WOOMBA!

Wesley Pruden Jr., editor-in-chief of The Washington Times, on his way to his announced retirement within five months, has gone public with an attack against fellow company publication Insight Online regarding a story about Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s campaign investigation of the background of her main opponent, Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

The Insight story was accurate. It simply reported that the Hillary Clinton campaign had launched an inquiry into Senator Obama’s accounts in his two autobiographies, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming The American Dream, and Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, regarding Obama’s proclaimed commitment to the Muslim religion and culture.

The Insight story was accurate and fair regarding the Hillary Clinton campaign organization's aggressive effort right away to dig up dirt on Barack Obama.

But Pruden’s column inexplicably called Insight’s piece “a lurid account … wicked stuff … trash,” and launched into an attack against blog “citizen journalists.” Me thinks Pruden has lost his marbles. More on that later.

Pruden’s attack against Insight, a fellow Washington Times Corp. publication on the web, was most interesting, because there is a huge corporate fight going on within The Washington Times over Pruden’s successor when his forced retirement as editor-in-chief occurs in just a few months, thanks to Preston Moon, chief executive officer of parent company News World Communications.

Pruden’s attack against the Insight piece had nothing against the story’s totally accurate report that the Hillary Clinton campaign was digging up dirt on Barack Obama and zeroing in on his self-professed Muslim upbringing as a youth.

The Insight story was totally accurate, and no one in the rest of the media had this story, including the lazy newsroom editors of The Washington Times, whose Insight Online is part of their own publication family.

What I found strange was one paragraph in Wes Pruden’s column that was actually autobiographical.

He wrote: “Anybody with a computer and a keyboard can be a ‘citizen journalist,’ who may or may not be a ‘citizen’ but who is rarely an actual ‘journalist.’ What makes ‘citizen journalism’ work is sensation, imagination and speed. There are no tough old city editors in citizen journalism, eager to pounce on a sloppy reporter or careless columnist with questions to ruin a good story. A ‘citizen journalist’ hears something by someone he may or may not know, embroiders it and sprays it into the ether where other ‘citizen journalists’ pick it up and send it on. If it’s really juicy, talk radio and cable news, with their insatiable maw for material, will give it even longer legs. Occasionally such stuff might even be true.”

Well, Wes Pruden was telling on himself, because in his decade as editor-in-chief at The Washington Times – where he was my boss for many years, to get that point on the table -- he mainly operated from his computer out of his home, went to the newspaper rarely for the 4 p.m. news meetings, knew few people in the newsroom, and few knew him.

As a 21-year veteran of the newspaper, who knew Wes Pruden and his work habits from the day he walked in the door at The Washington Times in his rumpled clothes in 1982, after leaving Dow Jones and The National Observer, I state with certainty: Wesley Pruden is a very good wordsmith but an extremely lazy editor, very opinionated on a few racial and cultural topics, enjoys the Washington political and social power game, but is a actually a very bad editor and manager who has sucked all he could get out of The Washington Times.

Pruden has bullied the owners of The Washington Times with the totally false story that he can get President George W. Bush on the phone any time he wants, because the Korean owners of the Times want that kind of influence. But Pruden doesn't have it, although he and managing editor Fran Coombs, have successfully sold that false bill of goods to the Korean owners of The Times, for their own benefit.

And now Pruden has publicly savaged Insight Online after it published, as far as I can tell, a totally correct and accurate story about the unfolding Democratic presidential primary fight, which The Washington Times did not have.

And Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, a close friend of Pruden, then  piled on as well with his own spurious piece that acknowledged: “While not addressing the veracity of the madrassah allegation, the [Insight] magazine piece said it had contacted the Obama camp, which declined to comment.”

Both Pruden and Kurtz attacked the journalistic integrity of Insight with smear words, without laying a glove on any of its story’s content.

I believe we’re well into a major media war as the 2008 presidential campaign cycle starts moving into high gear early on. And The Washington Times, thanks to Pruden's attack, has shown its own shortcomings and dirty laundry.

As this sordid media warfare unfolds, it's actually helpful to truth and a complete report.

Let the so-called dominant media establishment go after new media like Insight Online, Huffington Post, and others who are beating them with exclusives week after week. Let Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, people on the Comedy Channel -- all the big media mamas -- duke it out.

Let's have a media dog fight. The people will decide who's right, as they always have  in our free society -- praise God for that -- thank you very much.

Let truth and freedom ring.