Topic: NewsBusters
A March 18 NewsBusters post by Lachlan Markay declared that Washington Post reporter Shailagh Murray -- who just accepted a job as communications director for Vice President Joe Biden -- "penn[ed] a number of stories toeing the Democratic line on a variety of issues." Markay went on to assert, "The bias dossier on Murray is thinner than, say, Katie Couric's, but contains a number of telling items."
Markay lists exactly three "telling items." That doesn't exactly make his case.
As one might expect, Markay's treatment of Murray's "bias dossier" is one-sided and assumes that every reporter who doesn't display an obvious right-wing bias is automatically liberal. Thus, he utterly ignores the idea that Media Matters might have a "bias dossier" of its own on her.
And lo and behold, it does. Here's a few examples:
- Wash. Post's Murray wrote that Petraeus will argue against "precipitous U.S. withdrawal" -- but who is arguing for it?
- Wash. Post's Murray: GOP won't support Iraq withdrawal because "[t]hey're just not willing to do that to the military"
- Wash. Post's Murray, Weisman echoed media suggestion that pro-war = "pro-military"
- Wash. Post's Murray cited flawed poll, repeated GOP claim that "the public has grown more patient on Iraq"
We'd complain about Markay's blindness to the existence of media bias that is not what he considers "liberal," but we'd be repeating ourselves.
