Washington Post Ombudsman Criticizes Broder And Woodward’s Buckraking
Washington Post Ombudsman Criticizes Broder And Woodward’s Buckraking
Harper’s Ken Silverstein recently revealed that the Washington Post’s David Broder and Bob Woodward have been regularly appearing “on the business-lecture circuit” and receiving fees for speaking before a wide variety of special-interest corporate groups.
With his persistent and tenacious reporting, Silverstein forced the Washington Post to address the matter. In her Sunday article, the Post’s ombudsman — Deborah Howell — writes that the paper’s policy requires journalists to get “permission from department heads” before accepting such speaking engagements, but “Broder and Woodward did not check with editors on the appearances Silverstein mentioned.”
Howell confirms that Broder received speech fees from the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors and the Minnesota League of Cities, and accepted a “13-night ‘Rio and the Amazon’ cruise in exchange for three speeches about presidents he has covered.” Silverstein notes that Broder and Woodward are “regulars on the talk circuit” and that the problem is not restricted to just a few speeches.
When confronted by Howell, Broder offered a dissembling response:
Broder said he adheres to “the newspaper’s strict rules on outside activities” and “additional constraints of my own. I have never spoken to partisan gatherings in any role other than a journalist nor to an advocacy group that lobbies Congress or the federal government.” [...]
Broder later said he broke the rules on those speeches. He also said he had cleared his speeches with Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor, or Tom Wilkinson, an assistant managing editor, but neither remembered him mentioning them. Wilkinson said Broder had cleared speeches in the past. Editors should have been consulted on all of the speeches as well as the cruise.
“I am embarrassed by these mistakes and the embarrassment it has caused the paper,” Broder said.
Woodward said all of his speaking fees are going to a foundation he started with his wife. Harper’s Silverstein notes that this means Woodward “reaps significant tax savings” by giving these fees to his charity.
Howell concludes that Broder did not follow the rules, while Woodward’s case is “somewhat different” but still potentially troubling. “The Post needs an unambiguous, transparent well-known policy on speaking fees and expenses,” she writes. Neither Howell nor Post Executive Editor Len Downie explain what actions they plan to take in response to ethical failures by two of its more prominent employees.
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It’s ok if you’re rich.
**eyes rolling**
June 21st, 2008 at 11:12 pmHowell grows a conscience. Holey shirt!
June 21st, 2008 at 11:31 pm“going to a foundation he started with his wife”
Yes, the make David Broder richer foundation!
June 21st, 2008 at 11:44 pmLet me guess. Mrs. Woodward receives a healthy salary for managing this alleged Foundation. And it’s probably one of those Foundations where 75% of the donations are eaten up by administrative costs. These people are sooo 20th century.
June 21st, 2008 at 11:52 pmRepublican media types whoring for Republican corporations, it’s just fascist corporate greedmeisters, as usual, doing their best to keep America under the thumb of the corporate fascists. Fascism in the 21st century… who’d a thunk it? Is this a great country or what?
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:47 amWho gives a sh¡t what Broder thinks, speaks or writes, anyway?
_AIO_
June 22nd, 2008 at 3:29 amCaption contest: “No, I am not Hubert Farnsworth!”
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:49 amHey Woodward was educated from the best… Tom Delay
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:19 amFire their sorry butts!
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:27 amPut a uniform on Broder and he looks just like just another funtionary that stood in the docket at Nuremburg. He’s banal, arrogant and completely out of touch.
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 amNo thinkfast yet, so I’ll post this, here:
Four indicted in munitions fraud
A Miami-based weapons dealer is part of a 71-count indictment alleging that he defrauded the U.S. government.
Last year, the State Department e-mailed a young Miami Beach munitions dealer, telling him that he could not sell Chinese weaponry to the U.S. government to help supply allied forces in Afghanistan.
But Efraim Diveroli, the 22-year-old president of AEY Inc., and three of his employees didn’t take no for an answer, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.
Instead, authorities contend they conspired to defraud the federal government by selling it more than $10 million of Chinese-made machine-gun rounds, telling U.S. officials that the ammunition was from Albania.
Diveroli and his co-workers, who made their first appearances in federal court in Miami on Friday, even arranged to have ”Made in China” markings removed from the wooden crates shipped to Afghanistan to conceal the origins of the weaponry, according to the indictment.
The 71-count indictment charges Diveroli, his company, and employees David Packouz, 26, of Miami, Alexander Podrizki, 26, of Miami, and Ralph Merrill, 65, of Salt Lake City, Utah, with defrauding the U.S. and other procurement offenses. Arrested on Thursday and Friday, the foursome are set for arraignment on July 9.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:17 am“The Post needs an unambiguous, transparent well-known policy on speaking fees and expenses,” she writes.
Actually, Ombudsman Howell, what the Wapo needs to do is to atone for its role in helping the administration deceive this country into war. We now know that a lot of false statements regarding the threat posed by Saddam were “leaked” to several newspapers (including your own) and that these were often attributed to anonymous “senior administration officials”. Too many. You owe it to your readers to go all the way back to 2001 and put a name to every single false statement attributed to a senior administration official and tell us who it was that was lying this country into war. It’s one thing to protect an anonymous source who is blowing the whistle on government wrongdoing. (That’s not only acceptable, it’s necessary.) But there is no excuse in the world for protecting the identity of an anonymous source who is telling falsehoods on behalf of the government.
Tell us who was telling lies.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:32 amIt’s been a while since you’ve been a journalist, hasn’t it Broder?
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:35 ambarfly Says:
No thinkfast yet, so I’ll post this, here:
They do do ThinkFast on weekends (and some holidays). So tell us what else you got. :)
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:36 amThis is the same Washington Post whose Chairman and CEO, Donald E. Graham, recently attended the Bilderberg Group meeting in Chantilly, VA. Not a peep from this professional journalist on four days of meetings with powerful business and government world leaders.
It’s the same corporate chiefs who hire the Woodward’s and Broder’s to speak. The fix is in…
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:36 amTypo: They don’t do ThinkFast on weekends…
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:37 amIn his Sunday column, Broder does not address the issue. Rather, he asks whether voters have enough trust in Obama.
To be fair, Broder probably wrote that syndicated column several days ago and had already submitted it for dissemination before all of this “broke”. Unless I hear otherwise, I’ll cut him that much slack.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:49 amGee, this comes as a complete surprise.
Mendacity and corruption among the Village “elders”?
HowEVER could that have happened? I’m shocked, SHOCKED!@!!
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:52 amWayne A. Schneider Says
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:49 am
To be fair, Broder probably wrote that syndicated column several days ago and had already submitted it for dissemination before all of this “broke”. Unless I hear otherwise, I’ll cut him that much slack.
_______________________________________________
Yes, it’s very likely that Broder submitted his column before this hit the fan. But isn’t it ironic that Broder suggests in his column that we are (or should be) questioning Obama’s motives when it appears that questioning Broder’s may be more prudent?
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 amHere’s another thumb in the eye of “the surge is working” assertion:
McClatchy Newspapers:
Haditha victims’ kin outraged as Marines go free
HADITHA, Iraq — Khadija Hassan still shrouds her body in black, nearly three years after the deaths of her four sons. They were killed on Nov. 19, 2005, along with 20 other people in the deadliest documented case of U.S. troops killing civilians since the Vietnam War.
Eight Marines were charged in the case, but in the intervening years, criminal charges have been dismissed against six. A seventh Marine was acquitted. The residents of Haditha, after being told they could depend on U.S. justice, feel betrayed.
“We put our hopes in the law and in the courts and one after another they are found innocent,” said Yousef Aid Ahmed, the lone surviving brother in the family. “This is an organized crime.”
No one disputes that Marines killed 24 men, women and children in this town in four separate shootings that morning. Relatives said the attack was a massacre of innocent civilians that followed a roadside bomb that killed one Marine and injured two. Marines say they came under fire following the bomb.
One by one, the cases fell apart. American and Iraqi witnesses provided conflicting accounts. The investigation began months after the incident, and many Iraqis who could have testified were unable to travel to the United States. Furthermore, several Marines were granted immunity.
Last week, a judge dismissed charges of dereliction of duty and failure to investigate filed against the highest ranking officer implicated, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani. The Marine Corps plans to appeal.
The dismissals have deepened the victims’ relatives’ grief. Many say they feel deceived after having collaborated with U.S. investigators who came into their homes, collected evidence, took testimony, and ultimately failed to hold the Marines accountable.
“Right now I feel hatred that will not fade,” said Ahmed. “It grows every day.” Charges against two Marines who allegedly killed his brothers were dropped in August 2007.
All charges of murder in this case were dropped and at least seven Marines were given immunity to allow them to testify against Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the squad leader. His charges now include voluntary manslaughter of at least nine people.
Wuterich has always maintained that he made the right decision, believing his Marines were under threat.
While other Marines’ accounts have differed from his, Wuterich told the CBS News program 60 Minutes last year that he shot at five unarmed men outside a white car because he believed they were a threat when they started to move away from the car. At the first home they raided, where women and children were inside, he said he told his men to “shoot first and ask questions later”, because he believed the Marines were coming under “sporadic” fire from the dwelling.
But democracy (of a sort)is on the march — so just ignore those disgruntled Iraqis…
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 amThey should have to give up all fees and expenses to charity, without a tax deduction. Sic temper stupidus.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:51 am@ @0, barfly Says:
Here’s another thumb in the eye of “the surge is working” assertion:
Prediction: No Murkin, civilian or military, will do hard time for killing ANY iraqi, man, woman or child,…
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:31 pmNo surprise here.What would be nice is for someone to produce a list showing the remaining creeps who are on the take.i.e John Harwood of Wall street Journal,won’t be surprise to see he is being paid by someone for some of the BS he comes up with.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:05 pm