WaPo Tries to Kiss Some WH Butt

John Harris, WaPo's chief White House flunky (aka, the National Politics Editor), is afraid that Karl Rove may think that WaPo Kowtow is not quite low enough. He explains about Dan Froomkin and:
the concerns about "White House Briefing" in the Post newsroom.
I think he means Corporate cowardice headquarters.


The first issue is whether many readers believe Dan's column is written by one of the Washington Post's three White House reporters. . .

Given that there is such confusion, the question is whether this is a problem. For me it is a problem. I perceive a good bit of his commentary on the news as coming through a liberal prism--or at least not trying very hard to avoid such perceptions. Dan, as I understand his position, says that his commentary is not ideologically based, but he acknowledges it is written with a certain irreverence and adversarial purpose. Dan does not address the main question in his comments. He should. If he were a White House reporter for a major news organization, would it be okay for him to write in the fashion he does? If the answer is yes, we have a legitimate disagreement. If the answer is no, there is not really a debate: washingtonpost.com should change the name of his column to more accurately present the fact that this is Dan Froomkin's take on the news, not the observations of someone who is assigned by the paper to cover the news.
The phrase "cover the news" here should be understood to mean "kiss butt like Bobby W does."

UPDATE: Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has more, as does Atrios, Kevin Drum, and Josh Marshall (where I, oops, forgot to mention, first read about it)

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