Here:
The Post’s soft spot for conservative media players is well-known. Last year the paper lovingly profiled Fox News’ openly partisan anchor Brit Hume and announced, “He speaks deliberately, unhurriedly, making his points with logic rather than passion.” And in 2005 the paper equated factually challenged talker Rush Limbaugh with award-winning late-night satirist Jon Stewart.
But I think it’s time to acknowledge what has blossomed into one of the Beltway’s most dysfunctional media liaisons: the love-hate relationship between The Washington Post and right-wing bloggers. The Post loves the bloggers, but the bloggers hate the Post.
[…]
The one lengthy Post feature of a liberal blogger that I can find from the last 24 months was a page-one piece from April 2006 when the Post shadowed lesser-known blogger Maryscott O’Connor, who writes at My Left Wing. The Post portrayed O’Connor as a Bush-hating lunatic. Key phrases from the article: “angry,” “rage,” “fury,” “angriest,” “outrage,” “crude,” “loud,” “crass,” “inflammatory,” “attack.”
I’ve noticed the same thing about the Post. I’ve noticed the same thing in such denizens of the left as PBS. There is a tendency inside the beltway to be very critical of the left blogosphere (listen up Mark Shields and Nina Totenberg) but are deferential towards fairly extreme bloggers like Malkin.
Why is that? I’ve written to both the Post and WETA about this, and as far as I can get, they feel that Malkin, Jonah Goldberg, other writers at NRO, etc., represent a point of view that has sympatico with part of their readership or viewing audience, and therefore must be respected.
You’d think, though, that these highly visible media platforms would want to get both sides of the argument. Why the Washington Post (and, for that matter WETA) has been uniformly critical of the left blogosphere, and reasonably supportive of the right hasn’t been explained.
It’s truly amazing to see these media folks kowtowing to the wingnuts who hate them. Malkin detests Howard Kurtz and has written all sorts of nasty things about him, yet he produces a profile that completely ignores her disgusting side.
As for the Post’s discounting, or even reacting against, complaints from the left while falling over themselves to adjust their reporting to make the right happier, I’m reminded of Deborah Howell’s Abramoff debacle, in which any opinion that was shared by someone who had used a dirty word could be safely ignored. I also keep thinking of this bit from an online chat by Richard Morin, WaPo polling editor:
So they’re annoyed, and no further thought is necessary. But right-wing complaints don’t annoy them?
—Keith • 11:58 am
And Kurtz continues his love affair with Malkin today.
—Keith • 2:31 pm, March 1