Howie Kurtz focuses on the critical issue this morning:
The most difficult exchanges came when the metro desk’s Sexton asked why no action was taken after the strong challenges to Blair’s reporting in the sniper case – including from the paper’s own Washington bureau. The U.S. attorney in Maryland disputed a Blair article that said suspect John Muhammad’s interrogation was cut short just as he was about to confess, and a Fairfax County prosecutor called a news conference to denounce a second piece as “dead wrong.” Raines and his team “did nothing” to verify “the authenticity or quality of his reporting,” Sexton said. Why, he asked, did no senior editor demand to know the identities of Blair’s unnamed sources? Raines said it was his failure not to ask about the sources. He said he had “a political reporter’s DNA,” not “a police reporter’s DNA.” But he also said that after examining Blair’s story and a Washington Post account, he believed the story about the truncated interrogation was at least partially true.
Is there a company on the planet where an executive who had made such a decision would still be in place? If an Enron executive had made a similar decision, do you think Raines would be calling for him to stay in place? (My favorite Raines line: “Don’t demagogue me.” And if Ken Lay had said that?)
The Dish 