“Blind partisanship”…

“Blind partisanship” has reared its ugly head again.

Friday evening, Instapundit noted that Eason Jordan resigned over the uproar over his remarks at Davos, suggesting that journalists were targeted by American troops. The blogosphere had been all over this situation, which is one reason I didn’t say much (read: anything) about it. I really didn’t have anything new to say about it, and I was on the road the week before Jordan resigned, and really only had time for the ponderings required for my Social Security post below.

But today, after the deed’s been done, I thought I’d take a peek at something related to this, and related to other issues that have come up in the blogosphere; the reaction of the liberal blogs to the downfall of a liberal (or assumed liberal). The lefty blogs were all over the downfall of Trent Lott, but then so were the righty ones. In fact, some suggested that the right-of-center ones were harder on him. Previously I’ve noted that Kos, Atrios and Josh Marshall were virtually silent on the whole Rather-gate story (Marshall literally, Kos & Atrios only slightly less so). So here’s another major figure, who espouses liberal opinions, taken to task by the blogs over his remarks. Let’s see how the big three have reacted thus far.

(Please note that, while most blogs, mine included, post little to nothing over the weekends, these big 3 liberal blogs are still very active then. They can’t claim lack of opportunity to post, and especially since so many conservative blogs found time; see the Instapundit link.)

The Daily Kos: Silent
Josh Marshall: Silent
Atrios: Silent

As of this posting, none of these guys have mentioned “eason” or “cnn” since Friday. But all three (Kos, Marshall and Atrios) certainly had plenty to say about the Trent Lott comments at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party. Both were considered “off the record” comments, and you could easily make the case for Lott that he was just trying to be polite at Thurmond’s party, whereas there are no mitigating circumstances for Jordan’s remarks.

So the big picture here is that you won’t get the big picture from the high-traffic liberal blogs, but you can get it from the high-traffic conservative blogs. And again I’d say that, generally speaking, intellectual honesty will more likely be found from a conservative viewpoint than a liberal one. If you think Fox News leans conservative, then that’s a good thing for fairness and balance. This is not to say you won’t find intellectual honesty on the left nor blind partisanship on the right, but when 3 upper echelon liberal blogs won’t touch–or will only give the shortest of shrift to–huge news stories that put folks with their ideology in a bad light, this doesn’t speak well in general of that side of the spectrum.

Independent-minded people, who don’t identify themselves with one or the other and who like to consider both sides, should take note. Who do you trust?

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

UPDATE: Bryan Preston (in addition to linking to this points, for which I am grateful), notes that Jonah Goldberg at NRO has similar thoughts, including the downfall of Howell Raines. Goldberg acknowledges that the left can do just as well with this sort of story, but that the right has so much more “big game” in the “hunting preserve” on political issues. That is to say, the media truly is so liberal that there are more targets for conservatives than there are for liberals. The Jeff Gannon story (which liberal and conservative blogs hit) was small potatoes (did you even know there was a Talon News Service before you read about Gannon) but the liberals were hyping this up big time. And all the while, they ignored two major media stories; Rather and Jordan.

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