This is quite an essay about David Broder’s work.
Fri, Apr 27, 2007 9:05pm EST
“Media Matters”; by Jamison Foser
The “best of the best”?
(Excerpts)
Washington Post reporter and columnist David Broder is widely known as the “dean” of political journalists. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has been named “Best Newspaper Political Reporter” by the Washington Journalism Review, and ranked as “Washington’s most highly regarded columnist” by editorial page editors and by members of Congress in a Washingtonian magazine survey.
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It is clear what political journalists say about Broder. But what does Broder’s exalted position atop the media food chain say about the state of political journalism?
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One of the most revealing statements Broder — or, perhaps, any political journalist — has ever made came in 1998. In November 1998, after nearly a year of public opinion polls showing, basically, that people liked Bill Clinton and wanted the Lewinsky investigation to just go away, and of the Washington journalist/pundit crowd vehemently disagreeing, the Post published an article by Sally Quinn attempting to explain the disconnect (which lives on to this day).
Quinn famously quoted Broder explaining why the “Washington Establishment” — which under anybody’s definition includes both Broder and Quinn — was so angry at Clinton: “He came in here and he trashed the place … and it’s not his place.”
Broder’s implication — that Washington was his place, not the president’s — is arrogant enough. But Broder’s other comment speaks volumes: “The judgment is harsher in Washington. We don’t like being lied to.”
Please find the entire opinion piece here.