The right-wing meme about the Lib’rul Media? Uh, not so much.
The Washington Post, whose editorial page has been moving further and further to the right, has fired Dan Froomkin, the best bleeping blogger in America, whose White House Watch was must-reading during the Bush years and even more so during the early months of the Obama Administration.
Perhaps Salon’s Glenn Greenwald (click and read the entire piece, it’s great) put it best:
“All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point: what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama. Rachel Maddow is one of the few prominent media figures who will interview and criticize Democratic politicians ‘from the Left’ (and it’s hardly a coincidence that it was MSNBC’s decision to give Maddow her own show — rather than the endless array of right-wing talk show hosts plaguing television for years — which prompted a tidal wave of ‘concern’ over whether cable news was becoming ‘too partisan’). In general, however, those who opine from the Maddow/Froomkin perspective are a very endangered species, and it just became more endangered as the Post fires one if its most popular, talented, principled and substantive columnists.”
Froomkin has an excellent perspective on what journalists should do:
“I think that the future success of our business depends on journalists enthusiastically pursuing accountability and calling it like they see it. That’s what I tried to do every day. Now I guess I’ll have to try to do it someplace else.”
El Somnambulo does not understand what is happening to journalism anymore. The very idea that a paper like the Washington Post would deep-six Froomkin is something ‘bulo just can’t get his head around.
Ultimately, however, Froomkin will find a new home that is receptive to his audience while the WaPo will continue its drift towards journalistic obsolescence. The point is that it didn’t have to happen. When the final chapter on who killed newspapers is written, the answer will be simple. The newspapers themselves.