Buh-Bye, Steno Sue
Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 27, 2008
Howard “Mistah” Kurtz, in the course of watching several longtime fellow WaPo employees, including Susan Schmidt, take the buyouts that the Post has offered them, states this steaming hunk of untruth:
…Sue Schmidt, the investigative reporter who revealed Jack Abramoff’s dirty dealings…
Um, no. The late David Rosenbaum, a reporter with the New York Times, had his first story out on Jack Abramoff on April 2, 2002 — a full 22 months before Steno Sue’s first piece on the subject saw the light of day. Her main contribution to the coverage of the Abramoff story seems to have been pretending that Abramoff gave money to Democrats.
But, as our very own Charles noted at Brad DeLong’s shop, the Washington Post has been cheerfully promoting the fiction that Susan Schmidt broke the story, when in fact the only things I can recall her actually breaking with regard to journalism are reportorial ethics and maybe a fingernail or two transcribing the tripe she was fed by Ken Starr’s OIC and other members of the Republican Party’s get-Clinton cabal during the 1990s.
4 Responses to “Buh-Bye, Steno Sue”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Michael said
Too bad Howie didn’t take the offer as well.
shrimplate said
Thanks for the reminder and for spelling out some of the awful particulars.
Sheesh. Do they even bother to try anymore? They just pull stuff out of their rears and publish it.
Phoenix Woman said
Or they pull it from the rears of their bosses’ friends in the RNC.
Charles II said
Thanks for the plug, Phoenix Woman. Are you sure I didn’t get the link to Leen from you? I try to ignore whatever is happening in Washington.
It’s a shame that none of the commenters at the WaPo have brought this point about Rosenbaum to Howard Kurtz’s attention, nor indeed anything about Steno Sue’s ethics on printing leaks of Grand Jury testimony. I’ve considered registering just to leave little piles of rhetorical dung on their comment threads, but figured that it would be the equivalent of bringing coals to Newcastle.