Web Letters: Editorial Malpractice

Thank you. A friend sent me a link to this story, reposted on another page, thinking I would appreciate the content. I spent a few weeks this summer writing essays about the jingoistic editorials in the Washington Post, including an op-ed by Mr. Hiatt, that urged the US and Europe to confront Russia over its actions in Georgia.

The essays I posted on my Occasional Dissident site ("Jingo Bells, Jingo Bells, Jingo All the Way" and "South Ossetia? What South Ossetia?") and the Occasional Dissident MySpace page ("South Ossetia On My Mind," I and II) take the editorial board to task for failing to read their paper's reporting, let alone the reporting from other sources, and for making spurious claims that were wholly unsupported.

I have been quite astonished to see the tone of editorials in favor of the surge and other actions in Iraq, but the demands for action and willful ignoring of Georgia's actions reached new levels of nonsense. The paper remains mute on the issue, now that its claims and demands are shown to have been very overstated and dangerously ill-informed. The insinuation that Europe was engaging in old-fashioned and immoral appeasement was especially galling. Clearly, Europe was paying more attention to events than were Mr. Hiatt and his fellow editors.

It is clear as well that the Fourth Estate must do more than monitor the workings of government. It must also police itself and sound the alarm when fiction stands in for reporting. I applaud your work in that regard.

Alan Howe

Arlington, VA

"Liberal" Eastern newspapers are largely a right-wing myth concocted to excite their base. While individual reporters may be "liberal," corporate interests own and direct the newspapers' policies. There are no mainstream "liberal" media. The BBC got their facts straight, and reported correctly that Georgia started the war with Russia. They had people on both sides of the conflict reporting the comments of the people on the ground and the sequence of events. CNN International and the wire services do a good job too. BBC is more available!

Pervis James Casey

Riverside, CA