Letter to the Ombudsman

Every few months, I write a letter to the WP's Ombudsman about something that they printed (or didn't print). I'm surprised that I usually get a thoughtful response, either from him or the author. If I were Ombudsman, I'd do everything I could to discourage people from writing in so I could take more naps, including calling people "poopy heads." Who are they going to complain to? The Ombudsman?

I sent this one a few minutes ago:

Hi,

I was about to cite the article regarding Cheney criticizing Kerry for saying he would fight a "more sensitive" war on terrorism than Bush as an example of journalism done right. Cheney makes a newsworthy comment, which gets reported. The DNC points out that Bush made almost the same comment to the same group that Kerry spoke to, and it gets printed after Kerry's comment.

Except that when I revisited the article so I could link to it, I noticed it was rewritten. The DNC's point was removed and replaced with a much weaker rebuttal by Kerry's campaign that doesn't include Bush making a very similar point to the same group.

I understand the general principle of valuing a response from "the spokesperson" over "a friend of the spokesperson," but this is just bad judgment. The fact that Cheney criticized Kerry for something that Bush also said in principle is a critical piece of information to this story. I think it should have remained, either in addition to the Kerry campaign's response or in place of it.

On a related note, why does the Washington Post allow politicians to quote phrases from other politicians' speeches without printing the entire section it was quoted from to give the reader some context? Politicians from both sides take each other words out of context. It only takes a few sentences to reprint the original context, or describe the situation behind the comment. It's a non-biased way of letting the reader decide for himself if the attacking politician is honestly representing his opponent's words. Couldn't this be practice be made a policy at the Washington Post?

Sorry to belabor my point about context, but there have been several instances (besides this article) in the past few weeks where my opinion of someone has changed after learning about the context which he or she spoke.

For example, I read a quote from Kerry saying he would have attacked differently than Bush did when he was reading to the children on the morning on 9/11 and was told about the attacks. I thought Kerry said that unprompted and I felt he was taking a cheap shot at the President. While it wasn't the best decision President Bush could have made, it's understandable under the circumstances.

Then I read on a well-known blog on politics that Kerry was responding to a question about what he would have done in Bush's situation, and I no longer thought his comment was unwarranted since he was responding to a question and not making an unprompted attack. It's possible that my memory isn't serving me right, but I don't remember this being mentioned in the original article on Kerry's response. (I've noticed that The Post does include context often, but it is often in a related article a few days after the first one and/or in an "Analysis" piece.)

In general, I think The Post does a great job in reporting, better than most newspapers, but there are still a few areas I think the organization can do even better.

To all my hoes and bitches,
Jason W."