John Harris Live Chat

Update: Chat's over. As blogged live, below. I may write a summary later. Secret Agent Man Patrick Ruffini is mentioned at the end.

Well, he's going to be there, I'm here, might as well live-blog it. And I don't know how many readers it takes to bog down a Washington Post News Interactive Server, but boy is the response slow when I refresh that page.

And they're off. Best line froom Harris: Online Crankosphere. In full:

Des Moines, Iowa: Is there a reason that your concerns about Dan Froomkin's column surfaced now after it has been running for (I believe) over two years?

John F. Harris: Good morning, folks. There are TONS of questions on this topic, as I knew there would be. It's been boiling on blogs in recent days, and some comments I made there have been a big part of the conversation.

To be honest, I'm only going to answer a couple on this, for two reasons:

--I've addressed it in other forums, and the whole matter has been diverting me from other work.

--More important, the uproar on blogs has made what is by agreement of everyone at the paper and website a pretty narrow issue seem like a huge deal. It's not, and I'm eager to cool it down.

The narrow issue is how washingtonpost.com labels Dan Froomkin's popular White House Briefing column, and whether enough is done to make clear that he is a commentator but not a Washington Post news reporter. The Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, wrote a column saying more should be done to clarify that, and I was quoted agreeing with her. An uproar ensued in some places, getting the issue all tangled up in controversies about the war and journalism generally. As if we needed a reminder, these are emotional times.

For those who are actually interested in the details, Jay Rosen's site "pressthink" did a full and responsible airing of this relatively minor issue, and I said everything I need to say (and a little more)on that.
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/

For all its interesting and useful features, some things I don't like about the on-line crankosphere are its frequent humorlessness and tendency to blow issues way out of proportion.

After I popped off on some of these issues, some colleagues gently suggested I might be flirting with these traits myself. (They are liars and no longer my friends.)

I did get irked by one thing Dan had said on-line, which I took to be suggesting that Post reporters don't work hard to hold the White House accountable. He later quite graciously made clear this was not at all what he intended, and I felt bad about responding hotly. I like Dan and his column.

It just goes to show what my mother always said about counting to ten before speaking in anger. Unfortunately, we've fallen out, since she apparently loves Osama and Saddam more than America.

The "graciousness of Dan Froomkin" is a bit overplayed in this discussion, though an understandable thing for Harris to say. Froomkin frequently needles reporters for allegedly not holding President Bush accountable, definitely including "White House reporters" and I'm fairly certain the Post has some assigned there. (For example, The journalists who cover Washington and the White House should be holding the president accountable. When they do, I bear witness to their work. And the answer is for more of them to do so -- not for me to be dismissed as highly opinionated and liberal because I do. You can attack someone with a sledgehammer or a stiletto, but it's still an attack, folks.)

Update: For mysterious reasons that I'm positive have nothing to say about whether Froomkin is a highly opinionated liberal, most of the questions so far are coming from the left, sez Harris:

Miami, Fla.: What is the breakdown of questions you are receiving this morning in terms of from the left or the right? Is your aim to choose questions to answer based on the popularity of theme or on your interest in the subject?

John F. Harris: These things really vary depending on the news. Today, there's many more coming from what I'm supposing is probably the left, but that's because of the matter I mentioned in my first question.

Some days, conservatives are worked up on something and we can expect a lot of questions...

Update: Dudley, Texas, reads a different version of the Post than I do:

Dudley, Tex.: Reading The Post one gets the impression that being against the Iraq war and thinking Bush lied to get us in there is an outside the mainstream point of view. But a majority of Americans answer yes to both (and a majority of Americans before the war thought we should go in only with U.N. support). When will your coverage treat that like a legitimate viewpoint, not a crank viewpoint?

John F. Harris: By no means do I think that is a crank viewpoint.

The Washington Post poll, like most national polls, shows that a very strong majority of Americans think the Iraq war was a mistake. The numbers are high, though not as high, on the question of whether Bush deliberately distorted information in making the case for war.

I would doubt that anyone at the Bush White House would honestly say this is a crank view. The fact that they know these attitudes are pervasive is amon the biggest political challenges the president faces right now. That's why he's been making a series of speeches trying to bolster his support.

Peter Baker wrote a very good and clear-eyed analysis on this in today's paper.

If you read the Post and get the impression that being against the Iraq War is outside the mainstream, then you have a crank view.

Update: Harris is definitely keeping his promise of focusing on issues that do not involve the word "Froomkin."

Update: Now we're talking polling numbers. zzzzzzzzz...

Update: If this keeps up next they'll be talking about state congressional races. I'm so desperate for something interesting, I'm reading comments over at Buzz Machine. "Angelos" writes:

So the Washington Post has handed editorial control to Karl Rove.

This is news?

Yes. Yes it is. Must be that "rope-a-dope" strategy again.

Update: The Ruffini Conspiracy. Saw that bouncing around the internets, very entertaining:

Sterling, Va.: When will you fess up to what exactly you know/knew about Patrick Ruffini and when exactly you knew it?

Your unwillingness to comment makes the WP look -really bad- in light of the Woodward mess.

Or won't the White House permit you to comment?

John F. Harris: I said I was not going to return much to the Froomkin matter today, but I'm going to take this one because it bothers me. Also because many other questions I'm not posting are on a similar theme.

I did refuse to answer questions posed by a blogger named Brad Delong asking whether I knew that one of the people on record complaining about the confusion over White House Briefing was affiliated with Republicans.

As a journalist, I hate not answering questions, even from (in this case) someone who clearly was coming from a point of view quite hostile to me. But I had jointly decided with colleagues that I had responded enough to the blogosphere, so I took a pass.

I'll address the matter here. I did know that some people raising questions about Froomkin are Republicans, but there was a particular instance two months back that made me wonder whether we ought to be paying more attention. An old friend, quite liberal, who has been around politics all his life said to me, "I love that column your White House reporter writes." I said, "Um, Dwight, I'm delighted that you enjoy the column, but you know, right, he's not our White House reporter, and he does not report to me?" He said, "Well, why is it called White House Briefing?"

That suggested to me that maybe this is an issue causing confusion. But here's the thing: It's a very NARROW issue, not a question of trying to suppress one of the website's most popular voices.

As a Post editor, I have a great relationship with washingtonpost.com editor Jim Brady and his deputy, Russ Walker, and the newsroom and the website will discuss and work through this one calmly--as we do similar issues all the time.

For all the shouting, that is all this issue is about, and at the end of it all it's pretty pedestrian.

These chats themselves are an example of the great things the website and newspaper are doing together. ..

Then he has the gall to say Merry Christmas AND Happy Holidays before signing off. Probably had to get White House permission for that too.

Liberal Bubble Dwellers, apparently including DeLong, believe Ruffini was some obscure operative secretly transmitting orders into the microchip Karl Rove has implanted into all members of the Pos'ts politcal staff. And you should never ever consider the opinions of conservatives when gauging the flavor of your coverage. It's in the Constitution.

Chat's over.

Update: To a live chat that's over? Yes. DeLong replied to my post about his Ruffini comments:

You miss my point. If you are looking for an eloquent and capable Republican activist of a Bush-can-do-no-wrong variety, Pat Ruffini is very easy to find.

If you are looking--as John Harris represented himself to be--for a weblogger to serve as an indicator of general conservative opinion, you have to work hard to find Pat.

My claim is not that Pat is persona non grata. My claim is that nobody playing it straight would view Pat as anything other than what he is--a capable and eloquent Republican operative.

I think I see this as a distinction without a difference, but I've really got to stop writing posts saying I'll blog later and, you know... just blog later. For those unfamiliar with it, here's DeLong's site.