Overkill? Sunday's Washington Post has SEVEN [now EIGHT] Articles Mentioning Joseph Steffen (NCPAC)

The Washington Post, which 'broke' the story of former aide to Md. Gov. Ehrlich (R) Joseph Steffen commenting about rumors of Balt. Mayor O'Malley (D) cheating on his wife in postings on FreeRepublic, and in Freepmails, has published what can only be described as journalistic overkill in tomorrow's Sunday edition.

According to a search by Google News, The Post is publishing no less than seven articles in one edition that mention Mr. Steffen and the events leading to his resignation from the Ehrlich administration this week.

The rumors that Mr. Steffen commented on have been in circulation for several years, yet it took what appears to be a cybertrap of an unwitting Ehrlich staffer to bring the rumors to a point where they could be used by Democratic partisans for political advantage.

The Post, which was given the story by an unnamed source, is now flogging the story for all it's worth. One would think that a major newspaper with a major story would be interested in learning the whole story about how Mr. Steffen came to comment on the rumors in private messages responding to an anonymous person on the Internet so that their readers could be better informed. No dice. No mention of that angle in any of the seven, repeat: seven, articles mentioning Mr. Steffen and his political demise.

CHECK Post 18. Anti-Bubba182 may be on to something.

AND THERE IS THE FOLLOWING ISSUE- May be something....may be nothing,
It just depends..IF WHAT MD4BUSH LISTS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FROM FREEPMAIL.., AND IF THE TIME CODES HAVE ALWAYS READ "PST".

IF SO... it looks like the posts from MD4Bush that is listed in the first "link"........

ARE IN A BOGUS FORMAT!!! (I placed x in for letters that were on the post)

"Re: xxxxxxxxxxxx…
From xxxxx | 10/19/2004 3:41:51 PM PDT"

Notice that it says "PDT".

I just looked at my Freepmails.....and the time code lists as "PST"

Again.....this is only something if they are supposed to read PST.

MD4Bush most likely works for or with those newspapers.

Rumor has it that MD4Bush is a Montgomery Country Democrat operative trying to start the primary season early and give a boost to Doug Duncan. If there's a split in the DNC in the country then it's safe to assume the balance of power in MD is suffering the same fate. On one side is O'Malley representing the old guard, and on the other is Duncan representing the new element. Baltimore City v. Montgomery County, Anne Arundel County, and possibly Prince George's County.

The rumors about O'Malley have been swirling since the governor's race when KKT was tapped and O'Malley took a bath. A guy like O'Malley doesn't sit out an election he knows he can win unless there's a reason, and I don't think it's Kennedy money.

It's my estimation that Maryland Democrats are in the midst of a scism and this is just the beginning.

But perhaps the best part is that while the Democrats scream for an investigation, and Ehrlich agrees to it, the one guy who has to execute the investigation is none other then Joe Curran, father in law of Mayor Martin O'Malley, and Maryland Attorney General.

And if all of this is known to the opposition it's fair to assume that they never intended this to stick to Ehrlich but rather to draw out those nasty rumors and get O'Malley on the fence months out from a contentious primary.

Remember when the Democrats in congress had a memo stolen from an unsecured server? What did the Democrats scream about? They ignored the content and decried the theft.

Remember when CBS ran a story on forged documents? They ignored the forgery and ran with the content.

In this case they (the Wapo, and Baltimore Sun) are ignoring the instigator (MD4Bush) and accusing Steffen (NCPAC) of dirty tricks. One problem: if one side of the Democrat party is using the scandal to raise the 2 year old rumors and the other side is trying to take down an incumbent Republican governor who won an election and wrestled power from the Democrats for the first time in over 30 years after 9/11, and in the face of record setting elections of Republicans based on an old campaign model, who do you think is adjusting their game plan?

I'd put my money on the "new" Democrats, Doug Duncan, and pass on the Sun, and the Washington Post.

The number of times rumors of a man cheating on his wife have been wrong are very few.

I know the "reporters" in Arkansas knew about Clinton for YEARS and ignored it. Some of the women were working for the "news". I lost all respect for any of them when they didn't tell the truth when Clinton was running for President. It went downhill from there.

Where there is smoke there is usually fire. I wonder if they will apologize when this "rumor" is proven true? /sarcasm

From what I have read......MD4Bush was talking about the rumor before that NCPAC guy......

So the basis of the rumor would be a democrap....whose ip can be tracked.......

And it looks like the Washington Post and the Baltimore sun may have coordinated with a dem operative to work their story.....

If that were to pan out....it would show extreme bias on the newspaper's behalf.

Kinda like Kurtz and his NY TIMES story on that Gannon guy last week. One of his sources was dailykos. Zuniga, who runs that site had been on the Howard Dean payroll and now, it seems, is going to raise funds for the DNC through that web site.

Kurtz did not disclose that stuff.

That is a better point than mine. As other posters have pointed out today, and many times in prior posts, Old Media is afraid, and they are lashing out. Without being to verbose, it is their own fault, and the fault of their entrenched myopic leadership. Good, smart management can recover if they want to keep ahead of the rest of us. They can begin demanding rigorous investigations, and non-partisan questioning and reporting of events. But, that is too hard. It is still too comfortable to be sloppy and biased, and be able to hide behind the First Amendment and corporate lawyers.

I compare Old Media to a Tyrannosaurus stuck in a tar pit. It is struggling, and others are attracted by the fear. But if you get too close, the old reptile can still take a huge bite out of YOU!

The PDT on an October 19 missive would be correct.

FR defaults to California time and it's up to each freeper to set their preferred settings. I have to adjust twice a year as Arizona doesn't do Daylight Savings so half the year I have my settings on MST, which it is currently, and half I have it set on PDT because we are the same as California during daylight savings.

Clearly MD4Bush didn't bother to adjust his time stamp setting for Maryland time.

P.S. I'm not really following this story, just waiting to find out who MD4Bush is, so prefer not to get more pings to these threads.

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