Over at
Anonymous is a Woman, Karen Duncan smacks down Washington Post reporter Amy Gardner on her Haim Saban "story" (in quotes because, at this point, it's basically b.s.). Here's Karen (bolding added for emphasis):
Meanwhile, Amy Gardner, back in the local Metro section of the Washington Post, wanted to put a little Virginia spin on the story. She probably also wanted to show her editors that she too could do investigative reporting, which, in her case, consists of looking up VPAP online, just as bloggers do. So, without fleshing out any of the details of this complicated story, she wrote the piece pointing out that Saban has contributed a large sum to McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign. Gardner also spun this as a possible huge embarrassment for McAuliffe. I’m not sure why it’s a problem right now for several reasons.
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I can forgive VA Blogger because he’s a partisan and an amateur citizen journalist. A blogger, who probably isn’t experienced at professional journalism. What he does for his side is as admirable as what any of my colleagues on the left do for our team. But Gardner is supposed to be a trained, unbiased reporter without a team in the game. Yet too often, her biases are like a small boat, tilting so far in one direction that it threatens to capsize completely. Even though she’s not in the big league, on the front page of the national section, she needs to do a better job of gathering facts, analyzing what she’s got and not violating such basic rules of logic as leaping to false conclusions, guilt by association, and misuse of evidence. That may be a lot to ask of a blogger, but it's not too much to ask of a real reporter.
Sad to say, but this smackdown of Amy Gardner is well deserved. Over the past few years, I've watched as Gardner - in the guise of an "objective" reporter - has shilled for the Davises - Tom and Jeannemarie. In addition, her reporting on the Metro to Dulles project, particularly on the no-bid contract to Bechtel and the Tysons Tunnel angles, was utterly abysmal. Frankly, I can think of a dozen bloggers right off the top of my head who are better reporters than Amy Gardner. The fact that she works for the Washington Post should give us all an idea as to why the corporate media is going down the tubes.
