"Unwilling and Often Unknowing"

Conservatives, oddly enough, aren’t the only ones stretching the truth to “prove” the existence of Liberal Bias, as Deborah Howell – ombudsman of the famously “liberal” Washington Post – aptly demonstrates, once again, in her November 12 column.

Addressing a reader’s complaint about the Post’s allegedly left-leaning “political bias,” Howell not only accepts (and thereby tacitly endorses) the baseless, right-wing canard that the personal opinions of journalists are the lone, significant factor in determining the overall slant of the media that employs them -- ignoring the demonstrably significant influence of economically conservative owners, advertisers, pundits and politicians entirely. In her apparent desperation to (further) validate her paper's perennially insatiable right-wing critics, Howell goes so far as to “misrepresent former Post political reporter Thomas Edsall's stated views on the purported liberalism of most journalists." As Media Matters for America reports:

While discussing recent instances of "Republicans claiming bias," Howell noted that, on the September 21 broadcast of The Hugh Hewitt Show, Edsall asserted that "most journalists he knew were liberal," in Howell's words.

What Howell conveniently fails to mention is Edsall's subsequent -- and enlightening -- clarification of these remarks, during an October 10th “online chat hosted by… washingtonpost.com." And, after reading Edsall’s online comment in its entirety, it’s not terribly hard to guess why.

“It seems to me,” an online Post reader had (astutely) observed, “that the builders of red-state America used the theory of objectivity in reporting to advance some of the less honest parts of their agenda.” Asked for his “take on that,” Edsall then responded, in full:

EDSALL (10/10/06): The conservative movement has been very effective attacking the media (broadcast and print) for its liberal biases. The refusal of the media to disclose and discuss the ideological leanings of reporters and editors, and the broader claim of objectivity, has made the press overly anxious, and inclined to lean over backwards not to offend critics from the right. In many respects, the campaign against the media has been more than a victory: it has turned the press into an unwilling, and often unknowing, ally of the right.

Yes, during his October 10th online appearance, Edsall said something remarkable -- something few of his Beltway-journalist colleagues would dare to say in public. While acknowledging “the ideological leanings of reporters and editors,” Edsall also noted a second (yet similarly “obvious”) fact of political life: that conservative critics in recent decades have been “very effective [at] attacking the media… for its liberal biases.” Indeed, movement conservatives have been so effective at "attacking the media," to Edsall’s mind, they’ve succeeded in turning it into "an unwilling, and often unknowing, ally of the right”!

Consider... well, Edsall's former Post colleague Deborah Howell, for instance, who concludes her pandering, November 12th treatise on "bias" thusly:

HOWELL: It's my job to be the watchdog, so you tell me if you see bias, and I will write more on this subject important to the credibility of The Post and all journalists.

Sadly, if the Post’s (not to mention Howell’s own) past handling of liberal critics offers any indication, they’ll only bother taking this “important” subject seriously when prompted to do so by the Right.

As Sean Hannity might say... “good liberal.”