The Washington Post will run a story on Wednesday that is a perfect example of how a newspaper’s attempt to be “fair and balanced” and thus “objective” ends up being misleading.

In the attempt to be fair to the U.S. Justice Department, in spite of the highly unprecedented raid on a Louisiana Congressman’s office recently, an act which without doubt violates Article 1, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution, the Post ledes with this:

The Justice Department yesterday vigorously defended the recent weekend raid of Rep. William J. Jefferson’s Capitol Hill office as part of a bribery investigation, asserting that the Democratic lawmaker attempted to hide documents from FBI agents while they were searching his New Orleans home last August.

But the buried lede in the story is a quote from a Constitutional lawyer, an expert in these legal matters.

Noting that (AG) Gonzales, (FBI Director) Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty signaled that they would resign if they were forced to return the Jefferson documents, constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein said: “Well, let them resign. I am astonished that the president would not have fired them for undertaking this action without consulting him in advance.”

Read the whole story and you decide. Is the story fair AND balanced? Does it reveal the truth? Shouldn’t the true part be in the headline and the lede paragraph?

Washington Post: Congressman Tried to Hide Papers, Justice Dept. Says

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 30th, 2006 at 10:25 pm and is filed under The Bush Years.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.