"A Travesty"

John Judis is mad as hell over the WaPo's coverage of the Metro crash:

There were a few scattered stories about management or train problems, but nothing like the kind of extensive front page day after day expose that would have triggered action. I don't know, but maybe it might have prevented the crash this week. No, the newspaper was too busy assigning its metro reporters to do a year-long investigation of “Who Killed Chandra Levy?” The result of that exercise was a meandering twelve part series on Levy’s death that failed to answer the original question. The police, fortunately, answered it months later. I have never seen such a sheer waste of journalistic talent.

And now in the wake of the Metro crash, how is the newspaper responding? With a front page fluff piece on three people who survived the crash. Maybe it’s a wonderful piece, a real tear-jerker by an author with the skills of a Tony Lukas or Joan Didion. I don’t know, because I am not wasting my time reading it. I am still waiting for the newspaper to do what local newspapers should do, and get to the bottom of what happened, and do it in a way that will prevent future crashes.

-- CB