After dispensing opinions on the economy and President Reagan's foreign policy, the Washington columnists on Martin Agronsky's television show turned animatedly to a subject closer to heart. George F. Will was the most intense about it: "The presence of a gossip column on a great paper, which the Post is, is inconsistent with the mission and dignity of the Washington Post." Printing gossip, he went on, is "pandering to the voyeurism of a celebrity-struck public. When you then combine [this] with the doctrine that says we are not responsible for the factual nature of the rumor at all, only for the fact that it is a rumor, then you have given your gossip columnist a license to disseminate lies."
Once again, the Washington Post was finding itself widely criticized throughout journalism, but the Agronsky show was a special embarrassment. Agronsky polled his four television panelists: Would they have passed along the rumor, as the Post had, that Blair House was bugged while the Reagans were staying there before the Inauguration? A chorus of nos. What made the poll piquant was that aside from TIME's Hugh Sidey, all of the panelists (James J. Kilpatrick, Carl Rowan, George Will) are columnists in the Post, and the Agronsky show itself is owned and produced by the Washington Post Co. Such mumbling in the ranks might comfort those who worry that the Post's journalistic monopoly in Washington might stifle dissent, but little else was comforting about the Post's latest difficulties.
Widely regarded as one of the two or three best newspapers in the country, the Post got its reputation while inviting controversy. Watergate gave it a success it has since labored to match and an arrogance when challenged that compounds its difficulties. Back in 1978 Alistair Cooke defined the malady: "The Post is suffering from radiation, or smartass, sickness after overlong exposure to Nixon & Co." The result has been some notable missteps, such as a leering and erroneous account of Zbigniew Brzezinski's sexual behavior and a Pulitzer-prizewinning story that proved to be a phony. So when the Carters challenged the bugging item and demanded a retraction, Executive Editor Ben Bradlee characteristically asked: "How do you make a public apology—run up and down Pennsylvania Avenue bare-bottom, shouting 'I'm sorry'?" He hasn't yet—but last week the Post looked a little bare-bottomed as it made a front-page apology to the Carters, who then dropped plans to sue. The Post admitted publishing what "we later find to be untrue." How did it get itself into such a box?
The Post is a schizoid newspaper—solid in its reporting of national and international affairs, flashy in feature sections where writers are encouraged to stretch their imaginations. The two irreconcilable sides of the paper become one in the head of its debonair and aggressive editor Ben Bradlee. Like John McEnroe on a tennis court, Bradlee loses his playing edge when he can't stir things up.
The flashy side of the paper produced the bugging item.