Saturday, August 16, 2008

Washington Post Ombudsman is Clueless

Following up her surprising analysis that the Post favors photos of Barack Obama over John McCain, Ms. Howell does the same for total number of stories written about the two candidates. See the story here, it was a little better then photos - only a 3 to 1 advantage for the Democrat. Ms. Howell rather then asking any questions about this, which she at least did with the photos, accepts the standard "Mr. Obama is a compelling story of a newcomer" from the editor. With the photos she said that the overwhelming favoritism for one side was probably not a good thing. Here she just says "Numbers aren't everything in political coverage, but readers deserve comparable coverage of the candidates."

Update: The Washington Post has a widget that shows related links and posts to their article. They nicely show this one, but for some reason label it "No Title", despite showing the other linked posts' titles. Maybe I should be nicer to Ms. Howell?

Double Update: Turns out for some reason all my links from the Post show "No Title", so no grand conspiracy there although it was fun to think about for a while.

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