The Washington Post On “Slime”

Today’s Washington Post has an interesting article about the hard “attack and parry” campaign for Congress in Kentucky’s third district between incumbent Anne Northrup and challenger John Yarmuth.

Yarmuth founded and was long-time editor of an alternative newspaper in Louisville, the Eccentric Observer. While there he wrote over 800 columns, which have now come back to haunt him, although this was hardly unexpected.

Yarmuth, of course, knew he had written the columns. He said he had spent six weeks mulling the consequences of his columns before deciding to run for the seat.

The reporters, Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza, handle Northrup’s use of this material with relative balance. “Usually,” they note,

politicians drop their most damaging “opposition research” without fingerprints, leaking it to a reporter or airing it through a third party. Northup, by contrast, hurled her charge like an anvil through glass.

The purpose is to make Yarmuth, an antiwar liberal who disagrees with her on virtually every issue, an unacceptable alternative — even to many Democrats. They outnumber Republicans almost 2 to 1 here, which has made Northup a prime target since her first victory in 1996.

Northup’s aides were proud of their handiwork. Campaign manager Patrick Neely encouraged Washington Post reporters to make a detour on a nine-day tour of the region to be present for the news conference, where, he promised, there would be a spectacle too good to miss.

And what were some of these charges?

Friday’s business for Northup was the attempted disembowelment of Democratic challenger John Yarmuth. Her weapon was Yarmuth’s own words, preserved in a stack of newspaper columns that Northup brandished at the podium.

Voters, she warned, should know that the Democrat wanted to punish SUV owners, endorsed the legalization of marijuana and was all in favor of teenage drinking. “Parents should be concerned,” she said, and so should everyone else. “He has a lot of goofy ideas.”

Northup perhaps did not provide the most fair-minded interpretation of what Yarmuth had written as a columnist for the Louisville Eccentric Observer. But nor were her descriptions necessarily so far afield. The Democrat did once back taxes on gas-guzzling vehicles, some of which are manufactured in the district. He wrote a column about prison crowding that praised Canada for decriminalizing pot, and he suggested that lowering the drinking age to 18 is “something we should consider.”

All in all, as I’ve said, the article presents a fair discussion of a highly charged campaign. That, alas, cannot be said of the editors at the Washington Post, or whoever it was who wrote the caption to a photograph of Rep. Northrup that accompanied the article. That caption, in its entirety, reads:

Forty-six days before the election, Rep. Anne M. Northup (R-Ky.) unveils a campaign to slime her opponent.

Do the editors of the Washington Post really believe that those who write in their paper should not be responsible for what they write there, that criticizing what a writer has written (especially when he offers himself for public office) is “sliming” him? Apparently so.

If Rep. Northrup misrepresents what Yarmuth wrote, her attack will and should backfire. But does “perhaps not provid[ing] the most fair-minded interpretation” amount to “a campaign to slime” an opponent? Someone at the Washington Post seems to think so.

UPDATE [26 Sept.]

I complained about the “slime” caption in an email to Deborah Howell, the Washington Post ombudsman. She replied that “[i]n the edition I read the caption said “to skewer her opponent.”

I have just checked the link in my post, and it still leads to the article containing the same photo of Northrup with the same caption stating that “Rep. Anne M. Northup (R-Ky.) unveils a campaign to slime her opponent.”

I informed Ms. Howell of the above, and she replied: “Wow. I’ll check this out.”

I hope she does, and will post here if I hear more.

UPDATE II [27 Sept.]

Today Deborah Howell, Washington Post ombudsman, sent the following follow-up:

Mr. Rosenberg, “slime” was taken out of the caption after the first editon, thank goodness. It wasn’t changed on the Website until I pointed it out, after your letter. They both now say “skewer,” which is a better way of describing it. Thank you for writing and alerting me to this.

To which I replied:

Ms. Howell:

Thanks very much for your prompt response, and for having the much-needed correction made. Your actions speak well of and for the Post.

Now that I have your attention, may I make two other points? First, and rather obviously, changes/corrections made to the print edition ought to be reflected in the online edition as well right away.

Second, “skewer” is of course a much better way of putting it, and it is after all pretty much what the authors wrote. By contrast, the charge that Rep. Northrup was preparing “to slime” her opponent is a vile, nasty, partisan political libel, not just a poor choice of words. Thus simply removing it, although the right thing to do, seems to me an insufficient response to a very serious transgression.

I have no connection with the Northrup campaign, know no one associated with Rep. Northrup, and have not been in touch with anyone in her campaign or office. But I can certainly tell you that if I were Rep. Northrup I would not be close to satisfied with a correction alone. In short, I think your caption writer committed political defamation, which I regard as even worse than libeling a private individual since it pollutes the political process. Simply correcting the defamation several days late lets yourself off far too easy.