{"id":39040,"date":"2013-10-16T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=39040"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:51:22","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T20:51:22","slug":"the-house-isnt-burning-the-residents-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=39040","title":{"rendered":"The House Isn’t Burning; The Residents Are"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg at NRO writes about a recent Roger Simon jape at conservative legislators – by way of addressing a much larger question; why aren’t the media offended <\/em>by the left’s <\/em>assumption that they’re biased?<\/p>\n

Simon\u2019s column reminds me of a point I\u2019ve been making for years<\/a>. Most mainstream journalists roll their eyes at the idea the MSM is biased. It\u2019s a tired argument, I know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is.\u00a0 I’m tired of having to make it.<\/p>\n

And yet – as Goldberg shows us – it’s not only true, but getting more and moreso:<\/p>\n

\u00a0But it\u2019s simply remarkable that when supposedly objective reporters move on to the opinion column racket they reveal themselves as utterly conventional\u00a0liberal Democrats. When any longtime New York Times<\/em> reporter\u00a0rewarded with a column at the Times or elsewhere \u2014 Nick Kristoff, Bill Keller, Maureen Dowd,\u00a0Anthony Lewis, EJ Dionne et al. \u2014 rips off the mask it turns out that they were exactly as liberal as conservatives suspected…Just going by the law of averages, some of these reporters should turn out to be conservative or libertarian or at least ideologically heterodox. But it almost never happens. Indeed, when the Times<\/em> needs to find a conservative columnist (Bill Safire, David Brooks, Ross Douthat)\u00a0it always has to hire outside its own shop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s true in the Twin Cities, too; the Strib <\/em>had to hire think-tanker Katherine Kersten to give its columnist’s row a veneer of balance (as a generation of Strib <\/em>columnists tut-tutted about\u00a0What It All Meant).\u00a0 While the non-profit MinnPost <\/em>originally claimed to want to shoot for multipartisanship, the best they could do was Cyndi Brucato – as a reporter.\u00a0 <\/em>That, on a site staffed with DFL apparatchik Doug Grow, former Dayton comms guy Brian Lamberg,\u00a0and a raft of other committed libs.<\/p>\n

Jay Carney got his job working for Joe Biden, and later, Barack Obama because his employers knew from the get-go that the Time<\/em> reporter was ideologically simpatico with the administration. The same goes for Linda Douglas, not to mention Richard Stengel, Shailagh Murray, and many others. I wonder if any of them ever feel insulted when Democratic politicians just assume that supposedly objective reporters would make great partisan hacks?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Locally?\u00a0 Not only are the left’s “alt” media clogged with refugees from the Strib, PiPress <\/em>and other mainstream outlets, but there’s been a steady parade of regional journos that’ve found post-media homes in the DFL, at left-leaning non-profits like MN2020, and as comms people for liberal pols.<\/p>\n

Because it’s a safe assumption, I guess…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg at NRO writes about a recent Roger Simon jape at conservative legislators – by way of addressing a much larger question; why aren’t the media offended by the left’s assumption that they’re biased? Simon\u2019s column reminds me of a point I\u2019ve been making for years. Most mainstream journalists roll their eyes at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-tc-media-bias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39040"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39049,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39040\/revisions\/39049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}