Liberals Bloggers v. The Washington Post

Here's an interesting story I've half-followed but find fully fascinating... Liberal bloggers had been taking the Washington Post to task for inaccurate reporting about the Abramoff scandal by ombudsman Deborah Howell. Under the guise of fairness in reporting, Ms. Howell reported the story very delicately, going out of her way to portray it as bipartisan, in the process ignoring the content and nature of the story itself. Jay Rosen summarizes-

I understand why people were angry at Deborah Howell. She seems to have taken the concept of balance to new lengths, where not only news accounts and ombudsman columns need to be balanced, but the Jack Abramoff scandal itself "needs" to be balanced between the two major parties.

Her both-sides-fed-at-the-trough statements have been called inaccurate, outrageous, unfortunate, less-than artful. "He had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties..." I read these strained descriptions of bipartisan exposure as more of a wish-- a wish for balance in the facts of the scandal itself. (See also Deborah Howell responds at the post.blog.)

Liberal bloggers rallied around this story and urged readers to demand answers from Ms. Howell and the Post. People went to the Post's website blog to comment about the story. After numerous comments, the Post shut down the comments section on the blog. The reason for this, said Jim Brady (executive editor of washingtonpost.com), was that users were making personal attacks against Ms. Howell and that the staff could not "keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff." See the AP story and the Editor & Publisher story for more on that. Now bloggers are commenting on this, stating that to shut down the comments because of a very small handful of rude remarks (which occurs on every major blog; hey, some people are just angry) unnecessarily punishes the 95% who were legitimate (and accurate) critics of the story. Whether the intention or not, it gives the impression the Post wants to silence all criticism. I concur.

The Daily Kos has a compilation of all the removed comments, so we can judge for ourselves:
Here they are: the 42 blog posts WaPo wants to hide from you

[Note to the Kos blogger- Perhaps it might be more professional if you didn't remark that "Jim Brady is full of shit". Just saying.]

At the Huffington Post, Jay Rosen explores this issue and interviews Jim Brady about it:
Transparency at the Post: Q & A with Jim Brady of Washingtonpost.com

It's worth a read.