Professor Bainbridge…

Professor Bainbridge takes on Joe Conason’s assertion that the media reaction to the Gannon/Guckert is muted and that therefore put the lie to the charge of a liberal media. Kos quoted Conason, remarking “Exactly”, and the comment section followed suit. Atrios mentioned it and simply added “Indeed”. However, the Prof demonstrates (with numbers rather than one-word follow-ups) that Conason’s got it wrong.

Since I have access to Lexis/Nexis, I went into Nexis’ “News, Most Recent Two Years” database, which covers a wide swath of English language newspapers and magazines. I ran the following searches:

1. “Eason Jordan” with dates restricted to the last month: 151 hits
2. “Jeff Gannon” with dates restricted to the last month: 107 hits
3. “James Guckert” and “Jeff Gannon” with dates restricted to the last month: 42 hits

I then reran the same three searches in Nexis “Major Papers” database:

1. “Eason Jordan” with dates restricted to the last month: 40 hits
2. “Jeff Gannon” with dates restricted to the last month: 24 hits
3. “James Guckert” and “Jeff Gannon” with dates restricted to the last month: 12 hits

So the idea that the MSM isn’t covering the story is absurd and has no basis in fact. While the lefty blogs may then take issue with the slight disparity in the amount of coverage of the two stories, the Prof echoes something I’ve been saying about this.

The story is being covered by the MSM, albeit at a lower rate than the Jordan story. Query, however, whether legitimate news judgment wouldn’t regard Jordan as the bigger story?

To this I could say “Indeed” or “Exactly” myself. I’ve been chronicling the muted (or total lack) of notice three of the major left-leaning bloggers–Kos, Atrios & Marshall–have given to the Dan Rather, Eason Jordan, and “columnist payola” stories. You’d think, if you read only those Tier A blogs, that the Talon News Service was somehow a bigger deal than CBS or CNN, or that having a friendly reporter throwing softball questions is a bigger deal than passing off faked memos as real or accusing US troops of targeting journalists. Even if those 3 weren’t the sum total of most folks blog-reading experiences, they still have a huge readership that, apparently, doesn’t care that these stories are ignored or barely touched on, while suppositions about MSM coverage that aren’t backed up by reality are trumpeted far and wide.

Again, you independents who don’t like to be labelled, and who try to see both sides of the story, please keep this in mind. Generally speaking, on the major conservative blogs you’ll hear about all of these stories. On liberal blogs, you won’t, or you’ll really have to go digging to find them. Who’s being more intellectually honest with you? Who’s more committed to the truth, even if it puts folks from their political stripe in a negative light? You can find examples both good and bad on both sides, but in the overall picture I think you’ll find that conservatives are being far more upfront with you.

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