Maybe it’s best if sports guys just leave the tweeting to the teenagers, or, at least leave them to those who can get the facts straight.

Washington Post sports columnist Mike Wise got busted this week for tweeting something he made up out of the blue, or pink, or orange, or whatever color tweets are when they are hatched.

Wise “broke” the bogus story that Pittsburgh Steelers Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger would only have to sit out five games instead of the six games he had actually been suspended by the league for.

Wise has since been suspended by the Post for one month (the equivalent of four games) for tweeting the made-up story. As Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander explained to readers:

The action stems from a short scoop to his Twitter followers that said Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who has been suspended for six games by the NFL after allegations of misconduct, will only have to sit out five games. “Roethlisberger will get five games, I’m told,” Wise tweeted.

That was big news for those who follow professional football, and it quickly spread on the Internet. But as Wise soon acknowledged, it was a hoax that was part of a misguided attempt to comment on the lowered standards of accuracy for information shared on social media.

Fabrication is a major journalistic transgression. He’s lucky he wasn’t fired.

(more…)

On Sunday the Washington Post ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, issued an interesting apology for his paper’s failure to write about the Department of Justice’s handling of the Philadelphia New Black Panther Party case.

After summarizing the case and the controversy over it, Alexander admitted,

The Post didn’t cover it. Indeed, until Thursday’s story, The Post had written no news stories about the controversy this year. In 2009, there were passing references to it in only three stories.

That’s prompted many readers to accuse The Post of a double standard. Royal S. Dellinger of Olney [Maryland] said that if the controversy had involved Bush administration Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, “Lord, there’d have been editorials and stories, and it would go on for months.”

“To be sure,” Alexander said, “ideology and party politics are at play,” although he seemed to be referring only to liberal bloggers, “Fox News and right-wing bloggers,” “Congressional Republicans,” Sarah Palin, etc. No admission, that is, of ideology or party politics at the Post.

To his credit, Alexander chastises the Post for not covering the controversy and concludes by telling his colleagues, “Better late than never. There’s plenty left to explore.” He even suggests some topics: (more…)

The David Weigel saga continues to stagger on, becoming ever more intellectually incoherent. Not only has Weigel written yet another story about himself, this time for Esquire, but Ezra Klein of the Washington Post — the man who recommended Weigel for his short-lived job there — has also come out with another piece, largely argued along juvenile tu quoque lines that wouldn’t pass muster in a first-year logic class. If Weigel and Klein are the best young talent the Post can find, then things are even worse with MSM journalism than we thought.

More seriously, over the holiday, both the Washington Post, in the form of its ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, and the New York Times, in the person of media critic David Carr, both weighed in, with the result that the line between real journalism — in the form of straight reporting — and opinion journalism is now more blurred than ever. If ever readers deserved clarity on this increasingly important issue it’s now, and yet both establishment papers just fell on their faces.

Why? Because they don’t know what to say. Instead, these apologists manage to pretzel themselves in contortions worthy of the Cirque du Soleil while trying to explain to their readers the fine distinctions, the nuances, between a reporter acting as a reporter and a reporter acting as purveyor of opinion, i.e. either bien-pensant leftist conventional wisdom or the youthful exuberance that attends the re-invention of the wheel.

Let’s start with Alexander: (more…)

The Washington Post had two pieces on the (forced) resignation of its “conservative” blogger, Dave Weigel: one by ombudsman, Andrew Alexander; and, another by the staff writer, Howard Kurtz.

Both pieces make a bad situation worse: Alexander’s by unintentionally posing uncomfortable questions about how the Post goes about the business of journalism; Kurtz’s piece gets a key piece of information wrong or misquotes Weigel; Weigel responds.  Unsurprisingly, no one involved comes out looking well.

Alexander’s piece first.  In it he asks, one supposes, a rhetorical question.

But his [Weigel's] departure also raises questions about whether The Post has adequately defined the role of bloggers like Weigel. Are they neutral reporters or ideologues?

One response to Alexander’s question might be:

Well, Andrew, that depends on what the WaPo blogger is covering. If said blogger is covering the Left [Lefty Ezra Klein], then the answer is ‘ideologue.’

If the WashPo blogger is covering the Right [Lefty aka "Libertarian" Dave Weigel], then the answer–oh, never mind. I guess the answer to all questions of how the Post covers politics–and most news–can be answered by hiring another Lefty ideologue. At least with Klein, it’s out in the open for all to read, if one chooses to do so.

Long ago, the Washington Post crossed the line from mere “bias” into the realm of information and content management. That is, it’s not so much in the business of slanting news as it is deciding what news will be seen by the paper’s remaining readers. (more…)

The title of the latest blog post from the Washington Post’s Ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, reads; “Blogger loses job; Post loses standing among conservatives.”

Alexander makes an incorrect assumption that the Weigel incident caused the Post to lose standing among conservatives.  He doesn’t realize it has been a long time since the Washington Post had much of a standing among conservatives, and the nasty comments of one liberal blogger didn’t make it worse.

The ombudsman’s post goes on the speak about the “resignation” of Post blogger Dave Weigel, whose job was to write about the conservative movement. Unfortunately for Weigel, he was also an active member of a progressive discussion group, and sent plenty of emails disparaging the same conservatives he was covering. When some of those emails were leaked and published, he resigned.

Mr. Alexander candidly describes the last 24 hours:

Weigel bears responsibility for sarcastic and scornful comments he made in e-mails leaked from a supposedly private listserv called “Journolist,” started in 2007 by fellow Post blogger and friend Ezra Klein. Weigel’s e-mails showed strikingly poor judgment and revealed a bias that only underscored existing complaints from conservatives that he couldn’t impartially cover them. (more…)

Courtesy of Scott Johnson, one of the stalwarts of the indispensible Power Line blog, comes this illuminating correspondence:

My name is Greg Farrell and I would like you to know I have been exchanging emails challenging Washington Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander and his version of the incidents concerning Rep Lewis and Rep Carson. I was there at the foot of the Cannon Building. Here is the exchange in order. The first is my response to Alexander’s version as set forth in his April 11 Washington Post column.

The following is Mr. Farrell’s email correspondence with Alexander:

Put your money where your pen is.

There follows a classic exchange in which Alexander gets much the worst of it. In fact, he exemplifies just about everything that’s wrong with contemporary establishment journalism: defensiveness, pettifoggery, arrogance, and an utter disinclination to use his faculties of reason instead of his emotions and his sense of “social justice.”

Scoring on the ten-point-must system, I’ve got Farrell well ahead on points. So read the whole thing — savoring every word — and then let’s have your thoughts on Alexander, the Post and the state of the MSM today. Remember to protect yourself at all times, and no hitting below the belt.

In this morning’s Washington Post, ombudsman Andrew Alexander made the argument that “Allegations of spitting and slurs at Capitol protest merit more reporting.” This is zombie-mediaese for “we have to keep discrediting critics of this administration at all costs!”

An ombudsman is described as “a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency while representing the broad scope of constituent interests.” But here we see that the only interest being put forth is one that serves the Democrat establishment.

Alexander made the embarrassing claim that:

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, a black Democrat from Missouri, said a protester spit on him. Rep. Barney Frank, the openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts, was heckled with anti-gay slurs. Two black Democrats, Reps. André Carson of Indiana and John Lewis of Georgia, said protesters subjected them to racial epithets. The episodes were recounted for days in Post stories and columns. Much blame was directed at Tea Party activists.

It’s embarrassing for the Post because there were a plethora of camera crews videotaping the alleged incident and not one tape has come forth validating this claim. In fact, Andrew Breitbart has offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who has a video showing that the “N-word” was used. There have been no takers. Do you really think the media wouldn’t be showing such a tape 24/7 if it actually existed? (more…)

Today, in his guise as the Washington Post’s ombudsman, Andrew Alexander posted a discussion about the recent misreporting by the Old Media about the various “incidents” that supposedly occurred between the admittedly raucous tea party protestors and members of Congress in Washington, D.C.,  during the healthcare fight. But while Alexander finally makes some admissions on how the Old Media dropped the ball on these exaggerated reports, he still missed the point of the whole mess.

Alexander starts his report off with an interesting rhetorical style. He writes about incidents as if they actually happened even as he admits later down the page that either they didn’t or might not have. He recounts the supposed incidents in affirmative language instead of using qualifiers. “The Post and other news organizations had reported a series of incidents so ugly,” Alexander says, “they were denounced by congressional leaders of both parties.” Notice how he didn’t use qualifiers like “alleged incidents”? No, he said “reported on incidents” as if they were actual incidents that have been proven. If someone were to stop reading after the first few paragraphs they’d go away thinking those “incidents” were confirmed and true.

In any case, Alexander recounts the supposed “spitting” incident where Rep. Emanuel Cleaver complained that he was spat upon as he entered the capitol. He also recounted the name-calling that Rep. Barney Frank encountered as well as the thus far unproven “N” word incident that black members of Congress claim that they suffered through on the day they signed the bill providing for a government take over of America’s health system. (more…)