There’s been a bit of noise in the political blogging world about the Washington Post’s decision to end Dan Froomkin’s White House Watch, a tough and insightful must-read during the Bush White House years. He was a rare liberal voice in the Washington Post’s numbingly moderate-to-right-wing lineup of editorial writers and commentators. Liberals saw his departure as one more bow to the right-wing. This column disputes that view, by the way.
Well, Froomkin has written his farewell column. He gives the Bush administration one last good butt whuppin’ on his way out the door. But, boy, was I drawn up by this paragraph, in which Froomkin jabbed two sacred figures in the Beltway journalism establishment in commenting on press coverage of the Bush years. (My emphasis supplied.)
How did the media cover it all? Not well. Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long. The handful of people who did exceptional investigative reporting during this era really deserve our gratitude: People such as Ron Suskind, Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, Murray Waas, Michael Massing, Mark Danner, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (better late than never), Dana Priest, Walter Pincus, Charlie Savage and Philippe Sands; there was also some fine investigative blogging over at Talking Points Memo and by Marcy Wheeler. Notably not on this list: The likes of Bob Woodward and Tim Russert. Hopefully, the next time the nation faces a grave national security crisis, we will listen to the people who were right, not the people who were wrong, and heed those who reported the truth, not those who served as stenographers to liars.
Amen to that.