Post Reporter Hopes Protesters March on Post Building over Chandra Series

[Newsjock]

Source: Washington City Paper

In an internal communique, Washington Post Metro reporter Robert Pierre lashed out at the paper’s management for running the ongoing series on the murder of Chandra Levy. Pierre wrote that he found it “unconscionable” that the paper would devote a year and 12 chapters to the murder of a white woman, when around 200 people per year are murdered in the District–most of them male African Americans. The other local murder that “captivated” the Post, in Pierre’s telling, claimed the life of New York Times journalist David E. Rosenbaum. “Also white,” writes Pierre, who directed his outburst at Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell.

Then Pierre puts his rhetoric into overdrive: “Seems like either an awful big coincidence or just recognition that, to us, a white life is worth more than a black one. I personally hope that people march on the paper and throw the papers back. It is absolutely absurd and dare I say, racist, at its core.” Pierre goes on to discuss how he wrote up a couple of inches of copy on a recent murder victim, but his editors cut it over space concerns. “But we can devote 12 days, thousands of man-hours, and a year of investigation to one white woman.”

Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. says he hasn’t discussed the matter with Pierre. Pierre didn’t return a request for comment.


Read more: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/07/22/post-reporter-hopes-protesters-march-on-post-building-over-chandra-series/

[anonymous171]

1. MWGS

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. And of course...

We all know that murders are the only story in Washington going unreported by The Post.

[depakid]

3. Katherine Graham must be rolling over in her grave...

Donald's taken her once respected paper and turned it into a tabloid laughing stock.

Hardly even worthy of the Pravda designation anymore....

[Nancy Waterman]

4. I hadn't considered the racist side of this

though the national tendency to harp on these missing young white women is unconscionable and insufferable.
But I live in the DC area and get the Post daily, and I am furious over the front page daily coverage of Chandra Levy's murder for now 9 days running. It was bad enough in the summer of 2001. What on earth are they thinking to waste space with this now? And it is a huge amount of space every day. The few letters they printed about it on the op-ed were all opposed.

[truedelphi]

5. They are running the story now??

WTF is that about??

I understood at the time that it happened that the need to link Gary Condit to the incident was part of the motivation. They were able to railroad him out of his Congressional seat over it.

But why would they run articles about it now??

[Peace Patriot]

6. Could be a distraction. But I've got a feeling it's something more.

There was a very peculiar smell to the Dick Cheney meeting with Gary Condit on the very day Chandra Levy disappeared (5/1/01)--and during her very disappearance hours--and to the coverage (or I should say non-coverage) in WaPo and other corporate 'news' monopolies about that meeting. Two days later (5/3/01), Condit (leader of the "Blue Dog" Dems) voted FOR Bush/Cheney's highly controversial first tax cut for the rich, in a very close vote. Then there is the other story that summer--the House investigation of the FBI. Condit sat on the House Intelligence committee, privy to many secrets. (Two such secrets spring to mind: why Colleen Rowley's FISA warrant was denied, and how/why John O'Neil got drummed out of the FBI).

WaPo does nothing--I repeat nothing--that does not serve the Bush Junta and the worst of fascist corporations that rule over us. So, what I'm thinking is, pre-emptive cover-up. Maybe private investigators, or 'white hat' FBI, or McClatchy/Knight-Ridder (the only news service doing its job), has finally got something substantive on the Cheney-Condit-Levy story, WaPo got wind of it and is trying to get the coverup narrative out there, before the shit hits the fan.

Also, when bad wars happen to a good people, there comes a moment when the war profiteers face the peril of the public awakening and seizing back its democratic power. At three big turns of this gyre (Vietnam/Watergate, Guatemala/Nicaragua/Iran-Contra, and maybe now), the political establishment tries to deflect the public's attention from the most serious problem: rule by the war profiteers; and onto a real but lesser problem, by which some scapegoats are hand-slapped (survive in style, with pensions). WaPo's focus on this summer-of-2001 news story may be prep for something like that. Maybe they are going to disclose something that seems big and scandalous, but is relatively minor, compared to the leadup to 9/11 or the lead-away from it (Iraq War).

In any case, we are wise to be totally skeptical of any WaPo treatment of this story, and also regarding their motives for re-visiting it. They've become such a shit-rag that tabloidism may be all there is to it--a distraction from the catastrophes of Bushitism (and a racist one, at that). But, like I said, I smelled something back then. And it will be interesting to see what black holes WaPo leaves in the story this time (what questions they don't ask; what facts they leave out; what new spin they have on it.)