The Unrelenting Whitewash at the Washington Post

Reporter Petula Dvorak, fresh from being played the fool by "novice protester" Patrice Cuddy,  continues the tradition of whitewashing ANSWER and the antiwar demonstration generally in Antiwar Fervor Fills the Streets, which as of 12:30 a.m. this morning is marked as running on the front page Sunday. While toiling away in the Metro section earlier this week, Dvorak proved incapable, uninterested or just plain ignorant of ANSWER's role as a front group for the certifiably Stalinist Workers World Party. And it's not only Dvorak. The credit line for this story rivals that of a Hollywood script. Staff writers Karlyn Barker, Jo Becker, Susan Levine, David Nakamura, Robert E. Pierre, Amit R. Paley and Del Quentin Wilber contributed to this report.

Question: How many Post reporters does it take to whitewash ANSWER?

Answer: All of them!

Gaze upon the descriptive powers of the multilayered fact-checking unpajamaed media, and weep:

The demonstration drew grandmothers in wheelchairs and babies in strollers, military veterans in fatigues and protest veterans in tie-dye....

This account utterly fails to record the extensive presence of anti-Israeli if not outright anti-Semitic sentiment at the rally, or the support expressed by speakers for everything from socialism to Fidel to thugs like Hugo Chavez, who passed a law in his country making it illegal to insult him. God knows what else. George Galloway addressed the crowd but I didn't want to risk an aneurysm by hearing him praise Lenin or the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad or the Iraqi "insurgents" so I spared myself that opportunity.

Oh, but we do hear that Jesse Jackson and actress Jessica Lange made remarks.

Another example: As I noted on Saturday, Cindy Sheehan said the following: "We'll be the check and balance on this out of control criminal government."  Even that is mild compared to some of her ravings, but what does Dvorak and her screenwriting guild tell us? "This is amazing!" Sheehan said. "You're part of history." Paging the Pulitzer jury..

This is the essential problem of mainstream media: Many people who have personal experience of the topic being covered have  marveled at the difference between what they know and how it's reported. In the old days the grumbling was limited and couldn't travel  further than the gatekeepers permitted. Baby, those days are done. Yet there's something sad about having to rely on a diarist at the Daily Kos of all places to get a clear impression of the day's events; "NewDem" says he's ready to "screw the antiwar rally" because people there were "basically supporting the Hamas, etc., and the suicide killings of innocent Israelis in cafes."

You'll find none of this in Dvorak's story, or Carol Morello's A12 dispatch, For Many, Anger Has Grown Since Start of War. You'll find it in blogs. You could see it on C-Span. Someone out there must have a record of the moment when mainstream media became the least informed source.

I wonder if institutions like the Washington Post understand what they have taught us.  All I ever wanted from a newspaper was to find out what was going on in the world.

Comments

[Len]

As one who was there, and the father of two jewish daughters, I can tell you that the protest was not anti-semetic, just anti-war. My two daughters were also there demanding an end to this illegal war.

Impeach the village idiot!

[Christopher Fotos]

Starting with calls for the end of the "occupation" in Palestine, I'm afraid I don't buy it. What you're telling me is a contradiction not only of reports from other bloggers and friends of mine whose accounts I trust, but also of what I saw with my own eyes and heard with own ears on C-Span.