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The Washington Post addresses the recent episode of the paper's publishing an anonymous White House quote last Sunday that falsely blamed Katrina response delays on Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco having not declared a state of emergency. Within hours, as you might remember, the Post had published an above-the-story correction, saying in fact Blanco had issued a state of emergency on August 26th. So why was the Post continuing to protect the White House source who misled them?
Here's Howie Kurtz (second item):
Can we at least hope for more detailed corrections? More information to understand the context in which the White House official spoke and got it 100% wrong? And why the reporters are convinced the source was not deliberately lying?The Washington Post, like many news organizations, says it is trying to crack down on the use of anonymous sources. But the paper allowed a "senior administration official" to spin the story of the slow response to Katrina -- with a claim that turned out to be false.
On Sept. 4, the paper cited the "senior Bush official" as saying that as of the day before, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco "still had not declared a state of emergency." As The Post noted in a correction, Blanco, a Democrat, had declared a state of emergency on Aug. 26.
Liberal bloggers have unloaded on The Post. Wrote Arianna Huffington: "Why were the Post reporters so willing to blindly accept the words of an administration official who obviously had a partisan agenda -- and to grant the official anonymity?"
Post National Editor Michael Abramowitz calls the incident "a bad mistake" that happened right on deadline. "We all feel bad about that," he says. "We should not have printed the information as background information, and it should have been checked. We fell down on the desk."
Spencer Hsu, the article's co-author, says he "tried to make clear that the source came from the administration, and that he was blaming the locals, which I believe our story made clear and broke ground in explaining by uncovering the National Guard dispute."
Should the paper identify the source who provided bad information? "We don't blow sources, period, especially if we don't have reason to believe the source in this case actually lied deliberately," Hsu says.
Late Update: More from Post ombudsman Michael Getler.