WSJ Civil War

http://www.observer.com/20060717/20060717_Gabriel_Sherman_media_offtherecord.asp


If I put this on the J-board, Moddy's going to move it here anywhere. I wondered how long the WSJ could continue to be both a great paperin its news hole and a festival for fruitcakes on its ed page. Anybody know anyone who works there?

 

I'm surprised you're surprised. It's well known (and was supported by the study of a while back that I believe we discussed here) that the right of center reputation of the Journal is editorial page only, but that that the rest of the paper tilts left.

 

Guy --
The editorial page is a haven for crackpots and extremists -- witness its close ties with the loons of the "Arkansas Project" back in the day. The newspaper plays it down the middle. "Tilts left"? The WSJ? Yikes.

 

From your perspective, I'd say that's about right, and that we both just said the exact same thing.

 

"The strange pursuit of poor Vince Foster, in death as in life, is a case in point. While it is obviously a bit unfair to blame the Journal writers for Foster's suicide- though he may have-their journalistic values with regard to his case left a great deal to be desired. "Until the Foster death is seriously studied, a Banquo's ghost will stalk . . . the Clinton administration," one long editorial warned, paying particular attention to Mrs. Clinton's movement on the day of Foster's death, as if to cast her as a contemporary Lady MacBeth. The Journal also praised other media outlets' outlandish pursuits with regard to this paranoid endeavor. Its assistant features editor, Erich Eichman, later books editor, expressed "a debt of gratitude" for the New York Post's irresponsible speculation that Foster's gun had been put in his hand after his death and the body had been moved to the spot where it was found. Two days afterward, the editors imagined a vicious physical attack on a reporter whose notes were allegedly stolen, no doubt to prevent the disclosure of some other dastardly deed. This piece was entitled "Censored in Arkansas" and argued that Harper reporter L. J. Davis had met with foul play while reporting a story on Whitewater in Little Rock. But the Journal editors turned out to have played fast and loose with the facts, once again, though the facts themselves are quite confusing. Davis lost some pages of his notes after waking up unconscious in his hotel room. He told a reporter he did not remember much beyond that and admitted to having downed at least four martinis on the night in question. But the hotel manager later explained, "We have records that he was down here [at the hotel bar] at 10:30 that night," which was supposed to be the end of when he said he had been unconscious. The hotel bartender confirmed the manager's version and put the number of martinis Davis consumed at six. Davis, meanwhile, quite understandably, never mentioned the incident in print, thinking it insignificant and not trusting his own memory. He says he asked the Journal to print a retraction of its wild allegations, but of course it refused." (Eric Alterman: What Liberal Media?)

Guy --
After the requisite "What do you expect from a liberal book?" disclaimer, please find me a WSJ news story equivalent to these facts in which the paper tilted similarly left.

 

I get a laugh out of these nutbags trying to play class warfare with NYT reporters and editors. Like nobody at the WSJ vacations in the Hamptons or Nantucket?

 

I can't, not only because I don't have access to their archives, but because it's a silly request. First, their should be more partisanship on the editorial page than in the news, and as a good paper, I'd certainly expect it from theWSJ. Second, if you look at what I said, I didn't make the leanings equivalent, I said the editorial page had a deserved RW reputation, while the rest of the paper "leaned" left. What does Alterman's book have to do with any of that?

 

From the well known bastion of the VRWC - UCLA:

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

 

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512220003?offset=20&show=1

Off the topic here, because, as you know, the WSJ under the late loon Mr. Bartley, pioneered the "investigative editorial," which helped mainline all different sorts of baseless slander and blurred the line between the editorial pages and the news pages, so your "the editorial page is supposed to be more partisan" is a bit misleading, since the WSJ editorial page is sui generis in its approach. And, whatever, it did sell out its reporter pretty badly here.
Ah, Groseclose and Milyo. Everybody's favorite junk researchers.
Sorry. The WSJ is not "the most liberal" news coverage in America. Not even close.

 

I know nothing about the researchers, but you're going to have to come up with a source other than MediaMatters to discredit it. Why not just cite Alterman, I bet the DailyKos also thinks it was flawed.

 

Read the Media Matters piece and respond accordingly. Were these guys NOT connected to conservative think tanks? Did their research NOT consist of, among other things, calling the ACLU "conservative" because it rated a 49.8?
Anyway, the real piece of complete hackery comes from that stooge, Paul Gigot, who slimed his own reporter without ever talking to the guy. Nice.

 

FB, Guy,

You guys are having a D_B argument.

This UCLA "study" and the subsequent Media Matters rebuttal was hashed out here months ago.