Dornan Story Just Perpetuated Sleaze

* The Times knows that in covering public figures any newspaper is exempt from libelous reporting--the use of cruel innuendo, the spread of vicious lies and mean-spirited attacks. In The Times’ Oct. 29 article “Pass It Along: Dornan Gives Varying Reports of His Own Wisecracks,” your headline writers and reporter give new meaning to each of these exemptions.

While discussing a totally different issue of substance with one of your reporters, I brought up in passing an example of sleazy spinning of a private conversation I had with a liberal columnist at the ultra-liberal, nether-world Washington Post. (My son Mark was a participant; he is still livid at the twisting of his father’s words.) Not only did the Washington Post rape the truth, but your ad-libbed addendum to their clever crime maliciously questions my veracity, and, adding insult to injury, you could not even accurately report the gossip lie subject in context, i.e., television available to felons in federal prison.

Your too-cute headline adds to The Times’ negative image as one of the three newspaper princes of the liberal dominant media culture and reinforces in the minds of your conservative readers that you are now into tabloid reporting. What hurts is your reporter didn’t even bother to call me back when you decided to move the “buzz” and blindly follow the sleazy lead of the Post.

ROBERT K. DORNAN

U.S. congressman

Garden Grove

Editor’s note: The Times stands by its account.