Ed Morrissey at The Air:
I guess the Post doesn’t kiss and tell, huh? They didn’t always take that position, though. When Dick Cheney met with energy-industry leaders in 2001 (before he could take advantage of the Post’s Mack Daddy program), the Post demanded transparency in government officials meeting with lobbyists. In fact, the Post got inside sources to divulge the list of participants in the meetings of the Energy Task Force. The Post was so impressed with itself that it created [a] handy table in order to make the information as easy to read as possible, when it published the names of all the participants in 2006.
Now, how does that situation differ from the Post’s own “salons” intended to create tete-a-tetes in private with high-ranking government officials? Shouldn’t the Post, as a journalistic organization, inform the public about the actions of public officials who want to secretly meet with lobbyists? After all, that was the reasoning behind the demand that Cheney release the participants in the ETF — that secrecy would negatively impact public policy. If these public officials declined the invitations, we’d like to see that kind of integrity honored. If they didn’t decline the invitations, then we should know about that, too.
This is what happens when a journalistic organization decides to moonlight as a power pimp for profit. The moonlight identity becomes the sole identity.
But what I really want to know: would the discussions between reporters, lobbyists, and politicians have been limited to healthcare, or would New Media also have been discussed? Because while The Washington Post is cancelling these $25,000-$250,000/head events, I made another fifty cents from my Amazon referrals in the past two weeks alone, and I feel dreadful about it.
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