Borf!

Yesterday’s regular Wednesday “Ask the Post” chat featured an appearance by Managing Editor Phil Bennett, who faced a question on last week’s controversial “Borf” story.

Borf, you might remember, is the cute/evil artist/vandal who has been painting “Borf” all over the city–he was finally arrested last week and soon thereafter the Post ran a big Style story drawing from interviews conducted prior to his arrest.

Readers took the paper to task for covering up for a criminal, leading the paper’s ombudsman to explain the paper’s policy in his Sunday column.

Here’s yesterday’s exchange:

Washington, D.C.: The Post knew the identity and future plans of the serial vandalizer known as Borf. Please tell me why you couldn’t be a good citizen and report him to the police? Please tell me why The Post is not at least partially responsible for cleaning up the mess he made in D.C.

Phil Bennett: This is a tough question that was pretty fully explored by our ombudsman in last Sunday’s paper. The short of it is that we were influenced first by the fact that we did not know his identity for certain, and were still in the process of reporting when he was arrested. We were also, under these hazy circumstances, also dealing with a request of confidentiality. The complexity of those question was the reason we didn’t write a story. As for our broader policy, we do not protect sources if doing so could put someone in danger or imperil national security. We have to decide these on a case by case basis.

It’s an answer unlikely to satisify most complainants, especially given that Bennett’s answer is even more nuanced than Michael Getler‘s column.

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