The Washington Post Apologizes

On Sunday the Washington Post ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, issued an interesting apology for his paper’s failure to write about the Department of Justice’s handling of the Philadelphia New Black Panther Party case.

After summarizing the case and the controversy over it, Alexander admitted,

The Post didn’t cover it. Indeed, until Thursday’s story, The Post had written no news stories about the controversy this year. In 2009, there were passing references to it in only three stories.

That’s prompted many readers to accuse The Post of a double standard. Royal S. Dellinger of Olney [Maryland] said that if the controversy had involved Bush administration Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, “Lord, there’d have been editorials and stories, and it would go on for months.”

“To be sure,” Alexander said, “ideology and party politics are at play,” although he seemed to be referring only to liberal bloggers, “Fox News and right-wing bloggers,” “Congressional Republicans,” Sarah Palin, etc. No admission, that is, of ideology or party politics at the Post.

To his credit, Alexander chastises the Post for not covering the controversy and concludes by telling his colleagues, “Better late than never. There’s plenty left to explore.” He even suggests some topics:

… coverage is justified because it’s a controversy that screams for clarity that The Post should provide. If Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and his department are not colorblind in enforcing civil rights laws, they should be nailed. If the Commission on Civil Rights’ investigation is purely partisan, that should be revealed. If [former DOJ lawyer and now whistleblower J. Christian] Adams is pursuing a right-wing agenda, he should be exposed.

But is the Post really capable of providing neutral, objective “clarity” when it, or at least its ombudsman, seems so confused about colorblindness, the principle, that is so central to this controversy?

Eric Holder has been Attorney General for a year and a half, and “his department” has not been “colorblind in enforcing civil rights laws” for one day of that time. The Obama administration has nominated two Supreme Court justices and a slew of lower court judges all of whom oppose colorblindness, some of them vehemently. Indeed, one of them, Ninth Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu, even asserted once in a Los Angeles Times editorial that nothing in Brown v. Board of Education “establishes or suggests colorblindness as a legal principle.”

Obama made it clear before he was president that he opposes state initiatives, modeled on California’s 1996 Proposition 209, that would prohibit preferential treatment based on race, and his Dept. of Justice recently filed a brief in Texas supporting racial preferences not only in college admissions but in schools systems in general.

If the Washington Post has ever “nailed” the Obama administration in general or its Department of Justice in particular for their flagrant flouting of colorblindness, it must have used a super-quiet hammer and an invisible nail.