Glen Greenwald points to a recent argument with conservative co-worker Charles Krauthammer over torture as at least one of the factors leading to the dismissal of Froomkin.
Greenwald (6-18-09): One of the rarest commodities in the establishment media is someone
who was a vehement critic of George Bush who, applying their principles
consistently, has become a regular critic of Barack Obama -- someone
who criticizes Obama from what is perceived as "the Left" rather than
for being a Terrorist-Loving Socialist Muslim. It just got a lot rarer,
as The Washington Post -- at least according to Politico's Patrick Gavin-- just fired WashingtonPost.com columnist, long-time Bush
critic and Obama watchdog (i.e., a real journalist) Dan Froomkin.
What
makes this firing so bizarre and worthy of inquiry is that, as
Calderone notes, Froomkin was easily one of the most linked-to and
cited Post columnists. At a time when newspapers are relying more and
more on online traffic, the Post just fired the person who, in 2007,
wrote 2 out of the top 10 most-trafficked columns. In publishing that
data, Media Bistro used this headline: "The Post's Most Popular
Opinions (Read: Froomkin)." Isn't that an odd person to choose to get
rid of?
Following the bottomless path of self-pity of the
standard right-wing male -- as epitomized by Pete Hoekstra's comparison
of House Republicans to Iranian protesters and yet another column by
Pat Buchanan decrying the systematic victimization of the white male in
America -- Charles Krauthammer last night said that Obama critics on
Fox News are "a lot like Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run." But right-wing polemicists like Krauthammer are all over the media.
In
addition to his Rupert Murdoch perch at Fox, Krauthammer remains as a
regular columnist at the Post, alongside fellow right-wing Obama haters
such as Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, and Robert Kagan -- as
well as a whole bevy of typical, banal establishment spokespeople who
are highly supportive of whoever is in power (David Ignatius, Fred
Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Howie Kurtz, etc.
etc.). And that's to say nothing of the regular Op-Ed appearances by
typical Krauthammer-mimicking neoconservative voices such as John
Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith -- and the Post Editorial Page
itself. "Caracus" indeed.
I am not visiting their website until Froomkin is re-hired.
Contact the
ombudsman:
Update, from Politico:
UPDATE (3:50pm): Washington Post Media Communications Director Kris Coratti tells POLITICO:
I think the easiest way to put it is that our editors and
research teams are constantly reviewing our columns, blogs and other
content to make sure we're giving readers the most value when they are
on our site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources.
Unfortunately, this means that sometimes features must be eliminated,
and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced for
washingtonpost.com
Another update, via Greenwald (Froomkin speaks):
I'm terribly disappointed. I was told that it had
been determined that my White House Watch blog wasn't "working"
anymore. But from what I could tell, it was still working very well. I
also thought White House Watch was a great fit with The Washington Post
brand, and what its readers reasonably expect from the Post online.
As I've written elsewhere,
I think that the future success of our business depends on journalists
enthusiastically pursuing accountability and calling it like they see
it. That's what I tried to do every day. Now I guess I'll have to try
to do it someplace else.
