The Shamelessness of the Washington Post

The Washington Post likes to fashion itself a trend setter, an insider broadsheet that defends the public interest by exposing corruption. The Post is fooling no one.

Clearly the broadsheet values special interests over the public interest.

The payoff for a scandalous scoop is a coveted Pulitzer Prize, which awards the Post‘s investigative journalists between $3,000 and $20,000 for the trouble of advancing lobbyists’ agendas and helping drive newspaper sales.

Even more appetizing for the Post are generous corporate underwriters who are willing to pay as much as $250,000 a piece for access to its journalists, Obama Administration officials, and members of Congress. The salon scandal, anyone?

This takes us to the nadir of the Post‘s reporting: its “Pulitzer Prize”-winning coverage of Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The Abramoff scandal was born when Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt teamed up with lobbyist Tom Rodgers, among other mercenaries, to set up Abramoff for wrongful conviction by reporting false allegations against him in an effort to stir up scandal.

The details are fully laid out in my book, Lynched: The Shocking Story of How the Political Establishment Manufactured a Scandal to Have Republican Super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff Removed from Power.

Suffice to say, Schmidt’s Pulitzer Prize winning material was based upon misleading information and agenda-driven sources promoted by Rodgers, one of Abramoff’s professional rivals within the lucrative market of tribal gaming.

According to Shawn Martin, who covered a former Abramoff client, the Louisiana Coushatta, for the American Press, Schmidt heavily borrowed from his original reporting and ran to press with it.

While Martin reported the false allegations planted by tribal dissidents prepped by Rodgers, the American Press retracted those same allegations just days later. Somehow Schmidt, who had teamed up with Rodgers, ran with the false allegations while ignoring the retractions altogether.

Once Schmidt’s story was in place, the lobbyists who planted the false information in local newspapers took the false narrative to “important PR people in Washington, DC,” one participant boasted at a tribal gathering. The lies were then blitzed across the nation, setting the stage for Sen. John McCain to call for hearings in the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on behalf of his fund raisers.

Yes, the whole Abramoff scandal, which the Washington Post broke and drove in the public arena, has been exposed as a sham.

Schmidt has since made a hasty retreat, first migrating over to the Wall Street Journal as part of a buy out package. Where she has gone from there is anyone’s guess. One would think that the Post would be celebrating Schmidt all over town for ridding Capitol Hill of such a corrupting influence instead of relegating her to journalistic oblivion.

Yet, the Post continues to descend the depths of shamelessness.

Recently, Al Kamen used his Post column to savage Abramoff’s new book with all the finesse of a high school mean girl while touting the Abramoff reporting of Peter Stone, a journalist who received his information from Rodgers, parroted Schmidt’s talking points, and appeared with Rodgers and Schmidt in Alex Gibney’s Abramoff documentary, Casino Jack, which was based upon misinformation promoted by the Soros-backed Fenton Communications.

Leave it to the Post to keep the false narrative in the family while casting its friends as the purveyors of truth.

Despite having invented the Abramoff scandal, the rag today decided to weigh in on the sentencing of Kevin Ring in an oped entitled “Fair Sentencing in the Abramoff Case: An Associate Shouldn’t be Penalized for Going to Trial.”

The Washington Post advocated clemency for Ring: “So, what according to the Justice Department, is the appropriate sentencing range for Kevin A. Ring, a lobbying associate of Mr. Abramoff who was convicted last year but never accused of personally benefiting from the (Abramoff) scheme? A term of 17 to 22 years. One reason for the astronomical sentence, according to the government: Mr. Ring was the only lobbyist who went to trial instead of pleading guilty and cooperating with the United States.”

The Post pities poor Ring for having to face such a harsh penalty for exercising his constitutional right to defend himself. Yet, Ring wouldn’t be facing this prospect if the newspaper hadn’t run with the false allegations in the first place. Innocent people are injured when newspapers invent scandals and promote them with the help of PR firms, lobbyists, staged hearings, and headline-chasing prosecutors.

Fortunately for Ring, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle has seen through the absurdity of the government’s recommendation to consider a significantly reduced sentence, no thanks to the Washington Post and its reckless, special interest-driven reporting.

Susan Bradford is the author of Lynched! The Shocking Story of How the Political Establishment Manufactured a Scandal to Have Republican Super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff Removed from Power. To buy the book, please visit: www.susanbradford.org.

(c) Susan Bradford 2011