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Nov
13
Of course, what’s most interesting to me here is that the Washington Post didn’t publish anything about the incident until this piece by Howard Kurtz. Uh-huh.
Read the entire article, but here’s a chunk:
“It’s the stupidest thing I’ve done in 30 years in journalism,” music critic Tim Page said yesterday. “I hope people won’t judge me on this one explosion.”
Page wrote Barry’s aide, Andre Johnson, last week after receiving an unsolicited press release about the former mayor’s views on Greater Southeast Community Hospital:
“Must we hear about it every time this crack addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new — and typically half-witted — political grandstanding? I’d be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to and including overdose.”
Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. called Page’s e-mail “a terrible mistake” and said he has taken “appropriate internal action,” but neither he nor Page would disclose it. Page plans to take a previously scheduled four-month leave starting Jan. 1.
Downie said Page “has nothing to do with our local political coverage, as a music critic. On the other hand, it was sent on Washington Post e-mail, and he represents The Washington Post in everything he does.”
Perception is reality, as I’ve been told by at least one journalist.
Meanwhile, Marion Barry, the charactered councilman and former D.C. mayor, reacted this way:
Barry said in an interview that he was “outraged” and “incredulous” at the “despicable” e-mail, “particularly coming from a reporter at a reputable newspaper like The Washington Post, not a rag.” He said the note amounted to “character assassination” at a time when “around the nation, it’s almost open season on black people.”
Downie said Barry called him and that “we had a good conversation. . . . He accepted my apology.” But Barry said yesterday that Page “ought to be fired, and The Washington Post ought to run an editorial apology. That would be a signal to the whole world that The Washington Post won’t tolerate this kind of lowlife activity.”
Kind of ironic that a person who has spent his journalism career in an almost high-brow niche, as a music critic, is considered by Barry to have engaged in “lowlife activity.”
Sigh.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:48 pm November 13th, 2007 in Media, Scandal
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2 Responses to “Update from WaPo’s Tim Page, disciplined for dissing Marion Barry: “stupidest thing””
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I will reiterate once more – Marian Barry is a fool and a crackhead and I cannot for the life of me wonder why the Post didn’t tell him to take a hike. Are they that afraid of him? Why? And again, Page needs to get some resumes out and get the hell away from the Post. Someone somewhere will want him.
Lol. Well, looks like they’ve worked it out. I just can’t get over how people get so incredibly overwrought – and coming from me, who gets overwrought, that sounds weird, I know.