WashPo v. Froomkin: The Ruffini Connection

I am innately resistant to conspiracy theories, largely because I know I am innately attracted to them. So when people started hinting darkly that the White House was behind the Washington Post's latest idiocy, I was dubious.

Now, though, I think John Harris himself has delivered the smoking gun.

In an e-mail exchange with Jay Rosen, Harris comes off as slightly less combative (but not much) but defends his claims about both confusion (people thinking Froomkin was a White House reporter) and liberal bias in Froomkin's column. To support both of these claims, he offered one example:

Without agreeing with the views of this conservative blogger who took on Froomkin, I would say his argument does not seem far-fetched to me.

'This conservative blogger', as others have pointed out, is one Patrick Ruffini--former Bush-Cheney '04 staffer, current eCampaign Director for the RNC. Brad DeLong points out that Ruffini's is not a particularly prominent blog--#498 in the TTLB ecosystem--and wonders how Harris found it. I did some Blogger searches--"Froomkin", "Froomkin" & "liberal", "Froomkin" & "bias"--and eliminating all of the entries from the past two days, I didn't find anything from Ruffini's site anywhere near the top¹.

How fortuitous that Harris happened to find the one blog the White House would have directed him to...if, of course, they did that sort of thing.

We have heard nothing about any widespread public complaints (nor has Harris given any evidence of such). The political reporters interviewed by Rosen are a lot more equivocal than Harris. I'm having a hard time reconciling the facts with any scenario other than pressure from the Bush administration.

And if that's the case, then the behavior of Harris, Howell, and Downie is doubly shameful, and the Post owes it to its readers to come clean about the whole incident.


¹I did find other sites critical of Froomkin's 'bias' in the search--sites Harris would have found if he had done the search--including one with this positively Wildean witticism: "While Howell correctly identified Froomkin as a Bush-hating liberal, she came to the wrong conclusion about the problem at the Washington Post. More of its reporting needs to be labelled as opinion, beginning with the entire front page."

The author? An ambitious, talented kid named Jeff Gannon. Someday he'll go far.

Snark update: Jeff, don't quit your day night job.

[That's all, folks]