Topic: NewsBusters
In a Dec. 2 NewsBusters post, Mark Finkelstein bashed networks who bring on Pat Buchanan to advocate for the conservative viewpoint, insisting, "On foreign policy, Pat sounds like someone auditioning for Secretary of Peace in Pres. Kucinich's cabinet" and adding, "the MSM shouldn't be allowed to get away with faux-balance by passing Pat off as a partisan Republican. He's anything but."
Yet in another post earlier that day, Finkelstein did what he accused others of doing -- assigned a presumed political viewpoint to a pundit without examining the facts.
In the post, Finkelstein declares the Washington Post's David Broder -- who had recommended a McCain-Huckabee Republican ticket -- to be a "Dem-pundit," bashing him as "a Democrat designing a Republican presidential ticket."
The problem is that Broder is the kind of Democrat who, as Media Matters' Jamison Foser points out, attacks Democratic leaders and praises Bush. Which is to say, not much of a Democrat at all.
Finkelstein might want to transfer some of that judgment on who is and is not qualified to be a conservative to apply a little due diligence on who he reflexively labels as liberal. He does, after all, have a history of bashing Chris Matthews as a liberal even though they think alike on certain issues (i.e. hating Hillary).
