Colby: “Fair warning is fair play.”
On Saturday, Colbert I. King took to the Washington Post opinion page in another attempt to wrest D.C. politics from the grip of modernity. This time, he lashed out at the trend of candidates and/or their supporters doing personal opposition research. The lament was brought about by the anonymous deliverance to King of a 146-page dossier on mayoral candidate Adrian Fenty. It was given to him, he writes, by “a longtime supporter of council chairman and mayoral hopeful Linda Cropp.”
While some of his ire is directed at the Cropp campaign and others that might muck up the D.C. political scene, he reserves his real scorn for members of the media that play along. And not just any media: King, it turns out, was largely referring to his own paper’s reporters.
Here’s the shot across the bow of the Metro desk:
I don’t know whether copies of the “research” have been slipped to other journalists or whether contents of the dossier have been parceled out to individual reporters as “tips.”
Between now and Election Day, other anti-Fenty stories may turn up in the media. It’s a good bet that some of them will be based on information in the dossier. The only question is whether news organizations, if they use the information, will disclose to the public that the source is a Fenty opponent. Or will they pretend they dug it up on their own? Never mind, I’m not the ombudsman or a news editor.
King wouldn’t have to wait long for his question to be answered. The same day that the column ran, the Metro section fronted a story by Yolanda Woodlee that looked like it could have come from the opposition dossier—with no explanation of where the info originated.
King, deputy editor of the Post editorial page, says he didn’t know it was coming out the same day but was aware that Metro reporters were working on the story and probably wouldn’t follow his advice. “They said they wouldn’t discuss their sources with me, and, I assume, in the paper as well,” he says. A Post source says that Woodlee’s story did not originate from the dossier, but from a tip (or is that “tip”?) that led her to search civil records in Montgomery County. Woodlee wouldn’t comment about the chastising.
Just as King knew the story was in the works, King says the reporters also knew their knuckle-rapping was around the corner. “I told them what the thrust of my column would be,” he says. “Fair warning is fair play.”
August 29th, 2006 at 11:45 am
The thing that got me about the Woodlee article is there was no point. Yeah, Fenty was sued. but so what? It clearly was a dispute between his bank and his title company and the Fentys were peripheral to the whole thing.
A friend and I were shaking our heads over the contrast. And neither of us are committed to any candidate.
August 29th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
On the subject of smears, this is my all-time favorite Colbert King piece, and maybe my all-time favorite column ever. Doggie on the barbie!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/AR2006031001843.html
August 29th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
The most troubling aspect of the Post’s coverage has been with regard to the Council Chair contest. Although the Post wrote two critical articles, and an editorial, about Gray’s felon fund raiser and frat big bro Bruce Bereano last election cycle, the reporters assigned to the Patterson/Gray race have yet to even mention that Bereano again threw a secretive Gray fundraiser in Baltimore (which Gray ommitted from his calendar). Public records show Gray raked in tens of thousands in MD donations in a 2 week period coinciding with the Bereano event.(BB is also disbarred in MD and DC for dishonest and fraudulent misconduct!) But I guess that’s not newsworthy to Post reporters.
August 29th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
The Woodlee article did have a point- to reduce Fenty’s positives by injecting doubt. Any Cropp employee… er campaign strategist could have told you that…
August 30th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Fight the Hype If You Can:
The real story is both Fenty’s and Cropp’s leadership and time on the job still has not changed D.C.’s low educational achievement, unaffordable housing, expanding homelessness, rising HIV-AIDS infections, more random violent crime, increasing joblessness, middle-class/working-class displacement and an expanding population of poverty-locked D.C. citizens. But no one is hyping that news.
http://www.mooreforpeople.com/html/dennis_moore_for_dc_mayor.html