack.

This time it’s one in five former detainees who have “engaged in, or is suspected of engaging in, terrorism or militant activity.” And here’s the sum total of what Bumiller learned from her previous experience:

Civil liberties and human rights groups sharply criticized the May 2009 report and earlier Pentagon reports during the Bush administration concluding that substantial numbers of former Guantánamo detainees had engaged in terrorism or militant activity. The groups said that the information was too vague to be credible and amounted to propaganda in favor of keeping the prison open.

But it’s not just that the Pentagon’s assertions are suspicious on their face. As it happens, a series of studies directed by Seton Hall Law Professor Mark Denbeaux has been effectively picking them apart for years. (A response to the latest spate of stories will be coming out on Monday.)

Among the other (little, inconsequential) things the Seton Hall reports have pointed out is that the Pentagon, in all the times it has leaked on the topic, has nevertheless consistently refused to provide names that would allow anyone to actually verify most of its claims. There’s the issue of how they define “returning to the fight” – it apparently includes detainees speaking out publicly against their incarceration. There’s the fact that officials, if you press them, acknowledge they don’t really track former detainees – so this is largely speculative. And there’s the specious use of the term “return” – given that most of the detainees who were released weren’t found on the battlefield in the first place and were never formally charged with anything.

From Denbeaux’s December 2007 report:

The Department of Defense has publicly insisted that “just short of 30” former Guantánamo detainees have “returned” to the battlefield… but to date the Department has described at most 15 possible recidivists, and has identified only seven of these individuals by name. According to the data provided by the Department of Defense.. at least eight of the 15 individuals alleged by the Government to have “returned to the fight” are accused of nothing more than speaking critically of the Government’s detention policies.

From his January 2009 report:

The Department of Defense does not keep track of released detainees nor does it follow their post release conduct.

Denbeaux calls this week’s outrageous Pentagon assertions the latest example of what he calls “numbers without names and trends without numbers.” He told me he’s outraged it’s been so widely picked up — including by the Times.

“I don’t see what the point is of a public editor criticizing a story for the New York Times if they’re going to republish it a year later,” he told me.

Gullible, amnesiac journalists are a dangerous thing. Is our profession really incapable of learning anything from its mistakes?

Pulsating diversity of views on the Post Op-Ed page

One of the leaders of The Liberal Media is a leading outlet for right-wing advocacy.
By Glenn Greenwald, salon.com, November 9, 2009

"I know many readers, particularly liberals, feel we have too many conservative voices on the page. On the other hand, I hear from a lot of conservative readers who think we have too many people they consider too liberal (Dionne, Robinson, Meyerson, Marcus, et al.). We try to provide a range of views--no matter who is in power" - Fred Hiatt, Washington Post Editorial Page Editor, October 14, 2009.

The Washington Post published a total of 8 Op-Eds and opinion columns today, from these individuals:

* Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey (bashing Obama for wanting to try 9/11 defendants in an actual court)

* Neocon Charles Krauthammer (heralding the resurgent GOP fueled by "Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt")

* Newt Gingrich and GOP Texas Gov. Rick Perry (Obama's health care plan would destroy America)

* Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson (Obama has lost the American center and his health care plan will destroy Democrats)

* Conservative economist Martin Feldstein, former chief economic adviser to Reagan ("Obamacare" will raise premiums and increase the number of uninsured)

* Honduran coup defender Edward Schumacher-Matos (blaming Honduras' democratically elected President for "instigating mob rule" and criticizing both the American Right and Left for "extremism," while defending the administration-backed compromise)

* CEO of BP (British Petroluem) Tony Hayward (dismissing efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption as "simplistic" and advocating changes to cap-and-trade bill that would benefit BP)

* Liberal Eugene Robinson (warning of the takeover of the GOP by the intolerant, ideological Right)

So, to re-cap: The Post today has two former Bush officials, one former Reagan official, two right-wing politicians, a Fox News neocon, the CEO of America's largest oil and gas producer, a defender of the right-wing Honduran military coup leaders, and one liberal columnist. That overwhelming right-wing presence on the Post Op-Ed page is anything but unusual (the day after it fired Dan Froomkin, The Post published Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Hayden, Charles Krauthammer and an Iran-hawkish screed from David Ignatnius, preceded by Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Ramesh Ponnuru). And that's to say nothing of the always-pro-war Editorial Page itself, which typically advocates for those same positions.

The Post is obviously free to publish whatever it wants, but, wth some very rare exceptions, its Op-Ed page under Fred Hiatt now really is the leading outlet for neoconservatve and related right-wing advocacy. It is one of those outlets typically counted as part of the "Liberal Media" by right-wing self-victimizers and their media amplifiers, yet The Post's claimed devotion to airing a "wide range of views" is scarcely more credible than Fox News' "fair and balanced" slogan.

Unasked Question about Sam Alito

Glenn Greenwald

Monday July 13, 2009 17:14 EDT'

updated below

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Sam Alito used his opening statement to emphasize how his experience as an Italian-American influences his judicial decision-making (video is here):

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country" . . . .

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

Two weeks ago, Alito cast the deciding vote in Ricci v. DeStefano, an intensely contested affirmative action case. He did so by ruling in favor of the Italian-American firefighters, finding that they were unlawfully discriminated against, even though the district court judge who heard all the evidence and the three-judge appellate panel ruled against them and dismissed their case. Notably, the majority Supreme Court opinion Alito joined (.pdf) began by highlighting not the relevant legal doctrine, but rather, the emotional factors that made the Italian-American-plaintiffs empathetic.

Did Alito's Italian-American ethnic background cause him to cast his vote in favor of the Italian-American plaintiffs? Has anyone raised that question? Given that he himself said that he "do[es] take that into account" -- and given that Sonia Sotomayor spent 6 straight hours today being accused by GOP Senators and Fox News commentators of allowing her Puerto Rican heritage to lead her to discriminate against white litigants -- why isn't that question being asked about Alito's vote in Ricci?

Also: if empathy is irrelevant to judicial decision-making, why are GOP Senators calling Frank Ricci as a witness at this hearing? Since he's obviously not there to testify about the strict legalistic doctrines governing his claims, but instead is only there to trumpet the facts that make him "sympathetic" so that people will emotionally react against Sotomayor's ruling (his dyslexia, the amount he spent on books and tutors, his hopes for a promotion), isn't everything he has to say totally irrelevant pursuant to the GOP's alleged judicial principles?

UPDATE: I'll have running commentary on Twitter today on the Sotomayor hearing. It can be followed and read here. I'll likely post something more comprehensive here later today on this or another topic.

A Publisher Stumbles Publicly at The Post

By DAVID CARR

Katharine Weymouth, the relatively new publisher of The Washington Post, is a lawyer who worked for the company for 12 years and was educated at the Harvard School of Business, so she is hardly a naïf in running a business.

But she has never worked in a newsroom, a gap in her résumé that may have contributed to her current problems.

As first reported in Politico, The Washington Post had sent out a brochure offering sponsorships — a fee of $25,000 for one, or $250,000 for an entire series — for an exclusive “Washington Post salon” at Ms. Weymouth’s home in which officials from Congress and the administration, lobbyists and, yes, the paper’s own reporters could have a quiet, off-the-record dinner, discussions to be led by Marcus Brauchli, the newspaper’s editor. Theoretically, you can’t buy Washington Post reporters, but you can rent them.

I guess it sounded like a good idea at the time. Access, and its very close cousin, influence, define the Beltway. Millions of dollars are spent on having the right lobbyists, flacks and lawyers so that you can end up in a room with people who control your destiny.

And in some respects, the now-canceled salon on health care seems like an attempt to replicate a golden era for the newspaper in which a seat at a dinner hosted by Katharine Graham, the legendary publisher of The Washington Post and Ms. Weymouth’s grandmother, was the hottest commodity in the Beltway.

The difference? Mrs. Graham bestowed legitimacy (Richard M. Nixon never made the cut, even as president). Ms. Weymouth decided to sell it, with her paper’s editorial integrity apparently thrown in as a parting gift.

Perhaps Ms. Weymouth’s notion came up a year ago when she, along with senior Web and print editorial staff members went to Harvard to rethink The Washington Post brand. In response to questions about the salon, Ms. Weymouth sent a reply stating, “I take full responsibility. We will be publishing a note to our readers on Sunday.”

That might do a world of good for the paper. Initially, the salon controversy — we won’t give it a “gate” suffix out of respect for the newspaper that established the term — was explained away as the unfortunate result of an unvetted brochure sent out by an overzealous marketing employee (later identified as Charles Pelton).

But, as The Los Angeles Times pointed out, at least two of the invitations to political participants, Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, and Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, came from the personal e-mail address of Ms. Weymouth. Mr. Brauchli insisted that he had not realized the full implications of the events even though Mr. Pelton told The Post’s ombudsman that the plan was “well developed with the newsroom.”

The absence of a credible explanation, compounded a grievous wound to an important newspaper. The whole episode suggests a misreading of history that has been well covered by the paper but also, and perhaps worse, a tin ear to newsroom dynamics.

Let’s put this in context: Ms. Weymouth is confronted with the same crisis as every publisher in the country. The Web has robbed newspapers of paying readers and advertisers, the economic downturn is cutting into what is left, and smaller, nimbler Internet competitors are learning to slake the 24-hour news thirst on their own.

(The fact that it was Politico that broke this story only added to the sting. Started by two former Post reporters, Politico has become a serious competitor right on The Post’s inside-the-Beltway turf, and now has caught the paper on a fundamental lapse in the wall between church and state. In the increasingly heated race between the mainstream media and newer, digitally enabled ones, much of the remaining competitive edge for legacy media derives from a perception that they adhere to more rigorous publishing standards. Oops.)

So Ms. Weymouth and Mr. Brauchli are under tremendous pressure to innovate, both to cut costs and to increase revenue. Unfortunately, neither arrive at this critical point for the industry with much equity in the newsroom they lead, because they are both relatively new.

Ms. Weymouth has some inherited good will in part because she leads an organization that is not only family-owned but is also operated like a family. When Donald Graham was the publisher (and Bo Jones, who succeeded him) and Leonard Downie Jr. was the editor, they were both viewed as tradition-bound — boring even — but they both observed The Post tradition of winning over employees, not bossing them around.

Before the salon problem, however, Ms. Weymouth had made a series of decisions that had — fairly or not — kept her own newsroom at loose ends.

Her 17 months as publisher have been a period of upheaval, including rounds of downsizing that left the newsroom and other departments considerably smaller. She also oversaw the merger of The Post’s print and digital newsrooms after years of turf wars. She has made public comments praising The Huffington Post for its clever headlines, a compliment that did not endear her to reporters who see their own work splashed on or criticized on the Web site.

And she was widely seen as hastening the retirement of the longtime top editor, Mr. Downie. She then hired Mr. Brauchli, an outsider, to run a newsroom that had historically rewarded its own with the top job.

Mr. Brauchli with a deep, impressive résumé, including serving as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, has worked hard to retrofit The Washington Post for a new era. Mr. Downie was viewed as something of a traditionalist in the Ben Bradlee vein, an editor who managed the newsroom by walking around, making friends along the way.

Mr. Brauchli is not a high-touch guy, unless you count his BlackBerry. He has had to oversee the sharp cuts in the newsroom — a task that falls on many editors — but he has done so while attempting a radical reorganization of the newsroom that may do wonders in the long run, but has been unsettling for many.

His explanation for the salon mess — I planned to attend but did not understand exactly what the party was — has not helped.

“I believe Marcus didn’t know that this was going out, I don’t believe he would have approved it,” said Deborah Howell, the former ombudsman for the paper who is now a consultant for Advance Publications. “But I don’t see anybody taking responsibility for it, either. I’d like to know, as a reader and fan of The Post, how exactly this happened and so far, I don’t know.” (Ms. Howell made her comment before Ms. Weymouth accepted responsibility.)

Ms. Weymouth’s initial explanation for the salon fiasco, also broke another Washington Post tradition: those who are handed the sword generally fall on it when trouble comes.

During Watergate, Mrs. Graham took a lot of heat — including outright abuse — from the Nixon administration. After the Janet Cooke affair, Mr. Bradlee, the former editor, took the blame himself.

Ms. Weymouth’s excuse — that the salon brochure “completely misrepresented what we were trying to do” didn’t track with many reporters, who have already been contending with cutbacks at the paper.

“Oh really? Then what were they trying to do?” said one reporter who did not want to be identified as criticizing the publisher. “Yes, we should be in the business of seminars and conferences, but the issue for us is fraught because we cover Washington.”

Hank Stuever, a staff writer, said, “Katharine should expect the journalists who work for her to be disappointed and upset about this and should also understand that the details so far have been unsatisfying.”

“The people I know in the newsroom are still waiting for a lot better answer to what the goal was here, what was really happening with this idea, and how it got so far along without raising red flags,” Mr. Stuever added.

The reporters, no doubt, are looking forward to the note in Sunday’s paper. But they are also staring down the prospect of serving as a punch line in Beltway circles for many years to come. The president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, has already obliged by wondering aloud at a news conference whether he could afford to take a question from Michael Shear, a Post reporter.

Funny stuff, unless you are the reporter with your hand up.

“Even if this was just an unvetted marketing blunder, The Post’s reputation has taken a huge hit in terms of the optics. When you have Robert Gibbs joking about it, that’s hugely embarrassing for the paper,” said Richard Leiby, acting arts editor of the newspaper.

It is true that reporters and editors in every newsroom chronically complain about the business side of the operation and that their personal ethics meter is always on code red. But Ms. Weymouth has learned a hard lesson, one that every publisher and owner should study and take note of. Innovations are great, rethinking old ways is smart, and even conferences — properly vetted — are fine.

But the newsroom remains a paper’s biggest asset. And you cannot afford to lose them, even when it means admitting that you, not some guy over in marketing, made a mistake.

The real danger of O'Reilly's ambush interviews

Bill O'Reilly's interview tactics are getting a lot of attention lately, ever since one of his producers ambushed Think Progress blogger Amanda Terkel after Terkel pointed out comments O'Reilly made suggesting he believed one rape victim had made herself a target. What happened to Terkel shouldn't be diminished, as that ambush was particularly egregious, but it's worth remembering that this frequent ploy of O'Reilly's can sometimes be even more damaging.

Last week, O'Reilly broadcast another ambush conducted by Jesse Watters, the same producer who targeted Terkel. This one was of J. Rodgers Padgett, a Florida judge who'd angered O'Reilly by releasing a convicted sex offender on bail pending appeal. This time, as you can see in the video below, Watters and Padgett nearly came to blows. The producer surprised Padgett inside a convenience store and then, when the judge tried to leave, Watters used his leg to block Padgett from closing his car door.

That this particular ambush nearly escalated to violence is bad enough, but what's worse is the way O'Reilly and Watters twisted the facts of the situation. Clearly, no one wants to see a newly convicted sex offender out on the street, certainly not one like the man convicted in this case, whose victim is mentally challenged. But O'Reilly and Watters made it seem as if the judge had a choice in the matter, with Watters even using some loaded language -- "obviously this guy's got some predilection to being soft on sex offenders" -- in a way that seemed to suggest that perhaps Padgett had ulterior motives.

Turns out, unsurprisingly, that the real story differs sharply from the way O'Reilly told it. John Campbell, a local defense lawyer, told Tampa's News Channel 8, "As a matter of law, Judge Padgett had no choice... I would like to see that gentleman locked up as well, but the law doesn't allow for it." According to Campbell, unless it was shown that the convict is a flight risk, he had to be let out on bail pending appeal.

Moreover, as he does in most cases -- Terkel's was an exception -- O'Reilly claimed that the only reason he sent Watters out for the ambush was that they had contacted Padgett, who'd refused to speak to the show. That may be true, but it ignores an important fact: As News Channel 8 reported, "Under Florida law, sitting judges are not allowed to discuss pending cases."

O'Reilly's broadcast has inspired protests from local residents. It's also done some damage to our legal system, the idea that people are entitled to due process. Cable news shows focusing on crime generally oversimplify the law, but this sort of thing is on a different level entirely. In O'Reilly's world, if a judge acts in a way we don't like, then it's time to get him, facts and law be damned. That sort of attitude won't end well for anyone.