"...according to some of the [Washington] Post's editors, sources and evidence are not a newspaper's job. Newspapers don't have an obligation to ferret out the actual facts, only to repeat what people in power say. As reporter and former assistant managing editor Karen DeYoung says:
'We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power.... If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said.'Got that? So if an elected official stands up and says the moon is made out of green cheese, a newspaper is not obliged to challenge this assertion....
Downie [Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of the Post] thinks his job is only to repeat to us what others have said, not to try to find out whether or not it's true. That's not journalism. That's gossip."
