Reader Asks WaPo: What’s Up with Hiring Dem-Chasing AP Journo?

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From a chat at washingtonpost.com this morning with the Post’s White House reporter Peter Baker:

Rochester, N.Y.: I’m sure you won’t take this one, but it’s worth a shot: is anyone in the newsroom concerned about the fact that the Post is hiring John Solomon (formerly of the AP), whose pieces on Harry Reid were widely criticized, not only in the blogosphere but also by media critics (such as your own Howard Kurtz)? Does his hiring mean we can look forward to more RNC-inspired hit pieces on Democratic leaders?

I’ll bet your getting a lot of questions like this today. And I’ll bet you won’t take any of them.

Peter Baker: Old trick: “I bet you won’t take this question cuz you’re scared, nyah, nyah.” (And by the way, glad to welcome back our friend in Rochester to these chats.) But the serious answer to your question is everyone I’ve talked with in the newsroom is absolutely thrilled that John Solomon is joining us from the Associated Press. John is one of the marquee names in political journalism and he’s going to help us build the best accountability team in the business going into the 2008 election cycle. Has he been criticized by partisans in the blogosphere? Personally, I don’t know, but who hasn’t been? He wouldn’t be doing his job as an investigative journalist if he didn’t make some people squirm. John and the team he’s led at the Associated Press have broken a lot of important stories without regard to political party; in addition to the ethical missteps of Senator Reid, he and his team exposed the Dubai ports deal that caused a huge civil war within the Republican party and uncovered the videotape showing what President Bush was told about Hurricane Katrina before it hit.

Many things I could point out about this response (nothing easier than painting critics with the broad brush of partisanship), but I’ll settle for this: Baker, listing Solomon’s accomplishments, notes the Dubai ports deal and the pre-Katrina Bush tape, both indisputably big stories, together with Solomon’s stories on Reid. The paper also did this in their press release on the hiring.

The Dubai story had to do with the U.S. potentially outsourcing its national security to a foreign country. The AP’s story that Bush was told about the potential failing of the levees before Hurricane Katrina exposed a president’s lying to cover up his administration’s incompetence — incompetence preparing for a historical natural catastrophe that touched millions of lives.

That exposing a senator’s “ethical missteps” could be mentioned in the same breath as those two other stories baffles. But more than that, being a great journalist requires more than writing good stories; it involves restraining yourself from the bad ones. And it more or less requires a person to avoid repeating mistakes, particularly when going after the same target. That’s precisely the problem with Solomon’s reporting. And it seems the Post is willing to keep playing that game.

(One side note, we have no recollection and could not find any column of Howard Kurtz’s taking John Solomon to task. If any readers know what the questioner is talking about, please let us know.)

You can read the Post’s release on Solomon’s hiring here. Counter to yesterday’s AP memo, the Post makes no mention of Solomon getting his own investigative team.

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