The hack.
By trevino Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Not a few days back, our own Patrick Ruffini characterized the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin as a second-rate hack. Having myself corresponded with Froomkin back when he enlisted a few of us bloggers to do his work for him and then kicked us to the curb -- and also recalling the prior notices that the RS community has taken of him -- I decided to shoot the piece over to him for his response.
The exchange that resulted, below the fold, speaks for itself. It is worth reprinting in full as a prime example of the media mindset that we face in public life -- and the messianic lack of self-awareness that shapes and informs that mindset. While I give kudos to Froomkin for engaging halfway, at day's end, I must report that Ruffini was deeply wrong. He's not a second-rate hack. Guys like me are second-rate hacks.
He's a third-rate hack.
Read on.
The exchange began with a quick e-mail containing Ruffini's posting and a brief greeting. Froomkin replied at 6:58pm on 3/31:
Josh,
Long time no E. Thanks for the heads up.
I'll cop to being skeptical, but not partisan!
All the best,
Dan
I wrote back at 9:51pm on 3/31:
Dan,
Hmm. The Froomkin family is certainly a partisan one.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. (Weirdly, OpenSecrets doesn't list my own family's contributions.) Given the skew of your writing, it is reasonable to assume that you're part of this ideological milieu. Certainly you're a product of it. In that vein, I must admit PatrickR has a point: to appropriate the distinction you draw, the difference between skepticism and partisanship is that the former is applied equally.
Suffice it to say that while I don't adhere to the general conservative thesis of an ipso facto hostile media, it is telling when a senior Bush campaign operative considers you -- personally -- the person drafting the opposition piece.
Most resp.,
Josh
Froomkin responded the next day, at 4:40pm on 4/1:
Josh,
I'm now going to tease my family mercilessly about how cheap they are.
Seriously, though, my column is about the White House and the president. If I were also covering congress and politics in general -- and were only approaching Republicans skeptically -- I think your and Patrick's concern would be more legitimate.
That said, I do acknowledge -- and spend a lot of time mulling -- the fact that the mainstream press, by virtue of its core belief in holding the powerful accountable for their mistakes, does increasingly seem to find itself in a somewhat "oppositional" role with the Bush White House. (Not partisan, I would insist -- but oppositional nonetheless.) I'd be genuinely interested in hearing your reaction to that hypothesis.
Yours,
Dan
So I gave him my reaction to that hypothesis at 1:22am on 4/2:
Dan,
Well, I wouldn't call a couple thousand cheap. Give them credit for active engagement.
I appreciate your willingness to engage on this, especially as I'm sure it gets tedious taking flak from strangers. Rest assured that I write the following with the knowledge that if I had the chops to be a legitimate journalist, I probably wouldn't be squandering effort on a weblog.
You state, in your defense against the charge of partisanship, that your "column is about the White House and the president." The implication is that the perception of bias on your part is an inherent function of your subject matter. Both the explicit and implied contentions are broadly false. To explain, let's begin by reviewing the general two-part structure of your columns:
1) An editorializing passage of varying length -- this is the bulk of your original work.
2) A de facto clippings file on "the White House and the president" of much greater length.
Two points herein:
First, it seems obvious that your column isn't just about the White House and the President -- it's easily as much about the coverage thereof, and your opinions thereof, and (let's be honest) matters appertaining thereto. Else, respectively, why the clippings file, why the editorializing intros, and why the digressions into the vice-presidency, candidates, media, et al.?
Second, while I agree that journalists, "by virtue of [their presumed] core belief in holding the powerful accountable" (NB: a laudable faith in the collective nobility of journalists!) do find themselves "in a somewhat 'oppositional' role" to any holder of power -- not just the Bush White House -- this is irrelevant to a discussion of your column, as you appear to do vanishingly little there of what is commonly considered journalism inasmuch as that signifies original reporting. That the man who posts clips of others' journalism with his own editorializing appended on the internet is plainly before the world a partisan blogger, while the man who does precisely the same in the Washington Post declares himself a nonpartisan "skeptic" -- and in that role a journalist to boot -- is remarkable indeed.
This being established, it's worth going through your 2004 campaign-era columns to note some examples of what reasonable people would construe as, not skepticism, but partisanship on your part. They are found almost entirely in your editorializing intros:
1) Your 7 May 2004 column seizes upon the President's apology before King Abdullah of Jordan -- and the world press -- for the Abu Ghraib scandal to take the President to task for not directly apologizing to Iraqi prisoners. The effort you make to portray this as a de facto non-apology is best described as deeply weird: it reflects an ignorance of leadership practices (which British PM ever directly apologized to wronged Irish prisoners?) that I rather doubt is among your faults.
2) Your 24 August 2004 column was, frankly, indistinguishable from Kerry campaign talking points: Speaking as a person who is no fan of the Swifties nor many of the lies about John Kerry they peddled, I would nonetheless say that reasonable people would interpret the President's 1)condemning all such advertising, 2)explicitly praising Kerry's Vietnam service, and 3)agreeing with a characterization of the Swift ads as "unpatriotic" and "un-American" as constituting a meaningful disavowal of the Swift Boat advertisements. But no: you made great hay of the President's failure -- such as it was spun -- to go into still more explicit detail on the matter. That your rhetoric on the subject was almost word for word apparently derived from the Kerry campaign's media strategy (designed to tie the President's campaign to the SBVFT far more closely than was actually the case) is astoundingly coincidental.
3) The first eight paragraphs of your 3 September 2004 column denounce the content of the President's nomination acceptance speech in the manner of an editorial rather than an analysis. Especially notable are your remarks that there was "nothing remotely unscripted" -- c'mon, Dan, in a major convention address? -- and that the President, "[s]tanding accused of having fudged the connection between the war on terror and the war on Iraq....continued his attempt to conflate the two." This is, in fact, a matter on which reasonable people disagree (assuming you think me in that category, let me note that I -- and my friends who have fought in both wars -- agree with the President). As an aside, PatrickR has already noted the rhetorical reluctance with which you address the recent world events that substantively bolster the President's "conflation."
4) Here's your lede from your 24 September 2004 column: "For the American voter, it's looking increasingly like the November election comes down to this: Do you take what President Bush says on face value, or do you question it?" To which one responds: huh? To assert that the election hinges on shallow acceptance of propaganda (implicitly producing a Bush vote) versus rational examination (implicitly producing a Kerry vote) isn't an example of "skepticism": one typically calls the en masse characterization of voters for candidate X as lacking intellectual rigor "partisanship." Or elitist bigotry, depending. It doesn't help your case for your own rational skepticism that this column 1)is not good analysis -- an equally prima facie valid statement could be drafted by swapping "President Bush" for "John Kerry" -- and 2)later contains a rather debatable "debunking" of a Bush campaign talking point.
5) Your 20 October 2004 column informs readers that the "best way to control the message of the day [in an election campaign] is to force your opponent to respond to a basically groundless attack," and that furthermore the "Bush campaign and its allies have arguably done this on and off since March." By contrast, "John F. Kerry appears to have finally embraced" this "sordid truth of modern political campaigning" only just then, having spent the entirety of the previous campaign "fir[ing] off all sorts of supportable....charges against President Bush." So: a month after you declare that the difference between a Bush and Kerry vote is the difference between dumb acceptance and rational inquiry, you follow up by asserting that the difference between the two campaigns is that of truth versus lies. That's not partisanship?
6) Your 26 October 2004 column led with perhaps the most bizarre left-wing flight of fancy of the campaign: the infamous bulge under the President's jacket at the first debate. You close the segment with an avowal that you continue to believe that it ain't the shirt; then you segue into the talking-point-of-the-moment -- the since-vanished contretemps over missing explosives in Iraq. As election day approaches, the divergence between your major points and those of the Kerry campaign continues to erode. Quick: heard anything on HDX since? Written anything on it?
7) Your 29 October 2004 column contains this noteworthy passage: "From what Keen wrote [on his interview with George W. Bush], there's no evidence of any particularly tough questions. Of course it wouldn't appear that her USA Today colleague Jill Lawrence exactly grilled John Kerry either, in the companion piece. But without the full text of the interview, it's hard to tell if Keen didn't ask the tough questions -- or if Bush just ducked them." Needless to say, an unscientific survey of your oeuvre for similar rhetorical swipes at Kerry yielded precisely none.
8) Finally, because it's worth repeating: Patrick has already noted the egregiously skewed language in your 3 November 2004 column on the President's election victory. Framing the causes purely as negatives: a worthy touch indeed.
We doubtless agree that there is a lot -- and I mean a great whopping deal -- to criticize the Administration on. Its management of press affairs in particular, from fake news releases to heavily scripted public events to the Plame leak, has been frankly detestable; and it would be reasonable and defensible for a media professional to sour on the Administration by dint of this alone. (On that note, I think your aim at Nieman Watchdog is quite a laudable one.) But a good journalist -- or, I should say here, a good media professional -- will still not cross certain lines despite this. Plenty of journalists share your loathing for the Bush Administration: you're the only one in a major metropolitan newspaper that I know of who identifies its reelection campaign with lies and its supporters with stupidity -- and does so on the pretense that this constitutes nonpartisan, non-editorial coverage.
You told Harry Jaffe in the Washingtonian, "I don't express opinion in my column." What average person, left or right, who reads your work regularly seriously believes this? And given that you apparently do, what is the value, then, of your assertion of nonpartisanship?
Most resp.,
Josh Trevino
Froomkin's final message arrived at 10:54am on 4/2:
Josh,
Wow. I'm flattered that you and Patrick are reading me so closely.
But the excerpts that you and he have selected I think show how well my columns hold up.
I see my role as an avowed "accountabilitist" (if that were a word.) The opposite of that is not "Republican" but "apologist."
And I think I'll stick with what I'm doing.
But keep watching, and call me out if you think I screw up. We who advocate accountability should -- and some of us do -- advocate it everywhere.
Yours,
Dan
I replied at 11:44am on 4/2:
Dan,
Don't be flattered -- having been under the assumption that you'd address points raised with some measure of thoroughness and honesty, I rather regret having taken the time now. Although, as a Bush partisan, I suppose I ought to be happy that you've absorbed the habit of dealing with countervailing evidence by simply declaring that it actually supports you.
Accountability, of course, is a laudable thing. Given that you apparently think it encompasses the exposition of paranoiac rumor, tendentious rhetorical distortion, the promulgation of non-factual group characterizations (prejudicial stereotyping, the smart kids call it), and the repetition of de facto partisan talking points, you will forgive me if I find your grasp of the term tenuous indeed. One imagines your thoughts upon witnessing a six-year old throwing a public tantrum against the wretched tyranny of mom and dad: "Good thing he's holding them accountable!"
All the best with the blogging sinecure under journalism's guise on WaPo's dime. Indeed, so long as it continues, why change? On the one hand, you have a good career and a well-read public forum. Set against that is merely integrity.
Most resp.,
Josh
And it's been a stark silence since.
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The hack. 8 Comments (0 topical, 8 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
...is exemplified in his Friday missive on the topic of the WMD report and the malady of groupthink, unaware that he is suffering from the exact same ailment.
I havent read anything of froomkin, aside from his (private?) emails to you above, so most of the detail passed over my head. But partisanship in journalism seems not to be something risible in this day and age. Your (and Patrick's, if possible) assessment of Robert Novak would help establish the boundaries of phenomenon.
Fan of Novak, for the simple reason that I've never read anything he's written, save the one or two odd columns that have come up occasionally online in places like the Drudge Report. Which tells me that he's kind of marginalized as a curmudgeonly conservative, or that I am woefully uneducated in the etiquitte of modern conservatism, or both.
I did hear about the questions surrounding Novak regarding the Plame matter, of course, as anyone who reads the New York Times has, but speaking for myself, he's had absolutely zero influence on my politics or opinions, other than to say that is completely within his legal rights, I presume, to remain utterly silent on the Plame matter.
But, I do know that he's been a relatively big fan of getting out of Iraq as soon as possible, recently talked about Condoleeza Rice positively in that context (the one article of his that I've read in the past year) and, in some ways sooner than possible, which I don't agree with. He's a paleocon, from what other people have told me.
So, I don't pay him much heed anymore, if you were looking for a straight explanation, but that's just me. Maybe someone else here has a better argument for why I should listen more to Bob Novak. I'm all ears.
....inasmuch as neither of us are against partisanship in journalism per se so long as it's done honestly and openly. The issue with Froomkin is his dishonest portrayal of himself and his work.
And then there's "wink, wink" dishonesty. Froomkin talking about the Press' role of "speaking truth to power" regardless of who is in charge has been a recent preoccupation among many other columnists. To me, it's moving the goalposts away from their blatantly obvious bias. To them, it's a matter of reestablishing their certitude as advocates for the public and the right of the free press. But I've read almost every column Froomkin has written and I've found him intolerably biased, way beyond the fig leaf of saying that he would be this "critical" regardless of which party the President was from.
I would guess that if you did a semantic analysis of Froomkin's past and future work (because I certainly don't think he's going to get fired any time soon, he'll most likely be promoted) we'll see that in action.
In other words: in my opinion, Dan Froomkin just slants the news. He's one of the worst practitioners of that at the Washington Post in that regard. I've read almost everything he's written for the past four years, and almost nothing he's said has run counter to that. Reasonable people, of course, can feel free to differ.
And indeed, an unabashed sub-partisan, given his small internecine war. I can't imagine that anyone has a problem with this aspect.
As far as his writing, eh. His "scoops" haven't seemed as good to me since he basically decided he hated Bush; one supposes there may be consequences.
Over the years, Novak has not been supportive of major foreign policy decisions by Republican Presidents. He did not support Gulf War I and did not support the latest Iraq war.
And, of course, for years he has been constantly critical of Israel, favoring the Arabs in the on-going war.
All of which is his right, but let's note it for the record.
...by its very nature partisan sentiment; thus, whatever escapes the pen of a journalist is necessarily supra-partisan, or even anti-partisan.
I think that's the mindset. Because Froomkin sees himself as a journlist, he believes that nothing he writes can be partisan. What he writes, in his well-learned view, transcends ideologies and parties. The higher purpose, the well-being of mankind. And there's the hungup: their vision of that well-being, and what fosters it, is necessarily ideological and partisan. They cannot objectively exempt themselves, though they try.
I think Froomkin's attraction is an innocently malicious absurdity.