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Mr. Downie, Isn’t It Your Job To Tell the Truth?

By Harry Jaffe

Message to Washington Post executive editor Len Downie: Part of my job at The Washingtonian is to examine the good, the bad, and the inner workings of the Washington Post in my monthly Post Watch column and occasional Web columns. It is not to please you.

Is it Tom Shales’ job to please CBS? Is it Peter Baker’s job to please George W. Bush?

Your job, it seems to me, is to tell the truth, such as when you describe your working relations with reporters who cover the Post. In your interview on April 10 with Carol Joynt before a luncheon crowd at the Q&A Café at Nathan’s in Georgetown, you were less than accurate.

Joynt asked you about coverage of the Post by The Washingtonian and the City Paper. To which you responded: “I’m not always pleased with what The Washingtonian writes. . . .”

Joynt then asked how you respond to questions from reporters. You said you respond to all calls. You said you don’t need a PR person. Sometimes you have something to say, sometimes you don’t.

The facts are that you have not responded to my questions for more than two years. I have appealed to you with handwritten notes. I have left phone messages with your assistant. I have sent an e-mail every time I have written something that might concern you or benefit from your comment.

You have not responded. Period.

I was sitting in the luncheon crowd to hear your talk. I approached you afterwards and asked why you refused to answer my calls or questions.

“We should talk another time,” you said. I said that time would never come and that you had not been truthful. “So why don’t you take my calls?” I asked.

To which you replied: “You are an exception.”

To which I ask: Was Dana Milbank an exception when he was covering the White House for the Washington Post and the President refused to speak to him?

Perhaps, but Milbank still writes, and so will I.

For more of Harry Jaffe's Post Watch columns, click here.

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Category Tags: Post Watch

Comments

If the editor of the Post doesn’t care to comment, then he should appoint someone to respond to press inquiries, just as the organizations do that the Post contacts when working on stories. However, this just may be yet another glimpse into how Downie has been ruining what used to be one of the finest papers in America. Ben Bradlee was a helluva editor and he would have at least told Jaffe to go to hell; perhaps Bradlee would have given Jaffe an answer and would have stood up on his hind feet and told Jaffe why his paper was doing its job better than anyone else, but it wouldn’t have been this wimpy baloney. Where the Post used to be my daily must read, it is now simply an occassional scan. Too bad, too, it was an important paper and had guts. Now the Post has simply become a has-been, is pompous, has lost it’s style and is just politically correct mush. I have always found Jaffe’s coverage of the Post to be interesting and if anything, it helped keeping reader interest in the Post. Downie’s arrogance is just silly.

Posted by: Ken Rossignol, Apr 12, 2008 09:53:28 PM

journalists are the biggest hypocrites when it comes to interviews.

Posted by: ted, Apr 11, 2008 04:11:54 AM

Washingtonian is FAMOUS FOR NOT CHECKING FACTS. Why shoudl any editor in is RIGHT MIND respond to anything they ask??? That magazine is a cut and paste best doctors, best resturants guide with NO JOURNALISM....TAKE THAT

Posted by: sylvia, Apr 10, 2008 08:45:23 PM

Journalists always have thin skin. Every one of them should have someone write about them once in a while. Downie doesn’t like being written about. Good for Jaffe that he keeps trying.

Posted by: DC V, Apr 10, 2008 07:19:10 PM

Keep up the good work and don’t let old man Downie affect your writing. There are jerks in this world and he is one of them.

Posted by: Jay, Apr 10, 2008 04:40:02 PM