Washington Post = Dept of Health Marketing

WaPo cancels lobbyist event
Politico.com
Mike Allen, Michael Calderone Mike Allen, Michael Calderone – Thu Jul 2

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive "salon" at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

With the Post newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Weymouth said in an email to the staff that "a flier went out that was prepared by the Marketing department and was never vetted by me or by the newsroom. Had it been, the flier would have been immediately killed, because it completely misrepresented what we were trying to do."

Is anyone surprised? This only confirms the belief of many of you out there that many a newspaper are practically in bed with the Obama Administration and lobbyists. The surprise here is that it took an (dare I say it) honest lobbyist to recognize this as a breach of ethics.

Would the Obama Administration be "transparent" if this went through? I'm not going out on a limb to say this would have been brushed under the rug.

Regardless of whether or not they would have gone through with the get together, the Washington Post has become yellow journalism and a guard dog for the President. Who's next?