Salon slaps down WaPo ombudsman

Few things irritate me more than when *serious* newspapers cave into wingnut whining about the "lamestream media's failure" to cover one of their ginned up, phony outrages. And here comes the WaPo's Andrew Alexander to grovel in apology for failing to promote the Black Panther non-story. Joan Walsh doesn't hold back in this brilliant slap at his stupidity. Well worth enduring the odious black screen pop-up to read in full.

Here's a clip to tempt you in:

If he's going to chide the Post, Alexander should be criticizing its failure to debunk the story, not to hype it. In fact, the ombudsman notes that the Post actually covered the NBPP developments in three stories in 2009, but only one this year, published last week, focused on the latest right-wing firestorm. And indeed, the Post embarrassed itself in that story, but not the way Alexander implies. It was first headlined with the breathless " 2008 voter-intimidation case against New Black Panthers a political bombshell," which was later changed to "2008 voter-intimidation case against New Black Panthers riles the right," when someone realized there was no "political bombshell" in the trumped-up charges against Obama. (Alexander didn't mention the headline rewrite in his screed today.) Sadly, features editor Kevin Merida gave Alexander a mea culpa, terming the controversy "significant," and saying he wished The Post had covered it sooner. Ugh. [...]

It's the job of editors at big papers like the Post to expose those lies, and the movement behind them – not to flagellate themselves for not saying "How high?" when right-wing media watchdogs say "Jump!" Andrew Alexander botched his job today.

Especially pathetic since the narrative has already been so thoroughly debunked at this point.