In a candid admission, John Harris, formerly of the Washington Post said:
In my experience, the vast majority of political reporters approach ideological questions with what you might call centrist bias. . . . It took me a while to realize how this instinct for rationalist, difference-splitting politics can itself be a form of bias. . . Who needs a bunch of reporters popping off with their views? It is hard enough—and honorable enough—to aim to report and analyze politics fairly and with a disciplined effort to transcend bias. That is what we will do in this new venture.
The reporting on the views of the American People on Iraq reflects this Broderism bias - and leads to the falsehoods we see in the AP story I discuss above the fold.
Bob Somerby provides another example:
Guest host Andrea Mitchell raised the tired old question about Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize Bush to wage war (described by Mitchell as her “vote for the war”). “Is she vulnerable to a candidate from the left like Barack Obama, who was against the war—even though he didn't have to vote, he wasn't elected then, at that time—or Al Gore?” Mitchell asked. First, Elisabeth Bumiller took a go. Then, [Cynthia] Tucker weirdly said this:
TUCKER (12/3/06): She gives a better answer [about her vote] than John Kerry, who said something like “I voted against it before I voted for it.”
MITCHELL: There is no worse answer than John Kerry's.
JOE KLEIN: Right.
TUCKER: Absolutely. I also think that the peacenik wing of the Democratic Party may have learned a lesson from their failures in Connecticut, where Ned Lamont lost in the general election to Joe Lieberman. The simple fact of the matter is, every serious Democrat who was in the Senate at the time voted for the war—or voted to authorize the president—and Al Gore was one of the few Senate Democrats who voted in 1991 for the first Gulf War . . .
This is false of course. And idiotic editorializing to boot. These SERIOUS Democratic Senators voted AGAINST the war:
Akaka, Hawaii, Bingaman, N.M., Boxer, Calif., Byrd, W.Va., Conrad, N.D., Corzine, N.J., Dayton, Minn., Durbin, Ill., Feingold, Wis., Graham, Fla., Inouye, Hawaii, Kennedy, Mass., Leahy, Vt., Levin, Mich., Mikulski, Md., Murray, Wash., Reed, R.I., Sarbanes, Md., Stabenow, Mich., Wellstone, Minn., Wyden, Ore.
163 House Democrats voted against the war. And the idea that being against the war was an unserious position, is STILL HELD TODAY, as the makeup of the Iraq Study Group evidences:
FEINGOLD (12/6/06): The fact is this [Baker-Hamilton] commission was composed apparently entirely of people who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place, and did not have the judgment to realize it was not a wise move in the fight against terrorism. So that's who is doing this report.
Then I looked at the list of who testified before them. There is virtually no one who opposed the war in the first place. Virtually no one who has been really calling for a different strategy that goes for a global approach to the war on terrorism. So this is really a Washington inside job and it shows, not in the description of what's happened—that's fairly accurate—but it shows in the recommendations.
This pervasive Media bias is a cancer in our discourse and is extemely harmful to our Nation. The Broderist Media MUST be constantly challenged and corrected. And not just on Iraq. On every issue.
