WaPo: Dana Milbank on his own bias

[grasswire]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48952-2005Mar19.html

My Bias for Mainstream News

By Dana Milbank
Sunday, March 20, 2005; Page B01


To judge from the e-mails I received during the four years I spent on the White House beat, Post readers of all political ideologies agree: I am biased.

But in which direction?

A conservative magazine put me on its cover as "Dana 'Bias' Milbank." A liberal Web site made me its "Media Whore of the Week," and a posting on a liberal blog proposed "Whore" as my middle name. (I've decided to combine the "Bias" and "Whore" suggestions and make my middle name, simply, "Bore.")

In political journalism, complaints from ideologically driven readers come with the territory; sometimes I've gotten dueling complaints that I have betrayed my conservative and liberal biases in the same story. But I think the growing volume and the vitriol of the bias accusations are part of a new -- and dangerous -- development.

Partisans on the left and right have formed cottage industries devoted to discrediting what they dismissively call the "mainstream media" -- the networks, daily newspapers and newsmagazines. Their goal: to steer readers and viewers toward ideologically driven outlets that will confirm their own views and protect them from disagreeable facts. In an increasingly fragmented media world, ideologues have already devolved into parallel universes, in which liberals and conservatives can select talk radio hosts, cable news pundits and blogs that share their prejudices.

[LeftCoast]

1. Ah, so the Left and Right agree - Millbank sucks as a journalist!

:D

[Blue Belle]

12. We unite on common ground.

:rofl:

[Cooley Hurd]

2. Hmm - no mention of his story on DSM, just a lot of shit about...

...nothing.

Milbank's a coward... and a whore.:thumbsdown:

[babylonsister]

This story predates his DSM article;

he's a sucky journalist but don't know if he's prescient. :)

[FourStarDemocrat]

3. How about Dana "Denial" Milbank then?

'Cos if he can't admit that the trashy piece he wrote the other day on Conyers is biased, then the man's got some serious problems. A little introspection might do him good. Also, he failed to mention that he is a member of the Hoover Institute. I can't imagine how he forgot about that in his little defensive piece above.

[EVDebs]

4. Someone said he belongs to Skull and Bones. 'Nuf said.

[longship]

5. Aha! A non-denial denial!!!

Here at DU We back our boys!

[Eloriel]

6. The disagreeable fact is he wouldn't know a fact

if it bit him on the ass.

What a pathetic, self-absorbed, self-reinforcing, narcissistic jerk.

[Arugula Latte]

7. STFU, Dana.

We're through with you.

You can put lipstick on a corporate media whore, but it's still a whore.

[libertypirate]

8. This morons bias is Skull & Bones

He is a bonesmen

[oblivious]

9. So now expecting the truth is a liberal prejudice. What a sad hack he is.

[peacetalksforall]

10. He's a classic example of arrogant. His smirk when speaking on his

tv face time tells is all.

[malachibk]

11. What an asshole

That's all I really have to say.

[Cocoa]

13. bias is a red herring

my email to him, and almost all the best commentary about his embarrasment of an article, didn't say one word about bias.

Dear Dana,

Wow that article you wrote was terrible, as you probably realize by now.

I'm just wondering, how did you manage to get such a mistake of an article into print? That would have been rejected, for obvious reasons, from the paper I worked at in high school.

[ellenfl]

14. huh?

in which liberals and conservatives can select talk radio hosts, cable news pundits and blogs that share their prejudices.

and which liberal radio hosts and cable news pundits have those been up until recently?

i still can't find any news to watch that doesn't have a rw slant . . . except c-span which just shows what's happening in real time.

ellen fl

[Warren DeMontague]

15. And what is "mainstream"? Why, what the corporations say is!

Hence- we get wall-to-wall coverage of earth-shatteringly important "mainstream" news stories, like the Scott Peterson trial, The Michael Jackson trial, the Kobe Briant almost-trail... shark attacks, pandas mating, and the latest celebrity gossip.

What a PILE OF SHIT. Buddy, if you can't see that something is horribly wrong with the "mainstream media" these days, you have your head so far up your ass you're practically back at your head again.

[UTUSN]

16. Like O'LOOHFAH Quoting E-mails Claiming He Has a Lib Bias

Ahh, yes. So an attack on him is a sign of a huge problem attacking the whole journalistic universe. This column is from before, but it is precisely his "perception of reality" that was the issue in his mean-spirited take on the CONYERS event.