Job insecurity

I've certainly seen enough movies about life in the press room to know that they are not exemplars of equanimity, diversity, sweetness, or light. But I also know that, in the corporate world -- a world not devoid of backstabbing and political posturing for those grasping the ladder -- if I publicly and approvingly referred to an article, blog post, etc., that denigrated a colleague, the repercussions would be pretty swift. Particularly if those comments reflected poorly on the organization as a whole.

So nevermind that the WaPo's national political editor, John Harris, used the comments of a GOP webmaster to criticize Dan Froomkin's "White House Briefing." He used comments that referred to Froomkin -- Harris's colleague -- as "a second-rate hack." That would reflect badly, not on Froomkin, but on Harris and, more to the point, the Washington Post organization.

Um, where does the Post's publisher stand on all of this?

And, by the way, Harris is still being stupidly coy. First he tries to evade telling readers that he is using the comments of a GOP operative to mug the online columnist. Then, when caught with his pants down around his ankles, he writes,

John F. Harris: I said I was not going to return much to the Froomkin matter today, but I'm going to take this one because it bothers me. Also because many other questions I'm not posting are on a similar theme. I did refuse to answer questions posed by a blogger named Brad Delong asking whether I knew that one of the people on record complaining about the confusion over White House Briefing was affiliated with Republicans. As a journalist, I hate not answering questions, even from (in this case) someone who clearly was coming from a point of view quite hostile to me. But I had jointly decided with colleagues that I had responded enough to the blogosphere, so I took a pass. I'll address the matter here. I did know that some people raising questions about Froomkin are Republicans...

Maybe he's awfully ignorant, and doesn't really know that Brad DeLong is not just some Cheez-its eating, pajama-wearing unemployed crank, typing away in his mother's basement, but rather a respected professor of economics at Berkeley and a former member of the Clinton administration (Harris is, of course, political editor; why would he know that?). But wouldn't a good editor want to know who, exactly, is the guy raking him over the coals? Referring to DeLong simply as "a blogger" is just another example of how much WaPo editors dislike transparency these days.

Once again, where does his publisher stand on all of this?