WaPo Profiles Sharyl Atkisson

A good reporter.

What's interesting is that the Washington Post suggests she's a tool of the right because she follows stories the right is interested in.

The Washington Post doesn't say this out of its own mouth, but it does ask the question, by noting she's a "Rorschach test" viewed differently by the right and the left.

If Atkisson's a tool of the right because she follows stories featuring liberal villains, what does this line of reasoning suggest about the entirety of the liberal media? Whoops, I gave away the answer in the question.

Note that Atkisson offers the standard media response to the charge of bias -- she just goes where the story is, without prejudice or favor. Atkisson does indeed go where stories are -- even if the rest of the media has embargoed them.

Does this mean she's "partisan"? Why? Because she means it when she says she'll go wherever a story takes her, and the rest of the media most emphatically does not?

Liberals see a partisan tool. “I think Attkisson has completely given herself over to the right and is very happy to be their champion,” says Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at the liberal Media Matters for America organization.

Attkisson, 52, sees neither. She says she bears no partisan grud-
ges, not on the Benghazi story or another in which her reporting nettled Obama administration officials — the Justice Department’s problem-plagued gun-tracking operation, known as Fast and Furious (for which Attkisson won an Emmy for investigative reporting).

“I’m a political agnostic,” she says. “I don’t think about who’s good and who’s bad. I just go where the story leads. . . . People can say what they want about me, I don’t care. I just want to get the information out there.”

But Attkisson, who holds a third-degree black belt in taekwondo, takes a fighting stance when she feels she’s being stonewalled. Which is exactly what she thinks the White House has done to her on Benghazi.

Liberals seem not to believe her claim to be a "political agnostic." Strangely enough, liberals themselves often say exactly this about themselves.

What is it about this statement that they find difficult to believe? Do they know something about the typical reporter who claims it which causes them to have skepticism about it?

Do they know they themselves are lying when they say it?

...

Attkisson’s general approach to her work may be spelled out in the self-description on her Twitter account: “Investigative Journalist. Dreaming of a day when public officials answer questions as if they know they work for the public.”

I suppose to the media, the Public Relations Office of the Government, that seems like a partisan remark.

The article is worth a read, as it notes the angry pushback she gets from the White House, with taxpayer-paid government officials calling CBS to complain about her. But:

. “My goal is to report on untouchable subjects in a way that is fearless.”

Via @adamsbaldwin

posted by Ace at 10:59 AM

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