Walking on Eggshells?

The war of words between Harry Jaffe and the Washington Post is heating up. Media columnist and National Editor Jaffe, who's long had a love-hate relationship with the Post (i.e. the Post loves to hate him), got called on by the Toronto Globe and Mail this weekend and says he doesn't think the Post could repeat the Watergate scoops today: "I think the stars were aligned in so many improbable ways at that time for The Washington Post," suggests Harry Jaffe. "You had the patrician publisher who had high standards, you had a swashbuckling editor who was brave and was willing to take chances, who pushed his troops. And you were in a country where questioning authority was the mantra of the day." The paper's primary competition, The Washington Star, folded in 1981, allowing the Post to relax a little. "Thirty years later you have a one-newspaper town, you have a cold-blooded publisher-owner in Don Graham, you have a very painstaking editor in Len Downie, and the mood of the paper reflects the mood of the country: We're just much more careful, we want to be politically correct," said Jaffe. "Sometimes the Post seems like it's walking on eggshells, and that certainly makes it more difficult to pursue the kinds of leads and the kinds of tips that, if you keep following the thread, will take you to the kind of serious wrongdoing we saw in Watergate." His weekend comments are hardly a departure for Jaffe, who has been hitting the Post pretty hard recently (the most recent Washingtonian "Post Watch" column says the LAT has surpassed the WP as the best investigative paper). 'Dem is fighting words. Perhaps given that type of rhetoric, it's no surprise that in all of the thousands of words the Post has written about Deep Throat and W. Mark Felt over the past week it has never mentioned that the Washingtonian first guessed Felt thirty years ago--even though it's quoted his denial to them twice. Meanwhile, everyone from Slate to the NYT to the Boston Globe to Le Monde has offered a hat tip. UPDATE: An emailer snarks, "Am I right that a columnist for the Examiner just called Washington a one-newspaper town?" Touché.

Fishbowl

Walking on Eggshells?

Garrett

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Garrett