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Washington Post and Lobbyists
Friday, July 3rd, 2009 7:54 am | Author: Jerry | Entertainment/Sports, Life, Politics/Government |
Tags: lobbyists, media, news, watchdog
For years the Washington Post was a leading voice in exposing the ties between lobbyists and members of Congress.
But someone there must have forgotten what their mission is. Recently they announced that they would make the home of Katharine Weymouth, Post’s publisher, available to lobbyists and trade groups to have informal meetings with the Washington elite, members of Congress and others.
They were planning to charge $25,000 for each such gathering or $250,000 for a package of 11 dates.
What were they thinking? didn’t they anticipate a possible conflict of interest?
Yesterday after Politico.com broke this story Ms. Weymouth cancelled the first such gathering scheduled for July 21. The focus of that get-together was to be health care reform.
When the staff in Post’s newsroom found out about the planned events they were supposedly appalled.
Things may be tough for the newspaper industry and they may be looking for other revenue streams but this was a really poor idea. For a medic company to orchestrate such events makes all of us more vulnerable to biased reporting. Who will watch the watchdogs to make sure this doesn’t happen?
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