The short quotation above is a statement that can be heard in all newsrooms on occasion. It is usually uttered as a response by reporters or editors who have been asked about a story in another newspaper that is attracting a lot of attention.
In support of the “we had it” answer, journalists will dig out a line or a paragraph in the middle of a story inside one of last week’s papers that touched on the same or a similar subject. So there is usually some truth to the observation. But sometimes it isn’t a satisfactory answer if the new story is important and the newspaper hasn’t called readers’ attention to it with a headline, a fuller account and prominent display.
That is the situation The Post found itself in with many readers on May 18 after it published nine sentences from a Knight Ridder news service story on Page A13. That story reported that an investigation by the General Services Administration (GSA) “has concluded that departing members of the Clinton administration did not trash the White House during the presidential transition, as unnamed aides to President Bush and other critics had insisted.” The GSA probe was ordered by Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.).
This story, and Post readers, deserved better treatment. Neither The Post nor the Bush White House distinguished itself throughout this story, which began in January during Bush’s first week in office. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and other GOP aides helped ignite and fan an inflammatory story about vandalism to White House equipment and Air Force One that quickly made The Post’s front page. Fleischer said the White House was “cataloguing” the apparent damage.
Very quickly, the White House started backing away from the charges and suggested it was taking the high road, saying it was “time to move on.” But damage had been done, first to the departing administration, beyond that which was self-inflicted in other ways, and also, perhaps more important, to confidence in the new White House podium.
Although The Post treated the end of this story in humdrum fashion with its wire report of the GSA finding four months later, many readers, to their credit, never let go of this story and the way it was handled or mishandled.
Looking back at this episode, several points come to mind:
- The Post’s initial front-page reporting on Jan. 26 and 27 was straightforward. The White House was saying these things, and Clinton aides were responding. Where The Post fell short, in my view, was in not challenging Fleischer on the record more quickly and forcefully on the initial allegations and on using the White House platform to air such unsubstantiated charges.
- The Post did not remain alert to the overall power of this story with readers, considering that this had the appearance of White House manipulation of the press moments after taking office. When President Bush, on Feb. 13, volunteered that “all the allegations that they took stuff off Air Force One is simply not true,” The Post did not even report it. The only reference appeared in Al Kamen’s In the Loop column two days later. “In case you missed it,” is the way Kamen began the item.
- The Post did come back to the issue on Feb. 18, reporting that “the administration has offered no concrete evidence” of the vandalism, but this was in the middle of a broader story and was on Page A10.
- The use of a brief news service account rather than a well-displayed, staff-written story about the GSA findings tells me that the readers who complained have better news judgment than the editors. Here was a rather rare event: a government investigation, ordered by Republicans, returns a not guilty verdict about an outgoing Democratic administration with respect to allegations of vandalism launched by the spokesman and other aides for the Bush White House, and widely played up by the media.
