Dan Froomkin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dan Froomkin is a journalist for the Washington Post's website Washington Post Newsweek Interactive.

He writes the White House Briefing column for washingtonpost.com, a pugnacious daily anthology of White House-related items from news Web sites, blogs and other sources.

He is also deputy editor of NiemanWatchdog.org a Web site from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University that encourages reporters to ask more probing questions and hold the powerful accountable.

[edit] Criticism

On December 11, 2005 Froomkin was criticised by the new Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell, who stated[1] Froomkin's column "White House Briefing" is "highly opinionated and liberal". As such, Howell concluded Froomkin's feature should bear a name other than "White House Briefing," because the title may lead some readers to think it is the work of the paper’s reporting staff.

Howell cited Washington Post political editor John Harris's view that the name of the column dilutes the credibility of the newspaper. A second purpose of Howell's piece was to point out that Washington Post, and Washingtonpost.com are in fact two individual entities that simply share resources.

Froomkin defended[2] himself on Washingtonpost.com's editorial discussion page. His main point in defending himself was that although irreverent, he does not advocate policy.