ash sent this to the blogger Eric Alterman as an “and furthermore” to his running commentary on the professional opinion conveyors who are never as neutral as they purport to be. As of this posting, she has yet to learn whether he’ll publish it in the next day’s correspondence section, which is always a long shot though she’s had some success:
My impression of the difference between The Note and Kurtz – and I never seek out either but let bits and pieces of their respective columns come to me – is that while the former deliberately shills for bigshot insiderism (which translates into Republican spin regardless of who’s in power) the latter really believes he’s playing strictly down the middle.
Thus when ABC describes Congressional Democrats as possessing the weak Iraqi hand, you can practically visualize the mechanisms of the brain which produced that paragraph taking the raw data and formulating the reasoning backward from the predetermined conclusion. While Howie, biased in favor of conservatives as he uncannily invariably is, honestly believes he’s actually doing ‘fair and balanced” (on the one hand this, she said that) by applying the template regardless of truth and facts.
You see it on his program Reliable Sources, which I watched until last week when he insisted Brit Hume is a straight reporter. (Similarly, I unceremoniously severed my viewership of Hardball when Matthews referred to Bush’s only detractors on the left.) Now there appears a much larger consideration – a broader context – than rightleaning news coverage, rendering the question of calculated vs. inadvertent bias moot and which happily redounds to erstwhile disadvantaged liberals and progressives, Excuse me for working from absolutely no statistics or polls; rather, I sense that a huge constituency who never read Kurtz or The Note – who are either basically apolitical or selfishly concerned exclusively with issues personally affecting them (as they have every right to be) – DO vote, and vote on the basis not of what Howie, The Note, et. al. disguises as conventional objectivity but their perceptions of the candidates themselves. Sure, to some extent Republican smear operators may color or erode their impressions of the Democratic candidate, when it becomes the candidate’s responsibility to set the record straight. In any event, neither Howie, ABC, nor David Broder, for that matter, influence outcomes to the extent they’d like to think they do – witness last year’s midterm election, a taste of the likely 2008 blowout.
Speaking of “Dean” Broder, when he famously cited Bush’s “comeback,” was that supposed to be an observation or a prediction? That it turned out to be neither hardly humbled him, certainly not into retirement. So he keeps churning out columns the unroyal masses continue to ignore - if they’re even aware of his existence. A trade writer for a trade publication for others in the industry. Not exactly as it should be, but maybe as close as it gets.