Picture of a Busy Week

A presidential endorsement brings more than 240 subscriber cancellations. A hoax has a Post "columnist" revealing some "shocking" things about a presidential candidate. A prominent Washingtonian appears alive in a picture, though he's been dead more than a year. Plus a story about a congressional race runs with a picture of the wrong legislator. Another week in ombudsmanland.

The Post's editorial endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for president on Oct. 17 brought a predictable outcry and cancellations from angry subscribers. It is not uncommon to get cancellations with a presidential endorsement. The readers who unsubscribed were probably supporters of Sen. John McCain.

But some readers thought that The Post shouldn't endorse anyone. Some thought The Post hadn't endorsed anyone in many years. Others asked whether Republicans were ever endorsed. And some felt that the endorsement verified their belief that The Post is liberal in its news coverage.

It seems logical that The Post endorses candidates, since it offers institutional opinions on the important issues of the day. In recent history, The Post has endorsed only Democrats for president, but there was no endorsement in 1988 of George H.W. Bush or Michael Dukakis. The editorial board -- made up of editorial writers; editorial cartoonist Tom Toles; and Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor, and his deputy, Jackson Diehl -- has endorsed a number of statewide and local Republican candidates in Virginia, Maryland and the District.

While The Post editorially has been supportive of McCain on the Iraq war and some of his past initiatives, including campaign finance reform, I guessed that Obama might get the endorsement after an Aug. 30 editorial questioned McCain's judgment in choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. "Count us among the puzzled and skeptical," the editorial said.

While it's hard to get some readers to believe this, I have found no hint of collusion between the editorial and news pages in my three years here. The editorial board's decisions have nothing to do with news coverage. In fact, Len Downie, who just retired as executive editor, famously didn't read editorials, and the computer system has a firewall that prevents the newsroom from seeing the editorial staff's work.

Republican-leaning readers -- along with some who say they are Democrats -- have overflowed my e-mail inbox saying that The Post is biased in favor of Obama. As I've noted before and will again, Obama has gotten more news and photo coverage than McCain.

As for the hoax, about 10 days ago, e-mails began appearing asking if "Dale Lindsborg" was a columnist at The Post. The answer is no. A few forwarded his "column," which purported to report and criticize an Obama appearance on "Meet the Press." The bogus report said that Obama disliked the national anthem, had attended flag-burning ceremonies and intended disarmament.

Should The Post have written a story about the hoax? That's dicey. A small item in the Trail political blog would have been appropriate, but that might have given the hoax wider circulation than it already had.

Photo errors can be worse than word errors because they stand out so much. The Post had two bad photo errors last week -- one a real howler. In Monday's Reliable Source, Amy Argetsinger wrote an account of the annual National Italian American Foundation gala. Post photographer Richard A. Lipski took the gala photos, as he had in 2006.

One of the photos in the layout was of actors Mel Brooks and Alan Alda and of Jack Valenti, former chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America. Valenti died April 26, 2007. Several readers, including ABC-TV newsman Sam Donaldson, asked how such a mistake could happen since Valenti was so well known inside the Beltway.

Here's how: A layout editor looking for the pictures in The Post's photo database picked three pictures and didn't notice that one was two years old. A copy editor wrote the caption, also failing to notice the date, and a copy desk supervisor failed to check the information on the printout of the photo. A proofreader failed to question whether Valenti was alive. One supervisor, upon seeing the page later, expressed surprise that Valenti was alive, but assumed the photo proved his suspicion wrong.

Argetsinger said: "I'm absolutely sick about this. Obviously it was a terrible, terrible mistake -- one that jumped out at me the moment I saw the paper." Besides the fact that Valenti is dead, there was another clue -- Alda and Brooks were not mentioned in the story either.

The mistake was corrected in Tuesday's editions -- as was another bad one. A story about a close election in Minnesota's 3rd Congressional District, in which state Rep. Erik Paulsen (R) is a candidate, included a photo meant to be of Paulsen. It actually showed Alabama state Rep. Jay Love (R). The Post used a Getty Images photo with an incorrect caption. The only way to have caught the error would have been to check the picture against a photo of Paulsen in a legislative directory; such a mistake is so rare that no one thought to do so.

That was bad enough, but the photo of the Democratic candidate, Ashwin Madia, was about 10 times bigger than the picture of the Republican. Since the story focused on Madia as an unknown in a heavily Republican district, it made sense that he have a somewhat bigger picture. But it looked lopsided.

The correction included a photo of Paulsen -- so small it's called a thumbnail. Such disparity feeds criticism that The Post is biased toward Democrats.

Deborah Howell can be reached at 202-334-7582 or atombudsman@washpost.com.