Froomkin’s Sins of the Village
As you’ve heard by now, that beacon of sanity at the WaPo during the Bush years, Dan Froomkin, just got canned. I’ve been puzzling through what Dan might mean with his statement,
I’m terribly disappointed. I was told that it had been determined that my White House Watch blog wasn’t ‘working’ anymore. But from what I could tell, it was still working very well," Froomkin said. "I also thought White House Watch was a great fit with The Washington Post brand, and what its readers reasonably expect from the Post online.
I think that the future success of our business depends on journalists enthusiastically pursuing accountability and calling it like they see it. That’s what I tried to do every day," he continued. "I’m not sure at this point what I’m going to do next. I may take White House Watch elsewhere, or may try something different.
And I keep coming back to his emphasis on "pursuing accountability." So I decided to review a selection of Dan’s most recent columns to see what he might mean by that:
Spending Jitters Don’t Change the Fundamentals
The Amazing Shrinking Regulatory Overhaul
Obama’s New Road Rules May Fall Short
Baking Transparency Into Government
Good Questions From a Senator and an Activist
Bush’s Red Ink, Obama’s Problem
How Cheney Bent DOJ to His Will
And there was an interesting exchange in a live chat earlier in the week where Dan complained that "more news organizations haven’t put top reporters on [the wiretap story] (and the torture story) and told them not to let go until they’ve gotten to the bottom of everything."
Aside from Froomkin’s sheer productivity (particularly as compared to his colleague, Dana Milbank, who complains about writing 3-4 750 word columns a week), these posts reveal certain things. On some issues–torture and wiretapping–Froomkin is increasingly critical, particularly as to Obama’s "schizophrenia" regarding "transparency." On financial, health care, and foreign policy issues, Dan has been balanced–critical at times, but definitely appreciative of the complexity of Obama’s task and his successes there. And of course, he’s still beating up Bush and Cheney.
And that, apparently, is enough to get you fired from the Village rag.
To my mind, Glenn Greenwald has the best take on this so far.
All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point: what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama.
Sure, Froomkin’s critical. He’s critical in serious ways–perhaps more serious than his criticisms of Bush. But they are–as Glenn said–principled.
Is that what gets you fired in the Village these days? Adhering to principle over party?l
Froomkin was the only reason to read the WaPo, otherwise a most unrewarding exercise. Now we can drop the unrewarding exercise, and follow Froomkin wherever he goes.
Let’s see … Eugene Robinson started his self-syndication online with the St Louis American; when Walter Pincus writes beyond his national security beat, he gets published online in Harvard’s Nieman group, where Froomkin himself has been a big presence for years now; Michael Kinsley mostly up to writing books and granting interviews, and the little work he does for WaPo seems routinely his worst; Tom Toles is syndicated and anyway is available on gocomics.com; if you want her moving funnies you can bypass entering the wapo site for any other purpose through anntelnaes.com … is that it?
I’ve already removed the icon from my toolbar.
ditto
I agree, the only column I read @ WaPo was Froomkin… occasionally Carrie Johnson has an interesting tidbit, but the paper is schizophrenic with an inherent lean to the right while trying to bend the other way.
Think about, symbolically, what this move says: we are firing Froomkin who was critical of both Bush & Obama, and we are now showcasing Wolfowitz who is the disgraced former World Bank President and War Criminal.
It could be argued that Froomkin had perhaps the most prominent vehicle through which there was a push for torture accountability. That’s where my money is on the reason for his firing. With “White House” in the blog name, that was just too close for comfort now. We can’t “look back” on that torture thing.
Sort of makes me wonder whether Rahm was complaining. I’d hate to see the kind of blackballing from our guys we saw from Bush.
Rahm and Foxman are joined at the hip, er, make that “roots.”
You’re on the right path…just follow it all the way to the pinnacle of US political and media power (one and the same) – Tel Aviv.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14836500/
Media ownership study ordered destroyed
Sept 14, 2006
Every last piece’ destroyed
If journalists don’t hang together to oppose this new era of blacklisting and censorship, they will clearly all hang individually, one at a time, if they dare mention the word Israel. Peace does not serve Likud’s agenda. War does.
Contrary to what Mr. Foxman would force us all to believe, the truth does not have an anti-Semitic bias.
In America – they came for the journalists.
Learn from the lessons of history. OBVIOUSLY, the oppressed have become the oppressor. Yet no one dares speak of it.
Hey, he survived blackballing Bush toadies.
Ditto, can remove WaPo from the reading list. I can only think of a few pieces from WaPo that I’ve bookmarked and refer to as resources, and they were written by guest contributors or WaPo bloggers — meaning the rest of their organization is not making a dent in my reading.
Can’t wait to see where Froomkin lands…ahem.
Can’t wait to see what WaPo gives as a reason for this batshit crazy move.
Here’s what the official line is, at teh first link:
Meaning, they haven’t come up with a good excuse yet.
Gary Webb’s a prime example of the MSM screwing a truthteller. As for Mark Lombardi, J.H. Hatfield, Danny Casalaro–some of the Villagers really don’t like the truth.
Dan Froomkin, Washington Post, thrown out by corporate media, June 2009.
Robert Sheer, Los Angeles Times, thrown out by corporate media, November 2005.
History repeats itself. Pissing off power, one administration at a time.
I would like to point out that those three “Milbank Units” per week are less than useless compared to what Froomkin produces, both in quantity and quality.
It is a sad day.
The silver lining may be that the Post will poach Douthat and Brooks from the Times. If so, it would only be fair for the Times to pick up Froomkin’s contract.
Perhaps Dan’s colleagues at Harvard can arrange a well-paid gig at the Kennedy School or a Frank Rich like gig at the Times, while he sorts out his next move. Unlike more vulnerable colleagues in LA, SFO, Boulder, Miami and Boston, Dan has the connections and talent to make a fiery comeback.
I suspect what most riled Fred Hyatt was that Froomkin insisted on remaining a real journalist who happened to have an opinion column. (Even there, his column was forcibly renamed as “opinion” instead of news after a series of phone calls several years ago from a ranting Karl Rove.)
I suspect Arianna has seated herself on Dan’s doorstep right now. She knows a draw when she sees one.
God let’s hope so. Even if Huffpost is People lite, Froomkin’s distillation and combining of other columns was unique and highly educational.
She seems to have the financial muscle, or with Dan and others, might get it. The draw – the immediate publicity and the enduring good work – would be a boon if transferred to the new media. It would accelerate the Post’s transition to Pravda on the Potomac and enable the resuscitation of journalism in America.
[There are always foreign papers, like the Guardian UK, that could put their hats in the Froomkin ring.]
The commercials and People magazine aspect of Huff Po has me visiting that spot about once a week. Justin Raimando wrote a great piece about Huff Po and where the funding is coming from “Huff Po Israeli occupied territory”
It just leaves you sad. A part of my always responds viscerally to the thought of losing newpapers and print journalism – I remember Sat rituals of coffee and WaPo and NYT and morning rituals of WSJ and realize the benefits of stationed reporters and new sourcing etc., but then stuff like Miller frontpaging NYT and Froomkin getting kicked to the curb (after dealing with pool boy for way too long first) and you almost don’t give a damn about them anymore.
It’s a great thing to have the info from a Priest or Leonnig, but it’s really not worth paying out to support a paper that was sad and bummed to lose out on Domenech but chirpy over getting rid of Froomkin – and that keeps Krauthammer and Wills etc around for the “how high can we stack our brainless, factless neocons” piles.
I need a drink.
Got Bourbon??
You ask a Kentucky girl that?
Although I am more of a vodka drinker, still, of COURSE I have Bourbon.
I’d rather see Froomkin at someplace like TPM, if they could afford him, than Huffpo, but that’s jmo.
Agreed about where I would like to see Dan go in the new media, but as a former WaPo columnist, he presumably can demand a goodly price. If the Times can piss away $1.5 million or so a year David Brooks, I’d hope someone in the new media could make Dan a reasonable offer for his valuable services.
YIKES!
For something like Brooks they give 1.5 mil? Laugh? Cry? Drink.
Bourbon and branch water, vodka strait up or with a twist, or a cellar temperature Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale?
(Yup, that’s the figure I heard a year ago.)
My absolute favorite beer.
Try Dale’s Pale Ale for another delicious treat…
I think we should pay NYT etc. by the click. If I want to read Collins, I pay. If I don’t want to read Rove, I don’t click.
Mary:
We all need to stop speaking in “their” code.
Neocon = Israel. Just say it out loud.
Likud got Froomkin fired.
it doesn’t leave me sad. it leaves me happy that the washington post, which is a neocon rag, just shot itself in the foot.
I enjoy seeing bad newspapers collapse, just as i want other bad actors (like Blue Cross for example0 to collapse.
cus let’s be honest here: if the washignton post sees its mission as being a mouthpiece for neocon liars, then it’s not actually a newspaper, it’s a propaganda organ.
let ‘em kill themselves slowly, and let’s concentrate on buiilding norgs.
If this is owing to ranting from Rahm, Obama is courting a one-term presidency. It would be of a piece with his Rovian definition of transparency: “It’s for me to know and for you not to find out.”
Will be trying to catch up.
Ot..just amazed by the amount of MSM coverage of the Iranian protestors over the last week. Hell where was the MSM when tens of thousands of Protestors (I was one of them) were protesting in D.C. after the Bush selection in 200O. Where was the MSM during the anti invasion marches when hundreds of thousands of protestors( I went to six protest in D.C. and New York) in the fall of 2000 and Feb 2003. Really something how folks like George Will, Senator Chambliss, Rep Pence and many more are celebrating the Iranian protestors making them out to be heroes and these same folks demonized anti invasion protesters here in the states and the MSM either showed clips of the 20 people out of 200,ooo wearing mask over there or just completely ignored American protestors. Guess you have to live in Iran to get our media’s attention if you are protesting.
Will, Chambliss, Pence celebrating Iranian protestors, demonized American protestors. Hmmmm.
anyone see Flynnt Leverett on Washington Journal the other morning he wrote an article saying “get over it” The Iranian elections were as legal as ours
From Politico’s Michael Calderone:
And this is a bad thing?
link: http://www.politico.com/blogs/….._Post.html
Actually, I was interested that OmbudAndy’s blog is where this got reported at WaPo.
I can imagine the editors sitting around trying to figure out who should break the story. . .
“I don’t want to touch it — you touch it.”
“I don’t want to touch it — you touch it.”
“Hey, let’s get Andy. He’ll touch it. He’ll touch anything.”
And from Andy’s perspective, it makes a certain amount of sense. He knows he’s going to be writing about it sooner or later, so why not set the tone of the discussion?
That used to be called doing one’s job. Now it’s “ruffling feathers”, ie, rocking the boat, irritating corporate and government moguls who pay the bills. News for readers? Not too important.
at the fdl brunch at the first yearly kos convention i watched as dan circled the room looking for a seat, and almost exploded with joy when he sat at my table. i had the good manners to let him get a head start in the eating before asking why so many of his colleagues were such cocktail weenie-eating bushbot stenographers.
he said he didn’t get it either, that many of them are his friends and he knew they didn’t have a conscious bias, but he was heading back to D.C. to do a little ruminating and writing on the whole situation.
my enduring memory from the brunch is of a truly good guy.
cue the shirelles: i will follow him, follow him wherever he may go…
rosalind, you are an inspiration.
Ok — maybe a little over the top?
So disappointing. Count me as one with a bookmark on Froomkin, but not Wapo–buhbye. Good you link to Greenwald, who catalogues all of the tools who “work” so well through Wapo from the right.
It’s a bit baffling. I’m reluctant to jump in on Rahm-bashing, but it’s hard to avoid making the assumption of some fingerprints at the scene. Even if Froomkin just lost out in a battle with somebody like Krauthammer and the White House wasn’t sad to see him go. Kind of amazing to have survived all the way through Bush, but not making it to 200 days under Obama.
Even bigger, however, is the WTF? with the dying Washington Post. If newspapers have any chance to survive–and they don’t–it will be adapting and converting to an online presence. So why do you get rid of the guy in the forefront of that? Death wish is a funny thing, I guess. Must be a fun place to work.
Yeah, Froomkin is great. Can anyone recommend an email address to send a protest?
(OT: jeff kaye has a got a doozy next door on the mothership: Torture Architects Mitchell & Jessen in Road to Maui)
$336 is the price of an admission ticket to a WaPo shareholders’ meeting. There one could ask management about the business argument for letting one of their most-linked columnists go, and how it squares with the following statement in their 10-K:
This statement says “the future is online” as clear as can be.
Facing that, I don’t see how a management-bot answers a shareholder question about a highly-linked columnist with “well, from time to time we have to do things.”
The good thing about the ticket is you can sell it back once you’re done. But it’s been dropping like a stone since October, so don’t hold on too long…
Wonder if Jane is up to doing another fund raiser for a Froomkin blog. Wonder if Froomkin would be willing to do a comparison of how much air time protestors of the invasion, war and Bush 2000 selection compared to the coverage our MSM is giving Iranian protestors.
Agree, he was the only thing at the Willingly Poussed that I could stand reading. I imagine Carl Bernstein will have something to say, though the woodward will not. The Post have rendered themselves into lard.
OT, but as we’re talking about accountability, this story (ht TPM) about the FBI notes from Cheney’s interview during the CIA leak investigation, takes the cake:
ApacheTrout(36) — Obviously you missed Mary’s rejoinder on that bit in the last thread.
Walter Cronkite is very ill.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/n…..09.article
I’m not a big fan of HuffPo. I’d much prefer to see Dan end up at Salon, or at the NYT.
I still can’t believe WaPo did this. I must really be missing something. I just doesn’t make sense as a business decision.
What a sad bunch of fucking losers, is all I can say.
I’m still really pissed. As pissed as I was at 3:00 today.
Michael Froomkin, Dan’s brother: “My Brother Told Me Not To Say Anything”
http://www.discourse.net/
You asked:
No, just adhering to principle.
Beside Gene Robinson, does the wapoop have any other decent journalists they could fire
cuz I’m thinking this is a case of “Publisher-icide”
it’s kinda like Hari Kari, cept you kill your newspaper and live with the shame
for a repuglitard, that’s an exact match
so maybe a certain blog we all know an love could make some room on the mast head
havin a wapoop reject on staff could really boost yer marketability
I’d be willin to split the stale pizza (not 50-50, but 70-30, maybe)
I got fired from a paper route once, so you’d have another MSM reject around for me to talk to, if that helps
got an address, maybe we could get him to send us a resume …
(winkin & runnin)
It was very likely that this posting right here is what caused this man right here to demand the firing of Dan so that never again would the State of Israel be left in a position where this much truth about Israeli deceptions – or a story of crimes like this is ever again written by reporters or bloggers in the United States of America.
Apparently, the most powerful man in the world is Abe Foxman (The Enemy Of Free Speech In America). Want to know why you were fired, Dan? Start there.
Here are the REAL NEWS STORIES that US ”journalists” know of, but won’t touch:
http://bigdanblogger.blogspot……-2009.html
I hope he doesn’t go to HuffPo. It should be some place in the newspaper establishment. Maybe back at the R.C. Hoiles fishwrap in Orange County, Calif.
This is terrible to hear when they just gave Ezra a live chat every week. Ezra was the only reason I had to visit that site anyhow. He has become backup whenever the NYT prints a health care story.
Froomkin hardly sounds like Gideon Levy in that column, unless plunger is seriously suggesting that quoting Josh Marshall and the BBC got him canned. Let’s see, we have a statement that Obama is going to stand firm putting pressure on Israel. That is an argument my hawkish husband used back in November. We have one Republican congresscritter quoted saying that Congress will push back against him. Great. Here is a paragraph from my latest Brit Tzedek v’Shalom email:
“A growing number of prominent U.S. Senators and Representatives, including several Jewish Congressmembers, have begun to openly express their concerns over Israel’s settlement policy. These include Jewish members of Congress such as Sen. Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Henry Waxman, a senior Democrat, as well as the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John Kerry. During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, several Jewish lawmakers met with the Prime Minister and expressed the opinion that “it was their responsibility to make him very, very aware of the concerns of the administration and Congress,” according to a congressional aide.” Whether as much as a toothless resolution comes to the floor on this issue I don’t know since Congress is very busy. Per NYT they are having to put off the transportation bill.
The entire Obama / Congressional push-back against Israel re: settlements is, in my calculation, a charade. It simply plays well in Peoria.
Froomkin just did too good a job formulating a case against Israel’s expansion of settlements. The “media” isn’t supposed to help make Obama’s alleged case. They’re supposed to stand by and await the next false flag attack by Israel against Israel, and then side sympathetically with them when Israel again proclaims that there’s just no negotiating with terrorists.
It’s been working since Mossad bombed the King David Hotel over 60 years ago – why expect a change of tactics now?
Froomkin just didn’t get the memo.
Here’s the whole FAQ on Natural Growth
And here’s Gideon Levy’s latest column This was so good, it was worth an Oxdown. You could spring off about Obama and the meaning of political participation, etc.
Here is the relevant Gideon Levy column for comparison purposes IMHO: A true friend of Israel Found through Tapped through Philip Weiss!
long ago the fourth estate turned to real estate, up for sale to the highest bidder
now that froomkin is gone the fourth estate goes quietly, oh so quietly into the night
let’s hope a real news agency picks him up
HEY…WAIT A MINUTE
we’re a real news agency now, maybe he can have a stomping ground here until someone from conventional media steals him away!
Thanks plunger. 60 years ago was a bit ahead of my time so I’m learning about this for the first time.
That is precisely how Junior, Cheney, et. al. justify 9/11 — a legitimate military action.
Vice President Cheney is, of course, correct. There is a black and white difference between the actions of masked terrorists (how to create a government or recognize it when they all wear masks?) and legitimate recognized States who endorse freedom such as Israel. At this point in time when we are all under threat from North Korea and Iran, we ought to all be opposing their willing helpers including Hamas and Hezbollah. To the extent Froomkin destroyed the effectiveness of our intelligence agency, he deserved his fate.
Froomkin was the only actual heir-apparent to “WoodStein” in any meaningful sense. He’s the only one who would have “followed the money” if WaterGate was a contemporary scandal, instead of past history.
The WaPo has now relegated itself to another modern-day fish-wrapper… all that’s left is for the paper to join the Murdoch Media as the junior member at the Fox Village Square.
Masaccio has his newest post up on the front page: “The More Things Change…”
I would strongly suggest FDL get into the competition for Dan’s services.
Besides being convenient for me, it would undoubtedly bring a huge increase in eyeballs and potential donors.
Wow, as fearful as you are of the big ole scary world, I am surprised you were able to get an internet signal out. Good work!
Froomkin is the one afraid of the real world. Dick Cheney unlike all, including Froomkin, views it with unafraid and eternal vigilence…
WaPo Loses Its Top Web Columnist
http://www.harpers.org/archive…..c-90005240
For years, the best thing going at the Washington Post’s website has been Dan Froomkin’s “White House Watch” ( originally called “White House Briefing.” ) In fact, aside from the need to link to pieces from their print edition, there has been no other consistent reason to visit the website. Froomkin bored into the Bush Administration’s selling of the war with Iraq, its introduction of warrantless surveillance, and its treatment of prisoners, particularly the policies that encouraged torture and official cruelty. On each of these points, he was a strong counterpoint to the official editorial page voice of WaPo, which was an essential vehicle for selling the Iraq War and for soliciting support for Bush-era policies, even while it occasionally feigned criticism of them. With the arrival of the Obama team, Froomkin hasn’t let up for a second, a clear demonstration that he doesn’t play the partisan political games of old-media hacks like David Broder who clog the WaPo roster. Froomkin’s handling of the torture issue, among other things, consistently brought far deeper insights to the issues raised than the Post’s increasingly fact-challenged editorial page. Froomkin was particularly strong in discussing legal matters, a fact I link to his brother Michael, a prominent law professor. Froomkin’s work was heavily read and circulated. Indeed, as Glenn Greenwald notes, Froomkin was the author of three of the ten most closely followed columns published at WaPo. His work was consistently well regarded. So why would WaPo say good-bye to its premier web writer?
Can we, at minimum, kick around getting behind a demand for initiation of an impeachment investigation now, as an “incentive” for Mr. Obama to stop his obstruction and complicity. I’m not going to fall into this way of thinking…it’s not thinking, it’s being in lockstep, partisanship, IMO:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/g…..index.html
“….And then, most ironically (given John Harris’ accusations that he’s not objective), is Froomkin’s insistence on treating all politicians the same — subjecting all political leaders to adversarial journalistic scrutiny rather than declaring himself on one side or the other and spouting standard partisan talking points. He couldn’t be pigeonholed as reflexively pro-Bush or pro-Obama — i.e., he has intellectual and journalistic integrity — and therefore confused the mind-numbing little formula used to simplify and deaden our political debates. The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen put this best:….”
If you go back and look at Froomkin’s column’s you will see that he was actually quite supportive initially of Obama. He thought the page had been turned on the whole sad sick Bush era. He even put the best face on Obama’s first backtracks. It was only in the last month or two that he began to sharpen his criticisms, but even then only on specific issues.
What I am getting at here is that some of us, me for instance, have been a lot harsher in our criticisms of Obama for a lot longer. Yet that even someone like Froomkin who was a lot milder and more moderate in his treatment of Obama should get canned should tell you how hostile MSM rags like the WaPo are to even moderate voices.
It’s a great example of political censorship and of just how far CheneyBush moved the goal posts to the right. Those expensive midfield seats are now on the goal line.
Dloerke(65)…you’ll see a lot clearer if you manage to remove your baseball-sized cranium out of your ass!
Yes, especially if you’re engaged in an on-going battle with management. Recent Froomkin articles at the Nieman Journalism Lab indicate he wasn’t pleased with WaPo management:
The WaPoo is homogenizing the Reichwing news the way Clear Channel homogenized music radio (”because that’s what the people want!”). Beat reporters and real, original news is the first thing to go. Apart from taking time and being expensive, facts have such an ugly way of irritating the powers that be.
I figure the WaPoop is thinking it might get a 0bama bailout. and if they have an homest journalist who does his job, then no bail out for the POS newspaper. It makes me sick.
Paul Krugman weighs in.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c…..in-firing/
WaPo wants America to read a zionist war pig instead, they replaced Froomkin with Paul Wolfowitz. The “liberal media” recycles neo-cons. Look at Wolfowitz’ first article, the Iran War drumbeat has begun by the Israel-first Wolfowitz, that’s what I call an American traitor:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..03496.html
So, the “liberal” Washington Post fires a liberal, to put in a column by a recycled war criminal.
The drumbeat started beating just after the invasion of Iraq