Washington Post ombud Patrick Pexton (9/30/12) presents conservative opinion as a prima facie case for a left-wing slant in corporate news media: “Republicans think the news media are being too easy on Barack Obama…. Everyone sees more bias, and Republicans see it more than other groups.”
Patrick Pexton
Offering this as evidence of a left media bias is, of course, highly dubious. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans say that humans aren’t warming the planet. Sixty-three percent still maintain that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans “believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years,” according to Gallup. People who adhere to false beliefs are likely to falsely perceive a slant in truthful reporting.
On the subject of Obama, 34 percent of conservative Republicans think he’s a Muslim. Sixty-four percent of Republicans believe he wasn’t born in the United States. Why wouldn’t people under such delusions think that media were being soft on Obama by accepting the reality that he’s a Hawaii-born Christian?
To be sure, Pexton isn’t offering the right-wing view of media as proof that media are left-wing—only as substantiation for his own perception of a leftward slant at the paper he works for:
With the exception of Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza, who cover politics in a nonpartisan way, the news columnists almost to a person write from left of center…. If the Post wants to wrap its news in commentary, fine, but shouldn’t some of those voices then be conservative?
You may remember Dan Balz as the guy who called Newt Gingrich “an idea-spewing machine,” a “one-man think tank” with a “keen intellect” who has “remained in the forefront of the public policy debate over a span of decades.” Cillizza, on the other hand, is one of the two Post writers who jeered that “Mad Bitch” was the appropriate beer for Hillary Clinton to drink.
But we’ll grant that both Balz and Cillizza are what corporate media deem to be “centrists,” of the Democrats-should-move-to-the-right, money-should-determine-who-gets-to-debate variety. What’s more puzzling is Pexton’s idea of who qualifies as “left of center.”
Ezra Klein, sure—though I think Klein is totally sincere when he writes that he would like very much to be a centrist. And the Post has tried hard to balance its left-leaning blogger, hiring first Dave Weigel (who had to step down when caught straying from conservative orthodoxy), then Ben Domenech (dropped amidst plagiarism charges) before finally settling on Jennifer Rubin. Rubin, too, would no doubt be on the Post‘s front page if she did the kind of reporting Klein does.
But does Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein “generally write from a progressive perspective”? The guy who wrote that what American workers need is a pay cut (and maybe another depression)?
Walter Pincus would be more accurately described as generally writing from the CIA’s perspective.
And Dana Milbank—Dana Milbank?
Dana Milbank (Matthew Bradley)
Milbank was the other half of the Post‘s “Mad Bitch” duo. Milbank red-baited the Progressive Caucus for calling its deficit-reduction plan “the People’s Budget,” saying it “conveyed an unhelpful association with ‘the people’s republic’ and other socialist undertakings.” He similarly sneered at single-payer advocates (“socialism is not dead”) and mocked Rep. Dennis Kucinich as a “leprechaun.”
He defended White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ assertion that Obama’s progressive critics “ought to be drug-tested,” writing that “Gibbs and his colleagues have reason to be frustrated by the constant carping from the professional and semi-pro left.”
If Milbank is Pexton’s idea of a “progressive perspective,” it’s no wonder he perceives a left-wing slant at the Washington Post.
Patrick Pexton can be reached at ombudsman@washpost.com or on Twitter @WaPoOmbudsman.
Milbank also wrote that breathtakingly stupid op-ed, in the aftermath of the Family Research Council shooting, in which he described the hate group as “a mainstream conservative think tank,” said the Southern Poverty Law Center and Human Rights Campaign “are reckless” in labeling the FRC a hate-group, and offered up about a dozen other equally stupid comments:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-hateful-speech-on-hate-groups/2012/08/16/70a60ac6-e7e8-11e1-8487-64e4b2a79ba8_story.html
—
Left Hook
http://lefthooktheblog.blogspot.com/
Ombud: a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between either the state (or elements of it) or an organization, and some internal or external constituency, while representing not only but mostly the broad scope of constituent interests.
Talk about a disconnect from reality.
Oy …
.
Arthur S. Brisbane, former public editor (ombudsman) of The New York Times: “Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.” ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/success-and-risk-as-the-times-transforms.html
.
November 7, 2008 @ C-SPAN | http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/282301-1 , Media♥Obama :
@ 50:38 ~ Stuart Rothenberg: “Certainly the national media is in love with the guy. Democrats on The Hill are in love with the guy. He is entering office in a troubled time. And when he enters, he is going to tell you it’s more trouble than you know. That will give him a couple of years of leeway.”
@ 52:08 ~ Mark French (moderator) asks about media bias for Obama.
@ 52:30 ~ Charlie Cook: “They were star struck by this Obama phenomenon. Let’s face it, is there a Democratic and liberal bias in the media? Of course there is. But, they also love a good story.” “The media had more than a finger on the scale on the Democratic side.”
~ Stuart Rothenberg: “I agree completely. I’m sure they preferred Obama, they’re Democrats. Obama got better treatment. Uh, but um… it is what it is. That’s the nature of the political environment every two years or four years. Those are the reporters, and you’ve got to deal with that.”
…
Pexton no doubt also believes that the Washington Post’s opinion columnists “almost to a person write from left of center.” That would include such far-righties as Marc Thiessen, Robert Kagan, Robert Samuelson, Michael Gerson, Charles Krauthammer, and the looniest tune in print, George Will, who STILL thinks global warming is some kind of hoax.
Well first- I believe the Polls stated above as to what Republicans” believe” to be completely erroneous.I looked up these questions in a number of polls.Fifty eight percent believe that people have been here for 10 thousand years?Drop that to about 5%.How many Babtist belt Dems feel the same?About 5%.Total bullshit.Yeah alls Rs are lost in the dark ages of stupidity.Already loading up on logical reason why Obama lost this election.Reason numbers 1-100…PEOPLE ARE DUMB.Elitist Bullshit
At least MSNBC has come out of the closet and declared unswerving loyalty to Obama(watch Chris Matthews meltdown with Rachel Maddox ,and try to argue against that).Look- there is an Obama bias in most of the drive by press.When he got crushed in the debate it looked like a mad funeral on most networks(not FOX).Same with print media.Radio is more evenly balanced.We on the right really don’t care anymore.As long as wqe are allowed to have our say too.Thank you Fox network
The bias is of course a purely corporate bias. When a corporate media organ grinder decries “left wing media”, he projects his own suppressive fear and loathing of actual left wing ideas being promoted and debated. Especially the really scary ones, like economics.
The economic left is essentially heretical to the neoliberal dogma at the heart of Washington. And “Corporate News”, as the very extension of its ecology, internalizes neoliberalism deep in the marrow, on virtually every policy front. “Nonpartisan”, “postpartisan”, “objective”, “the center”, “serious”, “the tough choices”, “the adults in the room”, “both sides do it”… Well, they get the last one right.
The last FIVE executive administrations, 30 years since Carter, all shared an economic philosophy based on the primacy of market logic, a cult of privatization and depredation of the commons. Six if you count Margaret Thatcher, “Society Doesn’t Exist”
Carter, Reagan, HW, Clinton, W, Obama, Romney. That there are degrees between any one of them is, I think, the most basic obfuscation of American politics. The triumph of Edward Bernays and all his little hellspawn. The Empire Never Ended.
Bab first(to quote Romney)”just because you say it over and over again does not mean it is true.”Now hold onto you britches with both hands… Im going to say something you never hear in the liberal world.This faceless boogey man your side employs as the answer to everything that is wrong….does not exist.The corporate evil empire is just people.Just like unions are people.There is no corporate bias per say.No evil corporate skull and bones empire.As far as your economic philosophy ….I would say you do not understand the basis for a free people ,in a free market society.You sound like a socialist.The type who believe a central authority should pick the winners and the loosers.That is fine and dandy.Just not here.
The “free market” is an oxymoron. It would not exist without being enforced by the State.
You want a “free market” go to Somalia.
How do you think any of the major energy sectors got to where they are today- oil, gas, coal? Their bootstraps? No. Massive government subsidies. But in the same breath you’ll characterize green energy subsidies as totalitarian socialism.
Economic Libertarianism is an ontologically ludicrous philosophy.
Also corporations and unions are IDEAS. Organizing principles and levers of power. They are certainly not equal. Which form of authority is more bureaucratic and centralized than the modern corporate order? Give me a break.
Only people are just people, and between people there is the common good. This understanding is the difference between you and me.
Bap the corporate lever is a hobgoblin invented in a long line of”its not me -its the guy that lives over the hill”excuses.Excuses for every problem, or inequity.Everyone I know who owns a business from my friend who makes T shirts with John Lennon printed on them, to a friend who owns a massive insurance concern are incorporated.Great people.But of course it is not them right?It’s the other guy.The other corporation.Who is it?Bill Gates?Did he get the memo about running the world?Tell me who it is?Oh I know the koch brothers.Yet if you spent some time with them you probably would realize its not them.They seem normal.Its the other guy.You know the other guy.You say corporations are government subsidized?How about unions?Truckloads of the stym money went to paying their pensions(and buying their votes).Did you forget the banks?The old hobgoblin.The banks…the bankers…the jews.Sound familiar?