Back here and here a…
Back here and here and finally here I discussed how little attention some of the top liberal bloggers gave to the CBS panel report on the “Memo-gate” issue. I noted, however, that they did find time to dissect Armstrong Williams’ admission of getting money from the Bush administration while commenting favorably on “No Child Left Behind”. Now that was a legitimate story and worthy of dissection, but I noted that while conservative blogs covered both issues quite fully, Kos, Atrios and Josh Marshall gave extremely short shrift to the CBS issue. In the case of Marshall, it got “zero shrift”. Both stories had to do with media believability and behind-the-scenes influence, but while the conservatives gave big coverage to both stories, the liberal bloggers couldn’t get past their blind partisanship.

I wrote to Josh Marshall, noting this situation. The E-mail I sent is in the second link above, and his response is in the third. His answer to my charge of blind partisanship was that he hadn’t commented on quite a few issues besides Social Security lately, which was true, although he did find time to mention the “big” news that a radio station in Brattleboro, Vermont dropped the Rush Limbaugh program for Air America.

Today comes the news that Maggie Gallagher got a bunch of cash from the Bush administration for research and articles. Again, it’s worth looking into, for the same reason that the CBS issue is worth looking into. And again the conservative bloggers are all over the story (Instapundit, RedState.org, La Shawn Barber, and Captain Ed, to name just a few).

And wouldn’t you know, in the middle of an avalanche of Social Security posts, Josh Marshall manages to find time to cover this, too! A major media news organization gets outed for “myopic zeal” and heads roll, but that’s not worthy of coverage. Yet a single writer’s potential conflict of interest (which Marshall himself says “wasn’t as egregious as the Williams one”) is enough for Josh to do the research to look for some dots to connect.

Once again, we have another good reason to look to center-right blogs to give you a more even-handed treatment of the news. This is not to say that there aren’t liberal blogs that did cover the CBS issue, but if the top-tier guys–the ones drawing the readers–can’t manage a little fairness and balance, it really doesn’t speak well for their side of the aisle.

(Cross-posted at Redstate.org. Comments welcome.)

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