Dan Froomkin's Firing Leaves Post With Glut Of Neocons

So, now that Dan Froomkin's been fired, what's the Washington Post looking like today? I think that Glenn Greenwald neatly sums it up:

--Neocon Charles Krauthammer: attacking Obama for indifference to Freedom in Iran

--Neocon Paul Wolfowitz: attacking Obama for indifference to Freedom in Iran

--Establishment/CIA spokesman and war supporter David Ignatius: demanding that Obama do more to support Freedom in Iran and refuse to negotiate with the Iranian regime

--Bush CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden: warning that America will be in danger if CIA officials involved in torture continue to be criticized and questioned about what they did

Great. So, three columnists pimping the notion that Obama should do everything in his power to paint the Iranian dissidents as inauthentic puppets of the United States, and more from Michael Hayden, numbly suggesting that the dangers of questioning and criticizing the torture regime outweigh the dangers that torture regime has inspired.

One has to wonder: doesn't it get boring, reading this same stuff over and over again? Wouldn't a little Dan Froomkin at least bring some variety?

That's why I had to laugh at this article by Dave Weigel at the Washington Independent, because apparently, more of this writing is on the way!

Since its launch in 2005, the second daily metro newspaper owned by conservative billionaire Phillip Anschutz (the first was the San Francisco Examiner) has struggled for an identity in a city crawling with political journalists. But since the November 2008 election, the Examiner has beefed up its staff and pulled prominent right-leaning reporters and pundits away from publications like The American Spectator and National Review.

The Examiner's Mark Tapscott's intention is to "carv[e] out an identity as the conservative version of...left-leaning opinion and investigative journalism sites." Between the Washington Post and the Washington Times, there's not much territory left to carve out!

MORE:
Persecution of the Right and the Washington Post Op-Ed page [Glenn Greenwald]
Examiner Leads Conservative Response to Liberal Blogosphere [Examiner]

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Comments

[LMPE]

I've never read The Washington Post. None of this matters to me.

[larry278]

If the NYT & LAT folds & the WA PO eviscerates itself by getting rid of liberal or progressive writers, that means that Slate's, "Today's Papers", will have to drop them as honarary newspapers of record & designate some newspapers. That won't be difficult for TP considers USA Today a newspaper of record & still considers the NYT a newspaper of record in memory of the NYT 60 years ago when it was the USA's only newspaper of record & 40 years ago when the NYT still could be called a newspaper of record without giggling.
TP can easily upgrade a couple of good, reliable regional papers to newspapers of record or TP can use papers that have slipped & aren't reliable anymore, like Gannett's Louisville Courier-Journal. But the reliable Ky paper is now Lexington's Herald Leader. When you're based in NYC or DC, it's easy to ignore what's happening in fly-over country & the rust belt.
Slate is related to the WA PO. Allow TP to consider the eviscerated, impotent, amemic WA PO a newspaper to keep peace in the family.

[MadCroation]

People aren't buying papers anymore, so who cares?

[ESerafina42]

Have these papers not noticed that the Democrats have won the last two elections, the Republican party is a laughing-stock identified with by a mere 20% of the population, and public opinion, on health care, for example, is to the left of even the Democrats?

[RoveRoveRoveYourBoat]

A cesspool is not a garden !

[buggedabouttheus]

WaPo, no Dan? No reader here either. I'll get my Eugene and E.J. fixes elsewhere.

[StillAmused]

A wave of fear is sweeping over "news" outlets, fear that -- if they don't continually serve up heaping platters of juvenile neocon poopery -- they'll have to knuckle down, do serious reporting and reveal the worst-kept secrets on the planet: right-wing screechers lack the insight gene, consider being repeatedly proven wrong a moral vindication and share traumatic childhood memories of endless abuse suffered at the hands of little girls on their playgrounds.

[Yermammy]

The real reason Froomkin got the ax is he is a JOURNALIST and NOT a stenographer. The Washington Post is not so much a neocon rag as a Village Establishment rag and they have no room for a man that will go after Obama's foibles just as readily as he did Bush's.
That RIGHT THERE should be your clue that Obama is now owned (and punked) by the corporate establishment and continuing Bush's policies of secrecy and bad policies. Buy a clue.

[Osusuki]

I may be indulging in a bit of tinfoil hattery here, but it seems like the local news organs in Washington and all the state capitols are being flooded with right wing filth more and more every day, either in staffing as noted above for the Washington Post, or in reader response like you see every day in the Sacramento Bee. Could this be a concerted effort on the part of the right wing to make those in public office believe their cause is widely accepted and acceptable to most Americans? Whether that's true or not, I sure am tired of seeing story after story, op-ed after op-ed, and post after post written by neocons, libertarians, and other species of pod people.

[Bozwellian]

Guessing that most folks failing to realize the conglerationing that concentrated the MEDIA CORPORATIONS into the hands of basically FIVE holders ALLOWS the skewering of what IS put out and about and folks, the conservatives have used their $$$ wisely in their formation of those conglomerations for figured is that he who does control the MEDIA OUTLETS controls the perceptions and that is figured "RIGHT"....They figured it out, while the lefties and others got rolled and the public/citizenry are brunted by another grand slam scamming !!! The media outlet provides THE message(and like yeesh, we certainly are undulated daily with the righteous right /neocon daily talking points with barely a true articulation from the left !!! Only a matter of time before they figure a way to stymie/cut the online access and citizen news bloggers (especially after the Iran breakout being covered by their citizens as a prime example of what happens....)

[ObamanextPresident]

They are all taking a right turn. Politico, NYT, Wapo. Even MSNBC touts the daily right wing talking point and acts as if it has credence.

Neocons are rampant in every media outlet and still infiltrate every govt agency. The corrupt, criminal, shadow govt Cheney, Jeb, Kristol, et al must be imprisoned.

[AddyGmom]

Are they going to get rid of Eugene Robinson as well? Seems WaPo is going down the NeoCon road.

[XLintLuvR]

Hmmm...Pulitzer Prize winner? He goes nowhere until he's damn good and ready. They can tout that they've got him for now. If they bounced him out, they'll have to answer for it.

[rkrenke]

It's not just the editorials and op-eds, today's WaPo is nothing more than the print media's version of Fox News.

[johnpfree]

for what it's worth, the Froomkin thing and your expose of it has prompted me to finally write an "I divorce you" letter to the Washington Post.

The gist was that they have been Number One in My Heart since the 70's, but I have finally had my fill of their center-right, neocon, GWill-lyin' swill and they are henceforth dead to me and can f---ing go out of business for all I care.

Where was this desire to be the voice of the opposition during the Wilderness Years of Bush?

so anyway... just thought I'd share that....

[XLintLuvR]

This country was never center right. It was always center left. There's a reason why the right wing party keeps dying in this country. The difference between the left and the right is that people on the left aren't pod people. They don't march to the beat of the same drum. They don't go to the polls until there's something that moves them to. That's why the repubs keep going around saying that it's a center right nation. They're the only ones that you can rely on going to the polls. They've trashed the country so badly however that the next few elections are going to have the progressives and liberals making sure to keep the country center left until it's fixed. Why do you think between Hoover and Nixon there's only one repub Pres?

[Monknhall]

You guys are forgetting Howie Kurtz, another conservative in --what?--moderate's clothing? The guy's stuff is barely masked righty talking points, packaged under the ostensibly neutral rubric of media criticism.

For whatever reason, the Post has been tending farther and farther right for the last few years. It's sad, and pathetic.

[Tomlastliberalleft]

Everything dies. People die. Institutions die and let's face it newspapers die. Hard to understand what the folks at WAPO are thinking these days. Those of us who are not wingnuts stopped reading WAPO some time ago. I suppose there are a few people on the left who contniued to read it and hope that maybe someday the clouds would part. Pretty obvious to me the wingnuts don't read the news since FOX tells them what to think. So who is it that WAPO thinks constitute their readers? It is nothing more than a propaganda organ for the right and we really did not need another one of those.