{"id":1057,"date":"2008-06-26T08:22:40","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T07:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1057"},"modified":"2008-06-30T16:55:40","modified_gmt":"2008-06-30T15:55:40","slug":"the-judgement-of-len-downie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/06\/the-judgement-of-len-downie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Judgement of Len Downie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"drop_cap\">I<\/span> always thought one of the responsibilities of exercising judgment included an attempt to see the other side, or sides; to recognise your prejudices; weigh them, perhaps; and mitigate them. Self awareness was &#8211; and remains, I believe &#8211; the best remedy to journalistic (and blogging) hubris.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Leonard_Downie,_Jr.\" target=\"_blank\">Len Downie<\/a><\/strong>, Exec Editor of the <strong><em>Washington Post<\/em><\/strong>, practised <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/discussion\/2008\/06\/24\/DI2008062401047.html?hpid=discussions\" target=\"_blank\">a more extreme method<\/a>:<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p> I didn\u2019t just stop voting, I stopped having even private opinions about politicians or issues so that I would have a completely open mind in supervising our coverage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I was reminded of the early Christian ascetic, <strong>Origen<\/strong>, of whom <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Origen\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a> records:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Teaching throughout the day, he devoted the greater part of the night to the study of the Bible and lived a life of rigid asceticism. According to some traditions, he carried this to such an extent that, fearing that his position as a teacher of women as well as men might give ground for scandal to the heathen, he followed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=matthew%2019:12;&#038;version=9;\" target=\"_blank\">Matthew 19:12<\/a> literally and castrated himself&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I always thought one of the responsibilities of exercising judgment included an attempt to see the other side, or sides; to recognise your prejudices; weigh them, perhaps; and mitigate them. Self awareness was &#8211; and remains, I believe &#8211; the best remedy to journalistic (and blogging) hubris. Len Downie, Exec Editor of the Washington Post, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1459,1458],"class_list":["post-1057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}