WaPo Editor: Obviously We're Not Liberal, Because We Get So Much Hate Mail From Liberals!

Liberal media outfits do loves them their unhinged-leftist hate-mail. Because they use it again and again as proof positive that they must be reporting straight down the middle to incur so much wrath from the left.

Although Allah points out the speciousness (and convenience) of that claim, let's also note that most of the liberal media's criticism on the right comes from mainstream Republicans representing the great mass of right-leaning thought, whereas those who think the WaPo is a part of the Vast Right Wing Noise Machine are unabashed, unhinged lefties, "undecided" voters only the sense they're undecided between Ralph Nader and Hugo Chavez.

Which means that the criticism of the paper comes from the hard left and center-right, which means, in turn, the paper is somewhere in between. And what is in between center-right and hard left? Ah yes: establishment liberal. Which is what everyone who's not batshit crazy understands the WaPo is, its support of the Iraq War notwithstanding, and its quite-praiseworthy attempts towards true political balance notwithstanding. Yes, the WaPo is less blatantly agenda-driven than the NYT, but it is still, on the whole, establishment liberal, and its reporting reflects that deep institutional bias.

Perhaps this WaPo editor should talk to NYT Editor in Chief Bill Keller, who was asked about such charges of "rightwing nutjobbery" running rampant at the New York Times (of all places). Even he couldn't straight-facedly offer such stupidity as proof of his newspaper's alleged "objectivity."

Bill Keller, top editor for the New York Times, was discussing media bias, and noted that a lot of liberals were now emulating conservatives in writing letters of complaint that the New York Times was now "too conservative."

Usually, when media people mention this, they claim it "proves" they're actually fair and balanced, as they're "catching heat from both sides."

Keller, to his credit, admitted his suspicion that most of these letters from liberals alleging conservative media bias were not in fact ingenuous, but an attempt to "mau-mau" (his words) the media more towards the left, or at least prevent the media from making conciliatory moves towards the center to appease conservatives.

That's me quoting my own "reportage" there, because I can't find the original quote on the net. But he said it, unless some government mindthug has dosed me with a concentrated beam of V2K.

posted by Ace at 06:50 PM

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