A Washington Post columnist says White House aides are wrong to spread gossip to reporters. What’s more, she’s lecturing her colleague about the value of privacy and aides keeping “super private” moments to themselves.
Krissah Thompson is a staff writer. Michelle Singletary is a nationally syndicated personal finance columnist.
Singletary is quibbling about a new book out by former Bloomberg News reporter Kate Anderson Browner, author of The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House. Brown was also a CBS staffer and a producer for Fox News.
Thompson wrote about the book in a story published Monday.
Browner got aides to dish about such incidents as Nixon’s impeachment and Hillary Clinton when then-President Bill Clinton cheated on her with an intern named Monica Lewinsky. Other stories involve Nancy Reagan well as Jackie and Bobby Kennedy.
Notably, many White House staffers quoted in the book allowed their names to be used.
This might be a first for Washington.
Still, Singeltary is disappointed that a “long-held tradition” of silence has been broken.
