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<p>CARVILLE: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. It's said the pen is the mightier than the sword. Then our next guest wields a mighty deadly weapon. Through is writings, he introduced us to Paula Jones and took on Anita Hill. Now he says he was blinded by the right.</p>

Online Exclusive » An online start-up lures two top political journalists. Posted November 21, 2006 By Rem Rieder Rem Rieder (rrieder@ajr.umd.edu) is AJR's editor and senior vice president. It may not be a sign of the apocalypse, but it has the feel of a truly significant benchmark. The defection of Washington Post Political Editor John Harris and ace political reporter Jim VandeHei to an online start-up is not just a crushing loss for the Post. It's a dramatic manifestation of the ongoing shift from old media to new. It's also a reflection of the angst at the once unshakeable Post,...

The Bias Wars By Joe Strupp with Shawn Moynihan and Charles Geraci Published: July 26, 2004 NEW YORK Michael Rowett may be the last Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter anyone expected to leave for a job with the Democratic Party. Just four years ago, Rowett broke the story that several members of a state ethics committee investigating President Bill Clinton had given contributions to either Clinton or the Democrats. "He went after that as a thorough and dogged reporter, not knowing what he would find," recalls Griffin Smith, Democrat-Gazette executive editor. "He was a stalwart of capital coverage. I had no idea...

China had decided on an important policy and that is public ownership would be the mainstay and multiple forms of ownership will develop side by side, said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao when he was interviewed here by the Washington Post of the United States. "To sum up, we can use two 'unswervingly' to describe this. We will unswervingly uphold the public ownership system and develop the public sector, and we will unswervingly encourage, support and guide the development of the non-public sector, the private-sectorincluded," Wen said in the interview by Leonard Downie, executive editor of The Washington Post on Friday....

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) today announced that it had selected Bob Woodward of The Washington Post as ‘Mr. Run Amok 2005'. The award goes to the male American reporter who has “made the greatest advancements in evading the bondage of domineering editors and operating as a free agent within an existing mainstream media newsroom,” according to an SPJ news release. New York Times reporter Judi Miller was recently recognized as ‘Miss Run Amok.’ Mr. Woodward earned the recognition for keeping secret from his editor his own involvement in the CIA leak scandal for two years, even when what...

Anti-Gay Marriage Advertorial Rankles 'Washington Post' Readers By Joe Strupp Published: November 23, 2004 4:35 PM ET NEW YORK A 16-page advertising insert espousing a strong argument against gay marriage ran in some editions of The Washington Post Sunday, sparking more than 1,000 e-mails and phone calls, according to Ombudsman Michel Getler, who said most of the comments opposed the publication as offensive. "They were overwhelmingly negative about the Post distributing this thing," Getler told E&P, noting that many of the responses were from outside the Post circulation area, indicating a formal campaign against the publication may have begun. "People...

NEW YORK As newspapers conduct damage control after early Wednesday's error, in which most wrongly reported that 12 trapped miners had been rescued in West Virginia, many editors are defending their mistake by saying they were misled by various sources, including the state's governor. Yet, even after extensive follow-up coverage today, serious questions about the sourcing, and its use, remain. "AP was reporting accurately the information that we were provided by credible sources -- family members and the governor," AP managing editor Mike Silverman has said. "The mistake was not ours, it was the authorities at the scene," Leonard Downie...

The National Reconnaissance Office has asked the Justice Department to consider opening a criminal investigation into recent disclosures about a highly classified satellite program that has prompted criticism in Congress because of escalating costs, two administration officials said yesterday. The Justice Department and the FBI are reviewing the request to determine whether classified information was leaked and whether there is enough evidence to support a criminal probe, officials said. The request from the NRO, which manages spy satellite programs, comes after reports in The Washington Post and other publications about a stealth satellite program under debate in Congress. The Post...

JANUARY 21, 2002 -- Newspaper publishers know the suburbs are critical to the growth of the business. If they've had mixed success, it's not for lack of trying, as they have poured millions of dollars into hiring additional staff and producing zoned community sections. What they may not realize is that part of the problem may be right in their own house. For a host of reasons, journalists tend to look askance at covering the suburbs. The problem isn't trivial. Half the U.S. population lives in the suburbs today, more than double the slice of 50 years ago, while cities ...

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitizer prize winning reporter who has worked for the Washington Post and Huffington Post, has revealed that he is an illegal alien in a coordinated media push with the New York Times and ABC News seeking amnesty for illegal aliens like him.Vargas also revealed that he breached White House security by using a fake ID, including when he covered a state dinner. And that a superior at the Washington Post knew and approved of his actions.Vargas made the revelations in an article he authored published in the upcoming New York Times Sunday Magazine.Vargas writes that at...

It's a tough call whether Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—the Jordanian "militant" who is reportedly responsible for the videotaped butchery of Nicholas Berg—is more stupid than he is brutal, or whether he is a bigger monster than he is a fool. Zarqawi's own nauseating videotape makes the case for his indescribable brutality. The argument that he is Islamism's biggest lunatic yet—no small claim—is similarly straightforward: He has inaugurated an otherwise inconceivable display of comparative atrocity that could deliver his enemy from its own demoralization. After all, Americans have been sufficiently shamed, dishonored, and demoralized by the repulsive images of prisoner abuse at...

Washington, DC – Traditional Values Coalition Executive Director Andrea Lafferty complained today that an article in the Washington Post about the clothes worn by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ children was “unfair and disappointing.” Mrs. Lafferty said in a letter sent to Post Editor Leonard Downie, Jr. that the Post has now set a new pecking order for “unfair journalism which ignores substance and slides right into chortling about form.” “If you can’t come up with something disgusting about the actual nominee or his wife then rough-up the kids some and see what happens,” Mrs. Lafferty said today. Post fashion...

Has anyone else noticed that the silent majority seems to be involved in a silent boycott of all the biased news outlets that have been attacking President Bush, our military and the nation's Christian heritage this past year? If we believe a new report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations[1], which collects and monitors circulation data for newspapers and magazines, the liberal press is in deep doo-doo. Some of the nation's largest daily newspapers reported steep circulation declines and overall circulation is down across the industry. The top 20 papers suffered the biggest weekday and Sunday declines, among them the...

On December 16, 2003 Georgia beauty queen Sharron Nicole Redmond rolled down the window of her car and shot boyfriend Kevin Shorter. Three days later, Shorter bled to death. Even though Shorter did not have a gun with him, and even though Redmond easily could have driven away in her car, Redmond later testified that she killed Shorter in self-defense. This past week the jury in Savannah found Miss Redmond not guilty of murder. [http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=104&sid=447343] A case of battered justice for a male victim of domestic violence. Three days after the jury verdict, the Washington Post ran an editorial about...

Media: As newspapers and TV networks struggle and the administration presumes to define a proper news organization, what does the journalism establishment demand? No fair if you guessed a government bailout. The dead giveaway answer came this week as Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor and current vice president at large of the Washington Post, along with Michael Schudson, a professor at the mission-fatigued Columbia Journalism School, debuted their role-playing as cash-strapped bankers and auto execs. The news business' tenuous hold on profitability, they lamented, has threatened its sustainability. They demanded massive government involvement. The duo released their full report,...

One more story about whether Paula Zahn is sexy, or how the bags under Greta Van Sustren's eyes vanished, or the size of the pistol in Geraldo Rivera's pocket, and Peter Jennings might scream. ''I find it a bit tedious,'' the longtime ABC News anchor said Wednesday of the burst of journalists-as-celebrities news coverage touched off over the past few months as Fox News and CNN raid one another's talent barns. ''I recognize that those of you who write about TV have to write something every day,'' Jennings said. (Observe the endless chain: Viewers blame everything on TV, which in ...

It was September 19, 1996. I woke early, hurriedly dressed for a long day at the office during campaign season, walked out the front door of our townhouse, opened the Washington Post and beheld a vast, above-the-fold, picture of Bob Dole falling off a stage at a campaign rally in a Little League field in Chico, California. It was so patently wrong, so unfair, so mean-spirited, so petty that anger, pity and sadness all fought inside me for equal time. I was not alone. Washington Post executive Leonard Downie Jr. received more than 150 irate calls that day. His response...

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

News reporting that holds accountable those with power and influence has been a vital part of American democratic life, especially in places with daily newspapers profitable enough...to maintain substantial reporting staffs. That journalism is now at risk...American society must now take some collective responsibility for supporting news reportings....In a comprehensive report commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School, we suggest a number of public sources of support for this news reporting: - The Internal Revenue Service or Congress should clarify tax regulations to explicitly allow new or existing local news organizations to operate as nonprofit or low-profit entities, allowing them...

Bonneville International Corp. will launch radio station WWWT to replace WTWP, its radio-station venture with The Washington Post that will end next month. The new station will feature local and syndicated talk shows to replace programming provided by The Post. WWWT, dubbed "Talk Radio 3WT," will begin airing Sept. 20. WWWT will be simulcast on the same frequencies on which Washington Post Radio now airs: 1500 AM, 107.7 FM and 820 AM. Bonneville has lined up four nationally syndicated programs for the station: three featuring conservative-libertarian personalities -- Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly -- and one with liberal...