Weymouth STILL Doesn’t Renounce Pay2Play
Katharine Weymouth has a letter to readers apologizing for the Pay2Play dinner she had scheduled for her home. But it is a muddled mess. She apologizes repeatedly–which seems to me an admission of wrong-doing.
I want to apologize for a planned new venture that went off track and for any cause we may have given you to doubt our independence and integrity.
[snip]
As publisher it is my job to ensure that we adhere to standards that are consistent with our integrity as a news organization. Last week, I let you, and the organization, down.
[snip]
We all make mistakes and hope to be forgiven for them. I apologize to our readers for the mistakes I made in this case.
But while she admits the fliers for the Pay2Play dinner suggested the WaPo was selling access, she still stops short of explaining what she really intended.
A flier distributed last week suggested that we were selling access to power brokers in Washington through dinners that were to take place at my home. The flier was not approved by me or newsroom editors, and it did not accurately reflect what we had in mind. But let me be clear: The flier was not the only problem. Our mistake was to suggest that we would hold and participate in an off-the-record dinner with journalists and power brokers paid for by a sponsor. We will not organize such events.
In fact, the only thing she seems to renounce in this letter is the off-the-record status promised by the fliers. She assures readers that if journalists attend such Pay2Play soirees, they’ll be able to publish what goes on.
If our reporters were to participate, there would be no limits on what they could ask. They would have full access to participants and be able to use any information or ideas to further their knowledge and understanding of any issues under discussion.
[snip]
Further, any conferences or similar events The Post sponsors will be on the record.
And while she does say she won’t allow sponsors to pay for access to the WaPo’s writers–she says no such thing about brokering events between lobbyists and politicians.
From the outset, we laid down firm parameters to ensure that these events would be consistent with The Post’s values. If the events were to be sponsored by other companies, everything would be at arm’s length — sponsors would have no control over the content of the discussions, and no special access to our journalists.
So this is how the WaPo’s publisher believes she can promise "unbiased" news. She swears that her journalists will get to publish what goes on at the Pay2Play soirees. She continues to make the empty promise that sponsors won’t get to control the content of discussions (as if Weymouth will really shut them up when they start attacking the public option).
But she doesn’t, ultimately, back off the idea of selling lobbyists access to key lawmakers in Weymouth’s own living room.
Huh?? Weymouth thinks wapo has integrity? (”adhere to standards consistent with our integrity”)
oh wait! She IS consistent with their integrity. my bad!
OT, check out this chart, ew:
http://www.muckety.com/Thomas-…..25.muckety
This still fits with my theory that lobbyists were being set up with journalists as off-the-record sources. The only thing on-the-record was the event itself. But there is no ban on a journalist using a lobbyist he met at the event as an off-the-record source in the future.
When I read the letter earlier today, it seemed to me that she was exceedingly careful not to walk back the off the record nature of the “chats.”
They would have full access to participants and be able to use any information or ideas to further their knowledge and understanding of any issues under discussion.
This only says they will be able to ask what they want, but it doesn’t it will be on the record. Moreover, we know that most DC reporters treat the default status of conversation as off the record. That she felt she (and let’s not quibble about whose call this was) could promise discussions off the record on behalf of her reporting staff is further evidence that they do not seriously take any commitment to keeping sources on the record.
Can we just turn their lights out now, and unplug their whole operation. Total sham.
Unless this means “videotaped and made available to the public”, I’m not really interested in her excuses.
Now the Steno Pool can have drinks and a nice dinner while raking in a few bucks. This is the Cocktail Circuit taken to it logical greedy next step. the selling off of the last estate in this housing/financial crisis.
The Elitistness of this whole thing just reeks of the down-their-nose ways of those who feel no remorse for a continued war in Iraq they failed to stop and even encouraged it’s Shock and Awe. That Weymouth still doesn’t see anything wrong with this is why the Newspapers are failing, they have no connection to the public on a visceral level. If the Lobbyists are still handing out $250,000 for a single dinner there is still too much corruption creeping the halls of power. Somebody made a ton of money off the Wall St. crash and it is beginning to rear it’s ugly head.
Journalists won’t repeat what they hear at such dinners and coffees. If they did, no one would come, or it wouldn’t be reliable because we would rightly assume the resulting spin was the quo for their quid paid to Weymouth. Or there will be no “journalists” there, only Op-Ed writers.
Either way, that claim is another lie, unless Ms. Weymouth intends on becoming just another DC Madame. The town is full of them. They put lobbyists in bed with the correct lawmakers and administration officials and vice versa. They just call them Georgetown cock ‘n tail parties. Rather than charge a fee, it’s a round robin affair: hosting one event elicits an invitation at someone else’s.
Just think, if Eliot Spitzer had only used Ms. Weymouth’s services, he’d still be governor.
I’m reading that third block pre-snip (before shit hit fan) as a very impressively roundabout way of saying off the record.
I think the idea is that lobbyists are to politics what blogging is to journalism. If blogs are going to take out newspapers, newspapers will hand the narrative over to lobbyists and politicians can just ride above the fray.
Well, salons of this general sort have been going on at least since the days of the French monarchy. Ben Franklin did business at such salons during his ambassadorship, and I believe Balzac wrote about them as social events.
There are several important variables:
*who is invited
*who is admitted (not necessarily the same as the above)
*who is excluded
*who never even hears about it.
Cross the above with the money variables:
*who sponsors the event
*who pays for the food, entertainment, etc.
*what forms of payment are involved or expected.
The main novelty of the WaPo example is that the quid pro quo was laid out so explicitly, in print, and $$$ figures were mentioned.
If the full details of many of the Georgetown soirees were fully known, I’ll bet one could find all gradations between the above variables.
Bob from HI currently wandering around N of LA in S. CA
that letter has been rewritten since I first read it about 6 hours back
now this dispicable liar has finallty admitted that the whole fucking idea violates the ethics of journalism
but the marketing stooge is STILL being thrown under the bus
the marketing stooge was hired especially to create this type of crooked scheme
the marketing stooge was running a company that specialized in this type of crooked shit
so we have a crook, trained in a specific type of crime, hired by the publisher of the wapoop to commit this specific crime
and kathy weymouth thinks she can deny what her intent was, and blame the marketing stooge
no mention of who hired the stooge
that would probably be the publisher, right ???
kathy weymouth, the world’s sorriest liar
1. Blogs don’t have to and won’t be taking out newspapers. The papers are doing an admirable job of killing themselves.
2. I think Weymouth is apologizing to the onyly people who, in her world, really count: ownership. She knows she’s just shot the paper in the head and it’s now a dead tree walking.
Assuming she simply lied about these reporters being able to actually write about this meeting in its aftermath (that is a total lie), it sounds like the only difference between this and the annual Bilderberg meeting is that the oligarchs pay to send in their surrogate lobbyists to sway the press to do their bidding.
Got Fascism?
this goes beyond just pimping journalists to the lobbyists
after firing Froomkon, and then publishing john bolton and paul wolfowitz on the same day that politico was exposing the kathy weymouth as the pimpmaster in chief, the wapoop created the perfect storm of reader revolts
now the wapoop has some choices
rehire Froomkin, or DIE
fire kathy weymouth, or DIE
and fire fred hiatt, or DIE
that is the sum total of the wapoop regaining it’s small shred of integrity
weymouth and hiatt HAVE TO GO
America is SICK AND TIRED of the neocon bullshit that fred hiatt chooses to spew
America is SICK of kathy weymouth and her total lack of morals or intelligence
and America is SICK of watching real journalists get the shaft while bolton and wolfowitz are paid for their war mongering gibberish
According to her wiki Katharine Weymouth:
This in contrast to her grandmother who:
So Grandma was an actual reporter who worked with people from all walks of life while granddaughter came out of the advertising side of things, seemingly with no clue as to what it really meant to be in the newsroom.
My $.02
There’s a sentence at the end of that para about reporter participation that I don’t understand:
What would it mean to be a moderator at a soirée? Or does she mean at conferences? And if so, why is she mixing the two up? Or might she just as well?
As Bob @ 10 says, it always matters to think about who’s being excluded from these affairs. The clear implication of Weymouth’s proposal, whichever one she’s running with today, is that a major newspaper does not believe that any representative of civil society has a place in intimate gatherings of journalists, lobbyists, and power brokers.
I mean, we knew that conservative politicians and lobbyists and their clients believed that, but newspapers are at least supposed to fake an interest in other informed points of view that could be vital to citizens.
At what point is the decision made by the MSM that to keep the money flowing in it is imperative to placate those people shelling out the bucks?
in case you missed it yesterday,
those catty bitches at NYT join in the fun:
Like most republicans, she’s only truly sorry that she got caught. She says the rest of the stuff because she supposed to be sorry for that, but she really isn’t.
This WaPo scandal is proof that under George Bush for 8 years there were no rules, regulations, or laws. Everyone did what they damn well pleased and now look? They’re being exposed left and right! Eventually our nation will get back to where it was prior to the Bush Regime. Well, at least I’m hoping it will.
”To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as ’fact’ that Governor Palin resigned because she is ’under federal investigation’ for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation,” Van Flein said in a statement. ”This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law.”
…defamatory material…
wrt defamation cases – “The truth is an absolute defense.”
“…to doubt our independence and integrity.”
Is she kidding? The Fred Hiatt paper?
This is a paper that famously editorialized:
“…the telecommunications providers seem to us to have been acting as patriotic corporate citizens in a difficult and uncharted environment.”
This is the paper that defended George Will’s idiotic climate science column. And Pinochet.
Glenn Greenwald regularly evicerates Hiatt’s right-wing arguments.
We aren’t stupid, Katherine. And we weren’t born yesterday.
This one sentence says it all:
“If our reporters were to participate, there would be no limits on what they could ask.”
As opposed to SOP where their reporters are limited to only approved questions?
Maybe a Wapoop reporter would step up and disclose the rules they usually work under. Both written and unwritten.
Ii sounded to me like the only thing she genuinely regretted was the fact that the flyers got out and got made public.
Uh oh. Hitler just got the news Sarah Palin has quit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IzNPEGWNos
That clip has served many masters.
7O7!!!!!!!
LOL. I love that series.
Just reading the comments section of Kathy’s “apology”. The folks seem to feel she is only sorry to have been caught. It is not getting favorable reviews so she certainly hasn’t put this to rest. It sort of rambles much like the Queen of Alaska’s presser the otherday.
My take is that this is a money laundering operation by the WaPo to get around the lobbyist control rules enacted by Congress and the White House. The lobbyists get access to political officials by paying the WaPo. If the political officials get scared away from attending these Salons, as did Jim Cooper, then the whole scheme would collapse. If it were just lobbyists and WaPo reporters at the Salons, it would stink as a mere pay-to-play enterprise.
Emptywheel writes:
I think that misses the point.
The real issue is that nobody will mention single payer at all. The Overton Window is nailed firmly shut on that one. (It’s also unfortunate that nobody really knows what “public option” (or “plan”) really means operationally, but that’s another issue for another day.
A VERY famous citizen left this comment at WaPo:
good, he makes the important points. Weymouth’s letter is bogus.
I’m interested in the legal exposure here. It strikes me that Weymouth has set the WaPoop up as the middleman in an expensive influence-peddling scheme. What’s the real difference between what she’s done and what a high-priced madam would do?
What is the difference between what she has done and a high price politician like Max Baucus, Joe Liarman, etc would do?
Since sex wasn’t involved, it’s perfectly legal. And it’s legal in Nevada even if sex IS involved.
If you want to stay respectable, don’t solicit or repay favors in sex or cash.
Boxturtle (The sound you hear as you go through DC is a million backs being scratched at once)
Gotta disagree a little, boxturtle. Sex IS involved. We’re all getting screwed; and I don’t know about you, but I never even got kissed.
And this isn’t even a Dog Day Afternoon.
Integrity and value.
The difference you mention is that here the intercourse is (supposedly) purely verbal.
I’m not seeing any impact to WaPo from this except for newsroom morale…which was already questionable, IMO.
Advertisers are still there. Subscribers are still there. I doubt we’ll see any statistically significant drop in newsstand sales. And of course, politicians and their minions will still give WaPo a scoop in return for favored editorial treatment.
You don’t suppose Palin was ordered to resign in order to take the heat off the much more valuable WaPo?
Boxturtle (Yeah, I know. I’ll change my tinfoil after lunch)
I’m sitting here laughing at the Hitler video! Too funny.
(Christy’s up comparing Alito’s club with Sotomayor’s)
If this were an honest endeavor…why would money be involved…?
Ms. Weymouth is profiled in July Vogue magazine (US), the gist is she has taken on the mantle of Katherine Graham, has a new approach to the newspaper crisis, plus w/ pics of her in the office &’Mommy’ baking with the kids. There is also a mention of the salon cocktail parties bringing together politics, business, art types. Yipes.
It’s a tongue bath, even for Vogue.
(Sue me, I used to work in retail, they still send me Vogue for free.)
Weymouth used the word “integrity” five times in her short non-mea culpa, which proves she or her copyeditor knows how to spell it. This was definitely not a fall-on-her-sword moment as she continues to blame others for stuff she would “never have approved.” The buck stops with a college student intern over there in marketing someplace.
When Weymouth says these little “salons” (every so continental!) are commonplace, it turns out she’s right. The Wall Street Journal conducted one OFF THE RECORD INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE WITH LARRY SUMMERS a few months back. Let’s see Gibbs dance around that.
The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com
“The buck stops with an intern over there in marketing”. Just a coupla bad apples.
OT: This up at TPM: Documents describe chaos of Gitmo’s early months:
Watched Unreliable Sources this morning to see if little Howie would actually address the mess in his own WaPo house…
For some reason his show was only 30 minutes, 28 of them devoted to the breathless question…“Is cable news devoting too much time on the Michael Jackson death?“…not ponting out the irony of his entire show being devoted to same…
And he managed to jam in a 20 second spot at the end where he actually did point out the Weymouth mess, but of course with not enough time to actually discuss it!
What a pathetic fool this man is…and he thinks he’s the cleverest guy around!
Reminds me of that joke “We’ve already established what you are, we’re just haggling about the price.”
I know nothing about her except what I have read in the last few days, but I suspect Weymouth wanted to be as influential as Katherine Graham, without spending 30 years in Washington to do it. I think hosting these parties was going to be her quick way to become Washington’s queen. It might have worked, too, if she hadn’t also been trying to make money off them — it wasn’t only her own staff she was selling access too, but also all those supposedly influential politicians and Obama staffers who were going to be the Fearless Freep act that those lobbyists were paying to see. I don’t think the Washington Villagers will forgive this tackiness, and nobody will be coming over to the Weymouth house for dinner any time soon.
Weymouth apparently doesn’t understand what “off-the-record” means.
Weymouth says Post reporters would “be able to use any information or ideas to further their knowledge and understanding of any issues under discussion.”
Uh, Ms. Weymouth, you just gave us the definition of “off-the-record”. Indeed, the whole purpose of “off-the-record” interviews is to give reporters information the specifics of which will not be reported and will not be attributed, but will permit reporters to deepen their “knowledge and understanding” of the issues. Ms. Weymouth began her mea culpa by admitting that offering “off-the-record” access was a mistake, and then promises that such access will be off-the-record. This goes beyond incoherence; it is practiced sophistry.
Weymouth channels Palin
All that’s missing from this stroll through Villager Sociosphere is the loud quaking of ducks.
that should be — loud quacking of ducks. However …
Given her attorney’s weird threats against the press over Todd & Sarah’s Wasilla bribery scheme, something foul in Alaska is quaking like an aspen tonight.
OT, but another’s “letter to readers”, via the Politico, this is just getting more and more bizarre:
Do read that letter (4 page PDF) from Sarah Palin’s attorneys.
Based on the style and illogic in the writing, I wonder if they’re somehow actually kin of Sarah’s.
*wapo integrity* is an oxymoron.
Apologies for going so way O/T, but this is troubling stuff.
Biden: U.S. won’t stop Israeli strike on Iran
By Haaretz Service
“U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Sunday that the Obama administration would not stand in Israel’s way should the latter chooses to take military action to eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat. “
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1097911.html
*************************************************************
July 5, 2009
Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran
Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Sarah Baxter
“The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…..638568.ece
First the White House spins Joe as getting an increased voice in foreign policy — thanks Dick! — then following on a week of Sanford, Palin, cap and trade and the public option, for some reason the one network that received special access Wednesday night is giving over the biggest part of its flagship news punditry show to … Joe Biden!
That Haaretz piece is a bastardization of what Biden actually stated, and that’s uncharacteristic of that particular paper. Clearly his words meant Israel can’t count on the support of the Obama administration for a bombing run on or notionally targeting Iranian nuclear facilities; but it came out of his mouth couched in ‘new improved Obama pragmatic realism’, thus leaving entirely open — because entirely unaddressed — I reject Georgie S’s spin he asked after this “three times” — the nature of the U.S. position should Iran retaliate. That Haaretz of all Israeli outlets would spin it thus means this is being encouraged or permitted as part of the Obama ’soft pressure’ diplomacy, in this case towards Iran.
I’m glad you said that, LabDancer, because I thought there was a gap between what Biden said and both sets of reactions, but I couldn’t make sense of it. Still not sure I can, but at least I know I’m not imagining things.
I’m still trying to like Biden, but I wish he sounded more like Admiral Mullen. Is there anyone who will say that any attack on Iran would be utterly disastrous and wrong both short-term and long, and civilized peoples don’t want to hear this c**p any longer?
Is there anyone who will say that any attack on Iran would be utterly disastrous and wrong both short-term and long, and civilized peoples don’t want to hear this c**p any longer?
I shudder to say it, but Ron Paul would be about the only US politician saying something along those lines.
I think part of the problem is that no one is well served by disarray in Iran right now. Mousavi isn’t going to have the chops, in the short run, to step in and lead Iran and the world needs some kind of leadership they can deal with in Iran. I really think the impact of Biden and the Saudis is going to be to strengthen Iran’s existing gov, and that the intent was to do just that. Nothing strengthens a country in internal turmoil quite like having an external threat to unite them. There’s no way a series of statments about countries that wouldn’t interfere with Israeli bombings of Iran is going to do much in Iran OTHER than rallying people to an otherwise weak and unpopular leadership. See, e.g., Bush and GWOT.
I think Obama’s crew are pretty amoral, Republican clones, but not so stupid that they don’t realize that even the topic of Israel attacking Iran, with NO reaction from us, does nothing but strengthen Iran’s leadership a this time. IMO, FWIW.
Meanwhile, Biden appears to have gotten some pushback in Iraq from his newfound status of Iraqiguru.
Hopefully Obama does realize and remember (of course he does) that Biden’s who Iraqi Solution Gameplan involved carving Iraq up into lesser components (a Khurdish, Sunni and Shia province). So as you are pulling troops out of the cities and predicting violent clashes and there is a greater and greater need for Iraqs military to actually act as a cohesive unit, is it really the time to send Biden over as our voice on Iraq?
I’m probably wrong on this, but reading between the lines to me this sounds like Biden was pushing Maliki on the Biden plan, to divy up Iraq as a way of quelling internal violence, and Maliki was getting hot under the collar over it:
Biden was also apparently telling Stephanopolus that the unemployment figures right now are a result of “no one” understanding how bad the economy actually had been. ???? And yet … I seem to recall things like a Nobel prize winning economist in columns with a major paper and tv and even on his blog, over and over saying the stim pack was too little, too much tax breaks not enough job stimulus, etc. Blog posts here and throughout “the left” as well – then there was input from another econ guru, Stiglitz … I think it has become very clear just where anyone to the left of Goldman Sachs on the economy and to the left of Jack Goldsmith on disappearing people into forever torture stands with the Obama administration. They are “no one.”
Seriously, when Dana Rohrbacher is to the left of Obama on the Uighurs, and when Democrats fall all over themselves to consent to a CIA gen counsel who just can’t for the life of him decide wtf is torture and certainly can’t commit to making sure he won’t allow any, I really don’t have any-much desire to see any of them re-elected. As ineffective as they were as the “loyal opposition” they at least did things like block Rizzo’s appointment.
Oh well. It’s an odd day when the thing I seen on the innertubes that makes me least perturbed is a kos diary on Schumer making halfway commitments to a maybekindasorta public option.
As usual, you enrich the perspective, whether it’s something we want to contemplate or not. Shuddering right along with you.
and skdadl @ 60. Thanks for providing more info. Not having a tee vee service, I didn’t see and hear what he said. Interesting the spin that’s being taken, though. Too interesting. Sigh.
we laid down firm parameters to ensure that these events would be consistent with The Post’s values
brings to mind:
we obtained legal opinions to insure that our interrogation tactics would be consistent with America’s values
Question for bmaz, ew, et al:
Where does the 1st amendment stand re Weymouth’s scheme? iow, if it were Matt Cooper and Judy Judy, would Fitz be able to compel testimony if it happened at a Weymouth party?
Now I know: Froomkin got the best deal!
Heh, absolutely.
Soooooooo, Big Media is meeting in Sun Valley to try and figure out how to survive.