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Post Watch: We Did It! We Did It! Well, Maybe Not
By
Harry Jaffe
Former Washington Post executive editor Len Downie gave himself and the Post credit for finally cracking the Chandra Levy case. He said that the paper’s 2008 series on police missteps in the original investigation prodded cops to make an arrest. “I think it did cause the police to redouble their efforts,” Downie told Editor & Publisher magazine when police arrested a suspect in Levy’s 2001 murder. But top-level police and prosecutors said that the Post’s series was irrelevant. DC police chief Cathy Lanier reviewed the case in the spring of 2007 and reassigned it to a team of detectives that June. The Post series ran a year later, in July 2008. Police sources said that three detectives and two prosecutors started following leads that resulted in the arrest of Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique a year before the Post focused on him. The journalist who deserves some credit for fingering Guandique is Amy Keller. Her 2002 stories in Roll Call detailed his attacks on women in Rock Creek Park in 2001. Downie talked up the Post’s Levy series as judges were reviewing stories entered in the Pulitzer competition. The 2008 prizes will be announced April 20. This article first appeared in the April 2009 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here. More>> Capital Comment Blog | News & Politics | Society Photos
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Comments
It wasn’t until the police assigned several Spanish-speaking officers that the whole Guandique connection to Levy was figured out. It wasn’t the Post. It was the Police Department BOTCHING IT UP the first time around and trying to interview suspects who didn’t speak English. When they finally got around to (hello!) getting Spanish-speaking people in there, then the whole thing changed. That series was just filler on a slow news week. If they get an award for it that would be STUPID.
and YES, that reporter from Roll Call deserves GREAT CREDIT.
The Post needs to STOP TAKING CREDIT FOR CRAP THEY NEVER DID...
Posted by: Roll Call Fan, Mar 27, 2009 01:56:23 PM
the washington post DID NOT break the walter reed story. It was actually the Internet mag Salon that did it and the Post continued it...
and by the way, it was The New York Times that first broke the Watergate story beyond a mere break-in like it was reported at the time. Woodward and Bernstein were metro reporters at the time working the weekend shift and the break-in at Watergate was first reported as a break-in. The New York Times was the first to figure out it was much bigger, but the editors at the paper REFUSED to allow the reporters to cite anonymous sources and that’s when it fell apart for them. The Post was able to run with it because the editor let the paper use all those anonymous sources (deep throat, et al.).
The Post is great at taking credit for someone else’s work...
Posted by: in the know, Mar 27, 2009 01:51:38 PM
The reputation of the Post was shaped in signnificant part by Watergate. (I do not know if Richard Nixon ever commented explicitly on its role). And it has continued its tradition of investigative reporting, not long ago with a detailed series on conditions at Walter Reed and its inadequate treatment of veterans, which spurred reform.
Posted by: Candadai Tirumalai, Mar 21, 2009 06:41:37 AM
Um, what would you expect the DC Police to say? Especially after most of the series exposed their sloppy policework.
Posted by: Junior3, Mar 20, 2009 01:09:24 PM
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