Those whose whines Howell is taking seriously won't be satisfied, because they're really looking for a quality national newspaper; they're looking for Fox News in print form.

They already have one of these. It's called the Washington Times. For some reason nobody reads it.

Why don't they subcontract their hiring out to the RNC?

By the way, conservative columnists and others were abandoning the McCain campaign in droves. Exactly how does this get explained by liberal bias?

"Are there ways to tackle this? More conservatives in newsrooms and rigorous editing would be two. The first is not easy: Editors hire not on the basis of beliefs but on talent in reporting, photography and editing, and hiring is at a standstill because of the economy. But newspapers have hired more minorities and women, so it can be done."

And God knows Howell is a prime example of how little talent is needed to work for the Post.

It's not hard to see why conservatives feel disrespected. Howell

Howell needs to be replaced by someone with a bias toward reality. The WaPo has bent over backwards during the campaign season to create false equivalency, not only in their news articles, but also in their fact check sections and in Howard Kurtz's articles. It's not uncommon that the only thing in the A section with a liberal bent is the Doonesbury cartoon.

since Ms. Howell got the position of ombudsman at WaPo a couple of years ago, she has been responsible for a number of stupid ideas. But this one takes the cake. As I wrote after one of her earliest idiocies, who's the ombudsman to the ombudsman? I would now ask: when does the management fire her and get a competent for the job?

The right will NEVER be happy with the US media until there are no other voices around, which has been their goal for the last quarter century. Deregulation has enabled near-monopolistic conservative media ownership concentration in radio, TV and print, and the right has never for an instant stopped ranting about the "liberal media bias". With a single neutral media (Internet) leading the way, some balance has inched back into the MSM. Look soon for Palin to praise the "real American media" as opposed to pinkos like the Wsahington Monthly.

I almost puked when I read Howell's garbage Sunday morning. Anyone who reads WashPo regularly knows how far to the right it has gone in recent years.

Maybe they could have bumped up the number of McCain articles by doing more reporting on his lobbying connections, his relations with domestic terrorists like G. Gordon Liddy, his dumping of his first wife, his many affairs, etc. That would be a nice way to "balance" the coverage.

Validating Republican talking points does not make someone a columnist worthy of hire. Neither does using Find and Replace to plug the names of current Democrats into decades-old anti-liberal screeds. There might be more conservatives hired by newspapers if the conservative movement replaced mindless cheer leading with some intellectual vigor.

Simply put, Republicans these days aren't intellectuals, and Intellectuals certainly aren't Republicans. So where is she going to find any to hire?

Now would be a good time to mention the GOP's hand in CBS's firing of Rather:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/media/17rather.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Of course, if "conservatism" doesn't work, at least, the way it's practiced in the U.S., then one would expect most of the smart people to be critical of it.

As it is in science, if your theory is wrong and the facts do not support it, don't expect a lot of support from your peers, and you don't get "equal time" in peer-reviewed journals.

Good work Steve in calling attention to this bizarre post-election cave in to the right.

Howell claims this is about the loss of 900-odd subscriptions. To which one might say, good riddance if keeping these unhappy rightwingers comes at the price of slanting the coverage. Moreover, they should be happy with the Post, which, as Media Matters has well documented, leaned right on a daily basis in its campaign coverage.

Howell operates on the "balance" theory of journalistic objectivity. That is, getting the facts right is secondary to representing the competing points of view. An accurate story that makes conservatives look bad needs to be balanced by an inaccurate one that makes them look good.

I'd like to see her take on the Media Matters reporting instead of pandering to cranky letters from sore loser Republicans.

Someone should let Deb on to the fact that many conservatives supported Obama. Having a wide array of views on the Op-Ed page is a good thing, but insisting that everybody on the Right take the same position and support the same candidates is hackery.

It's not hard to see why conservatives feel disrespected.

Sadly, modern movement conservatives don't consider the obvious explanation: That modern movement conservatism -- and by extention, the clown show that was the McCain campaign -- isn't respectable.

Those whose whines Howell is taking seriously won't be satisfied, because they're really looking for a quality national newspaper; they're looking for Fox News in print form.

And they have it -- the trouble is, no one takes the Washington Times seriously, and rightly so.

So, let me get this straight: Ms. Howell is suggesting a "quota system" where people are hired based not on their skills, but to preserve an artificial "balance"? Who sets the quotas? The Commissariat of Conservative Media Dominance?

Sounds like socialism to me...

Maybe there were more "laudatory opinion pieces" because there was more to laud. This type of "fair and balanced" stuff is pure idiocy, even after overlooking its hypocrisy. As if suddenly when we hit the general election, then everything needs to be balanced. Where were the "laudatory opinion pieces" for Kucinich, Gravel, and Ron Paul? Where's the fairness?
Bottom line: the free market has decided that conservative opinions suck. Why do conservatives hate the free market?

Clearly, there should be a political commissar in every newsroom to make sure that the writink, hirink and speakink complies with the views of the grand old Party and the Great Leader Reagan. Only then can the People's Reagan Revolutionary Daily reliably report the news.

Good work Steve in calling attention to this bizarre post-election cave in to the right.

Howell claims this is about the loss of 900-odd subscriptions. To which one might say, good riddance if keeping these unhappy rightwingers comes at the price of slanting the coverage. Moreover, they should be happy with the Post, which, as Media Matters has well documented, leaned right on a daily basis in its campaign coverage.

Howell operates on the "balance" theory of journalistic objectivity. That is, getting the facts right is secondary to representing the competing points of view. An accurate story that makes conservatives look bad needs to be balanced by an inaccurate one that makes them look good.

I'd like to see her take on the Media Matters reporting instead of pandering to cranky letters from sore loser Republicans.

Howell obviously plans to choke the Post to death. After 8 years of underreported "conservative" mayhem in the White House, what Washington needs is more from the People Who Are Wrong about Everything--and they will be needing jobs if the Obama administration is competent.

Howell's column had absolutely nothing to say about accuracy, which is the first quality I value in a news source. The Republican crackpots have hijacked the term conservative and simply drained it of meaning. Today it staggers like a zombie through the political landscape, knocking over furniture, scaring the children, and smelling simply terrible. Who wants to speak to a reporter whose personal shortcomings and malice overshadow the story? Who wants to read a report from someone who can't see clearly and won't listen?

Can Howell offer any example of a story that was less accurate because it didn't have input from a certified conservative?

Her column actually addresses the bleating of people who felt betrayed by the Post's reporting of the presidential campaign. Evidently, they expected the newspaper to help McCain compensate for his personal deficits and inconsistencies as well as the limburger millstone that is the Bush administration. A principled ombudsperson would have answered that they're asking too much.

Why does howell's construct have to be either/or/both? Aren't there more than TWO competing voices in the political landscape?

That to me would be the problem with the post, not that it's supposedly closed off to conservative (Republican) voices but that it's closed off from other voices.

This is one of the big reasons the internet dooms newspapers. If they want to save themselves catering to one or two narrow ideologies that only exist inside the beltway isn't the way to go about it.

"Those whose whines Howell is taking seriously won't be satisfied, because they're NOT really looking for a quality national newspaper; they're looking for Fox News in print form." There, I fixed it for you.

Ultimately newspapers are private-sector, sales-driven institutions, and the decisions they make reflects this. If conservatives can wrap their little heads around this fact, they should should just pack up the tent and do something else.

Howell must be, unequivocally, the most tone-deaf person yet living in America. What an incredibly dull-witted, indefensible, and fantastical narrative she has adhered to of late. Wow. She sounds like an Andrew Jackson appointee explaining the Trail of Tears tour agency.

To quote Don Henley, for conservatives, "there's just not enough love in the world."

The only place they're truly happy is within high-paying echo-chamber "think tanks" (and boy, am I using the word "think" loosely), whining about how nobody understands them.

Anyone reading the washington post in the post convention period would have seen just the opposite of Howell's conclusion. The articles on McCain\Palin were more favorable and more favorably placed. Also, the pictures of McCain\Palin and of their supporters were more appealing and more white (can anyone forget the front page picture of the older women supporters at the rally in PA). Many pictures of Obama show his back and pictured him among blacks. Pictures of his supporters often focused on blacks. This was high level editing by professionals with a clear goal. I don't know what newspaper Howell reviewed but it was not the one delivered to my door.

Ms. Howell IS aware of the average reporter's salary, right?

College Republicans tend to struggle with the giggles when they hear the numbers involved.

Journalists tend to need a love of truth and civic duty over monetary gain to survive the shortcomings of the job. Kind of like teachers.

Grinning cat has it exactly right. The article and most like it should substitute "republican hack" for conservative. Like this:

"There should be more intellectual diversity among journalists. More republican hacks in newsrooms will bring about better journalism."

Let me echo a point Grinning Cat made above. Conservatives now live in gated communities, in brick-at-mortar and intellectually. Their ideological spectrum is much more limited than that found on the left.

The (liberal) NY Times today has a feature on the National Review which I think illustrates this pretty clearly. I like to read the Corner occassionly, but it has become a real embarrassment. It's like Seinfeld, a show about nothing.

When is Howell's tenure over? (I think I recall the WaPo's ombuddy gets a two-year appointment.) The sooner the better.

Anyway, people in news, as opposed to editorial, are expected to keep their political biases out of their reporting and editing. They're supposed to go where the evidence leads, without fear or favor. I know a lot of readers don't understand that, but it's disappointing that Howell doesn't seem to understand that either.

For conservatives it has always has been about entitlement, not meritocracy.

Why should a company in the idea business hire a conservative if their ideas are bad? Because poorly conceived notions about government and the economy provide balance?? Is that what journalistic "balance" has become -- every time any media outlet reports on or promotes a good idea it has to be balanced one-to-one with news or opinion promoting a really bad idea? Isn't this why we have multiple news outlets in the first place?

It's one thing to cover different sides of a debate. Publications like the Post and the NYT do that all the time. But when your company's thin profits depend on the breadth and quality of the ideas on your editorial pages why should people who believe in torture, censoring scientific articles and promoting Intelligent Design in the schools be given any authority to write editorials?

Furthermore, there is a presumption by conservatives that they actually understand what "liberal" means. Why should we believe them? They have spent thet last 40 years attacking their own caricatures of liberalism and look where it has brought us.

This is not just a liberal rant. Filling the public's mind with bad ideas has serious policy consequences. Take the Iraq War for example.

No one questions that Fox News has a conservative agenda. In the fall of 2003 a widely publicized study published by University of Maryland media researchers determined that Fox News watchers were three times more likely to hold three critical foreign policy misperceptions than those watching the next most watched network.

According to this academic study, three times more Fox news watchers believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attacks on 9/11; three times more Fox news watchers believed weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq and that these weapons had been used in the war; and three times more Fox viewers believed the rest of the world had a favorable attitude abour our invasion of Iraq.

With the backing of an ill-informed public George Bush pushed his Middle East agenda relentlessly to the point we are now at five years later: thousands of lives lost, mission not accomplished and with the US nearly a trillion dollars deeper in debt. Oh, and Osama bin Laden still not captured.

The "balance" Howell speaks of comes from the broader marketplace of ideas. It doesn't have to come from one single editorial board all the time. The reason liberal editorial boards have greater prominence now is becuase journals like the Post have called events correctly more often than the National Review and the Washington Times over the years. That's why I continue to subscribe to the Post and the NYT and not to the Washington Times.

Howell needs to come to terms with the consequences of the failure of conservative ideas and stop imposing her notions of balance where it is not called for or needed.

"The right will NEVER be happy with the US media until there are no other voices around."

Exactly. They don't want to hear opposing opinion or any news that interrupts their twisted view of the world, which is why they are trotting out the Fairness Doctrine boogeyman again.

I have always thought that William Bennett was a pompous hypocrite.
Let me get this right, the reason he should be on TV and in the Wapo is because he is wrong about most things but refuses to learn anything new.
And if he opened his mind a little he would then be unacceptable because he spoke based on facts not ideology.

Also, if you try to politicize your coverage, you could end up like CBS.

But...but...but...Obama's coverage in WaPo was more positive than McCain's!

Note to Deborah: Obama's campaign was more positive than McCain's. You can't just make the news up in order to achieve a false "balance".

How come Fox and WaTimes never have someone wringing their hands about the lack of balance?

And when the liberals feel disrespected, she calls them dirty bloggers.
When her articles bring thousands of hostile comments, they're symptoms of the decline of western civilization to the hard-left DFH's.
But let a pout form on a Republican's lips--oh! it Must Be Responded To!
Disgusting duplicity.

If this is really about 900 lost subscribers, then management is probably livid. I'm sure that they are demanding she do whatever it takes to get those subscribers back and who gives a crap if it makes the Post a good newspaper or not.

In other words, while I think Deborah Howell is an idiot, she's got to address these phoney-baloney bias concerns whether she wants to or not. I'm sure all newspapers are hearing a lot more from angry conservative McCain supporters. And since newspaers are now supposed to be in the business of pleasing the advertiser rather than informing people, something must be done.

Though it's funny, isn't it, that when liberals complain about Post coverage, then Howell writes articles about how they know they're doing a good job when they get a lot of complaints? Hmmmmm.

Well if she wants to kill her newspaper, go on ahead and hire more conservative language writers as if the Washington Post hasn't been putting out conservative propoganda for years. Liberals can go to the intenet and read blogs and never have to read the word Washington Post again. And if they try to shut down the internet people will just line up on social networks. Even the GOP realizes its soap doesn't sell anymore, now if only the conventional wisdom folks will get the message.

Wow! What a spectacularly stupid idea.

How does she keep her job?

Affirmative reactionary hiring is exactly what the Star Tribune did a few years ago when they hired Katherine Kersten to be a columnist. They gave her a news column slot but all we've ever gotten from her is tired reactionary crap. In a city with thousands of unemployed published professional writers, they chose a think tank lawyer to write turgid columns about how evil liberals are.

This is the future of journalism if we keep promoting the Kerstens and Bill Kristols over those who've worked in the industry all their lives.

Those whose whines Howell is taking seriously won't be satisfied, because they're not at all looking for a quality national newspaper; they're looking for Fox News in print form.

Glaring error fixed.

Mark Gisleson is spot on about the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. Besides Kersten, they've also filled the commentary section with Will, Brooks, Krauthammer, Gerson and local wingnut Jason Lewis. The result is that the wingnuts still call it a communist rag and their circulation is plummeting. Maybe they're losing people who would like to read some liberal opinions once in a while.

Considering that the two most recent Op-Ed columnists for the post are the utterly unreadable Michael Gerson (who contends that Barack Obama ran a campaign "conspicuously devoid of ideas") and the neo-apostate conservative Kathleen Parker, I'd say they are working pretty hard not to be seen as "left." On Fridays I get the pleasure of Krauthamer, Novak, Will and Samuelson all at once.

There is no lack of conservative voices at the Post. The problem for "balance," though, at least in terms of the election, is that many of the conservative columnists were not into McCain and some, including George Will, acknowledged reality in saying that Barack Obama looked, sounded and acted more presidential than John McCain throughout the campaign.

Yes more conservatives in the media would be nice but it overlooks the bigger picture. The current media reporting the "news" should be held to a "truth standard" and a "balance" standard. Since they are a protected industry they should be held to a higher standard. That is where the problem lies. If they can't be held to that standard then drop the protection and let free enterprise take over. At that point the truth will win.

It's pretty clear who the consevative voices on the Op-Ed page are -- they ceaselessly parrot Republican't Talking Points.

I'd like Howell to say who she thinks the liberals are. Not the moderates, the people who are equivalently to the left as Krauthammer is to the right.

Who, pray tell?

By the way, conservative columnists and others were abandoning the McCain campaign in droves. Exactly how does this get explained by liberal bias?

George Will and Kathleen Parker drank out of the newspaper's office water cooler and were infected with liberal cooties?

Excuse me, that should be Will on the right. I forgot she's at the Post and was thinking Times.

As noted above, there was plenty to report about McCain that was not reported, but most of it was NOT nice. The Republican't overlords at WaPo killed it, McCain was not making "news" by repeating the same lines over and over and over from his acceptance speech, thus less McCain coverage.

Come to think about it, the fact that he was repeating his acceptance speech over and over and over could have be reported by the WaPo also but wasn't even.

Howell is a tool.

The reason there are more libs in journalism is easy.

Liberal journalists are going into the profession to 'change the world' and 'make a difference'.

Intellectually, conservatives see the job as basically reporting - which can sound boring.

But, changing the world? Sounds exciting, no?

The problem is that many journalists aren't reporting, they are trying to change the world... into what they want to see.

If there was at least one newspaper that wasn't biased in any manner (save the editorials), I would be a subscriber.

Alas, there isn't.

I think you're wrong, ster, about the conservatives see the job as basically reporting, if by reporting you mean printing the facts.

It is well known that reality has a liberal bias, and that conservatives don't live in the reality-based world, they make their own reality.

We've just seen what happens when the 'reality' created by conservatives bumps up against reality-based world, and it ain't pretty. It's a friggin' economic implosion.

Though it's funny, isn't it, that when liberals complain about Post coverage, then Howell writes articles about how they know they're doing a good job when they get a lot of complaints? -- sophronia, @11:22

That's because we don't "complain" with our wallets, while, apparently, 900 conservatives did. If we were as prone to sending "dear WaPo, I'm cancelling my subscription; your right wing rag is not fit as a cage liner" letters, we might get a hearing too.

Two things struck me as peculiar, when I read that piece (yesterday). One was that she said she had voted for Obama. Either she's lying through her teeth or else she's not quite as stupid as I gave her credit for.

The other (thing which struck me as peculiar) was that she admits there are plenty of conservative voices in the *opinion* pages of WaPo; the shortage (by natural selection, she seems to suggest) is on the *journalist* side, ie the news gatherers and reporters. Since news aren't a matter of opinion but a matter of fact, her desire to, artificially, skew those proportions frces me to conclude that she must be lying through her teeth in point #1; she really *is* too stupid for words.

Funny, if conservatives took over the Post, the first thing they would do is eliminate the position of ombudsman.

"The opinion pages have strong conservative voices; the editorial board includes centrists and conservatives; and there were editorials critical of Obama. Yet opinion was still weighted toward Obama. It's not hard to see why conservatives feel disrespected."

Does Deborah Howell reads what she writes? The first sentence of this paragraph pretty much says that lack of conservative voice is not the problem, right? They have lots of them at WaPo. So how can she then turn around and says that the solution is to hire more conservatives? Where is the logic in that? A public editor should at least be able to give logical, rational explanation, not simply reprinting letters from complaining wingnuts.

"And when the liberals feel disrespected, she calls them dirty bloggers.
When her articles bring thousands of hostile comments, they're symptoms of the decline of western civilization to the hard-left DFH's.
But let a pout form on a Republican's lips--oh! it Must Be Responded To!
Disgusting duplicity"

Yeah, in my opinion, this is the biggest bias of all. This condescending, dripping with contempt attitude towards complain from the left. NYT does this all the time, too. Any complain from the left is seen as proof that they are doing a great job. Any complain from the right, on the other hand, is seen as true and must be corrected.

I think this is the greatest succcess of the conservatives - in painting the media as liberal, they have succeeded in ensuring better coverage, because newspapers like NYT and WaPo are so scared of being called liberally bias that they bend over backwards to satisty the right.

The irony is, by doing this, they are actually ensuring that they lose more readers. Most of those people complaining about liberal bias wouldn't read NYT and WaPo even if all their complaints are addressed. And all the bending over backwards to placate the right are driving a lot of people from the left away. So they are not gaining readership from the people they are trying to placate, but are instead losing readership among those who are irritated by the misplaced placating.

Yes, we definitely need to consider the views of the devil. God has been given way too much press over the years.

You are absolutely correct! Great post. Conservative affirmative action will not work. Allow them to keep losing circulation and go out of business. That is the best remedy for the situation. Good old fashioned capitalism. Don't serve the customer the customer goes elsewhere.

Let me see if I can summarize the comments from the left... conservatism is stupid and that's why if there was media bias it would be okay, except of course there is no bias because WaPo tries to make money which makes them a tool of the corporate right. Besides the diversity idea was always just about undermining the white-male conservative status quo... a viewpoint which is the only real qualification you need to be in the MSM. So, no one on the right is qualified!

I know, I know... resistance is futile... you are progressive.

Curt.
You can't read.
Seriously.
You're dumber than... well, words fail.
Read this post again and realize why you're an arrogant infant.

Has anyone bothered to stop and think about this? All she did was write an article that takes the Fairness Doctrine and puts it into the world of print media.

Liberal responses to her article can then be used when liberals bring up the Fairness Doctrine for radio to point out hypocrisy. It's a classic debate technique and something that many simply took at face value rather than looking a little deeper into.