Liberal bias exposed and admonished in newsrooms - progress is made!

It's nice to know that Lyman is absolutely middle-of-the road and objective at all times.

He's both fair and balanced.

 

Unnamed people 4 1/2 years ago booed the State of the Union from beginning to end? That's some endurance by them.

 

Great. Has NewsBusters gotten around to blogging about the journos that booed Al Gore during the 2000 New Hampshire debate -- journos that were covering the event -- against Bill Bradley? I won't bet the mortgage on that.

Meanwhile, here's the liberal bias on display at MSNBC; May 1, 2003.

This got on the air, by the way.

Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war.

Try to get through all of this without retching:

 

Good dig, there Joe. Thanks.

 

Isn't Matthews an opinion, not news guy? And an acknowledged loon? Were you OK with what you say happened at the Gore debate? Was that appropriate?

 

Booing or cheering by a political reporter at a debate or speech is the newsside equivalent of cheering in the pressbox. Fuck no it's not ok whether they're booing Gore, Bush or anybody else.

 

I'd concede that the idea of a newsroom on duty booing the president during the SOU speech seems incredibly unprofessional and inappropriate. But in this case I might cut em some slack because, after all, it was Dubya.

 

At least you're honest about it.

 

The Seattle Times thing was unprofessional, clearly, but let's be honest, reporters and editors a) have political beliefs and b) often share them in the newsroom conversations. And judging by my own experience at two of Massachusetts' many conservative dailies (stop chuckling, I can give you names), it's not just liberal reporters and editors who do it.

 

There better have been some admonishing, is all I've got to say about it.

 

Agreed. That reaction was way over the top.

 

How reporters react to a candidate/politician on television, whether it's in a positive or negative fashion, is wrong only if it affects how they report on said person. (Reacting in any fashion at the event you are covering, however, is cause for concern. Newsrooms? Not so much.)

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=gored_by_the_media_bull

You can make a case, a damn convincing case, that the biases of the reporters that covered Gore in the 2000 election influenced their coverage, which was a joke from start to finish. High school softball gamers had more substance.

On the other hand, this MSNBC newsroom incident occurred in early 2003. At about the time that our military was about to embark on a major offensive. At about the time the supporters of said offensive outnumbered the critics on the nightly cable news gab-fests about 20 to 1 (and that's a conservative estimate). At about the same time the bullshit cases for said offensive by the administration were swallowed whole by MSNBC and . . . oh, just about everyone else.

If you're going to make a case that MSNBC's coverage of Bush was influenced by that newsroom incident, come at us with your transcripts and links. We'll be waiting.

Oh, and while the rest of the media gleefully reports that the surge is "working," one news org is skeptical. It's the same org that didn't swallow the 2003 lies, did some damn investigative work, and has been right on Iraq far more often than anyone else.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/18927.html

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/18959.html