What media objectivity?

More Washington Post Hijinks? Reporter Cancels Book Party Appearance Hosted by Democrat Operative

By Jeff Poor

It's probably safe to assume that a lot of reporters in the mainstream media lean to the left side of the ideological spectrum. And it was seen throughout the health care debate over the past year and a half - that somehow we need to raise the rhetoric beyond hyperbole like death panels, etc.

One of those reporters was The Washington Post's health care reporter Ceci Connolly, who last summer appeared on MSNBC and made such a plea [0]. And since then, she made other gestures to show she was in line with the Obama administration [0] on this issue. Well, lo and behold, according to a story by Jeremy Peters posted on the New York Times Media Decoder blog [1], Connolly canceled an appearance at a party for the book, "Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What it Means for All of Us," [2] which according to her Web site [3] Connolly and her book are labeled as "one of the main authors of the first definitive book on the 2010 health care law."

"[T]he Post found itself in another potentially embarrassing and ethically compromised position on Wednesday after one of its most senior reporters abruptly canceled an appearance at her own book party, which was being sponsored by a public relations firm with strong ties to the Democratic Party," Peters wrote.

That communications firm was Blue Line Strategic Communications, a public relations firm run by Michael Meehan and David DiMartino. Peters reported Meehan, a Democratic communications strategist, has had some very close ties to several Democrat campaigns.

"Mr. Meehan was most recently an adviser to Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general who lost to Senator Scott Brown, the insurgent Republican candidate who captured Edward M. Kennedy's former seat," Peters wrote. "He was also a senior staff member in the Senate for years, working for some of the most powerful members, including John Kerry, Tom Daschle and Barbara Boxer."

Connolly's questionable association with Blue Line Strategic Communications comes on the heels of abandoned plans by the Post's publisher Katharine Weymouth [3] to charge lobbyists and trade groups thousands of dollars for access "to top congressional and administration officials for $25,000 a plate" at a dinner party at her home.

According to Peters, the book party went on with Connolly. However it does further beg the question if the Post's reporting throughout the ObamaCare debate was really "objective."