Darn That Liberal Media, Pt. 1

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo explores the Washington Post/bloggers story and how it marks a turning point in a larger trend... a media that tends to default to Republican talking points out of 'bias' fears. In the process, they end up becoming biased. Blogger feedback seeks to correct that. Here's what Josh has to say-

...So much of the imbalance and shallowness of press coverage today stems from a simple fact: reporters know they'll catch hell from the right if they say or write anything that can even remotely be construed as representing 'liberal bias'. (Often even that's not required.) Indeed, when you actually watch -- from the inside -- how mainstream newsrooms work, it is really not too much to say that they operate on two guiding principles: reporting the facts and avoiding impressions of 'liberal bias'.

On the left or center-left, until very recently, there's simply never been an organized chorus of people ready to take the Howells of the press biz to task and mau-mau them when they get a key fact wrong. Without that, the world of political news was like an NBA game where one side played the refs hard and had roaring seats of fans while the other never made a peep. With that sort of structural imbalance, shoddy scorekeeping and cowed, and eventually compliant, refs are inevitable.

This is evening the balance, creating a better press.

Agreed. Leave the talking points to the Ailes crew. An equally critical, aggressive, and factual press is all we ask.