The Washington Post has now clearly inserted itself in the political process with a weekend of more stories on the alleged anti-Semitic comment by Cong. Jim Moran (D-Va.). Still The Post says it doesn’t know what the comments were. But that doesn’t stop the paper from repeating the charge, originally reported Friday, today, in two stories Saturday (here and here) and one Sunday.
A letter to the editor from a Jewish reader expressed the same concerns I did Friday about the fairness of these stories.
And now, in a column published today, Paul Goldman, a former Virginia Democratic Party chairman and a Jew, criticizes The Post. Goldman makes a point I neglected to in my post Friday: The alleged remark was made in March, but the accuser, Alan Secrest, did not leak the comment (as we must assume he did) until the Friday before the primary election.
How can we have a fair political process if, in the last week of the campaign, someone can purposely leak a resignation letter to the virtual 800-pound media presence in order to get that media giant to print a damning charge (remember, Secrest knows Moran’s internal campaign polling data, so he knows what can hurt Moran the most) without even knowing what the alleged anti-Semitic words were exactly?
It is fundamentally unfair to ask someone to defend themselves against words the accuser refuses to reveal.
…I don’t believe a newspaper of such power as the Post should, in the final weekend of a campaign, make huge stories with such potentially damning content based on a claim of anti-Semitism unless the accuser at least will tell them precisely what was said so people can make up their own minds.
Stephen Farnsworth, a former journalist and now political science professor at Mary Washington University and author of the book The Nightly News Nightmare: Network Television’s Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988-2000, wrote in an email to me this morning, “If this incident is supposed to be an important part of how voters assess Moran in the primary, both the consultant and the Post should be clearer about exactly what is being alleged. It also gives Moran a clearer opportunity to respond to a specific charge.”
The story was picked up by CNN and is bouncing around the blogosphere. Even Rosenberg supporters have trouble with The Post’s story.