Moving to the Right: Brit Hume’s Path Took Him From Liberal Outsider to The Low-Key Voice of Conservatism on Fox News (Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, via Brothers Judd)

Hume is no partisan brawler in the mold of some of Fox’s high-decibel hosts. By virtue of his investigative background, his understated style and his management role, he represents a hybrid strain: conservatives who believe in news, not bloviation, but news that passes through a different lens, filtered through a different set of assumptions.

On April 6, when every network newscast led with the revelation that President Bush had authorized former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to leak classified information about Iraq, Hume began his program with an apology by Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney for a physical altercation with a Capitol police officer a week earlier. Bush and the CIA leak was Hume’s third story.

“Sure, I’m a conservative, no doubt about it,” Hume says. “But I would ask people to look at the work.” He does not accuse his fellow journalists of pursuing a partisan agenda, saying their bias is “unconscious.”

The discussion of issues among the panelists on Hume’s Special Report is some of the best on television.

Orrin Judd had a great observation about this story:

[T]here’s something deeply odd about the host of a program on a rival liberal cable network writing about the potential conservative bent of Mr. Hume, no?

Yes.

Alex Whitlock has a post up about a recent New York Times story. The point he makes is related to Hume’s “unconscious” point:

If it is so natural to scoff when things are tilted one way or another for some reason or another (financial incentive, relationships, etc), why do liberals look at us so funny when we say that a newsroom that 85% Democrat liberal is almost unavoidably going to be biased? Perhaps it’s partly because some conservatives paint it up as a conspiracy — I mostly chalk it up to being human. The solution, the author says, is to avoid whatever incentives make us biased. But how does a newsroom move towards ideological diversity when there aren’t as many conservatives interested in being journalists?

Of course, the journalists in those newsrooms that may tilt 85-90% Democrat still insist that they are “objective” — and that’s part of the problem. Not only does a certain amount of groupthink prevail in those newsrooms, but the journalists actually think they’re objective on top of it! As a case in point, the Chronicle‘s self-appointed online editorial page linker recently noted that he likes a certain far-left blogger because the blogger is not a “raver” — this despite that blogger’s regular references to President Bush’s “lies” and the need to impeach him! That’s not raving, one supposes, when one’s own view is decidedly left of center. But is it really objective? No, it’s not. That doesn’t make the self-appointed editorial page linker part of any conspiracy. It just reflects the lack of self-awareness and self-criticism (myopia?) that prevails in the profession.

My friend Ethan has long criticized that notion of “objectivity” as the mantra of professional journalists, and I’m more inclined to his view these days. Yes, if professional journalists continue to insist that’s their standard, then it’s really easy to demonstrate that they consistently fail to live up to that standard. But that gets boring after a while (too easy!). Still, news organizations are left with the problem of how to boost ideological diversity in the newsroom while still clinging to the notion that their newsrooms are “objective.” That one’s not so easy.

Ben Domenech has finally offered what seems like a real apology for being an intellectual thief, following earlier efforts by Domenech and his dwindling band of supporters to portray him as a victim and/or to downplay the gravity of what increasingly was shown to be outright intellectual theft.

For those who don’t know, Ben Domenech is the young conservative overachiever who has served in the upper echelons of government, edited books, and started the Red State community website. The Washington Post decided he was just the sort of young overachiever who could provide conservative blog commentary on their site, and offer under-represented perspective.

That wasn’t a bad idea, but as it turns out, the young overachiever actually seems to have achieved some of his success by stealing from others. So, no WaPo blog for him. Bad boy.

Whether it’s a young conservative overachiever like Domenech, or older liberal intellectual thieves like Doris Kearns Goodwin or (locally) Rick Casey, I hate plagiarists. Even worse, I hate the excuses so many of them seem to offer, and the fact that there are hardly ever consequences.

It’s nice to see there were consequences this time, even if there were no consequences when Doris Kearns Goodwin and Rick Casey ripped off the work of others.

LOCAL BLOGVERSATION: TBIFOC, TBIFOC Kittycats.

Saturday afternoon, I whined here that the Dallas Morning News had no RSS feed for their excellent state news section.

Shortly after whining, I emailed them and asked if they could provide a feed.

I got an email yesterday (Sunday!) that the email was forwarded to their web development folks.

I got a followup email this afternoon that my requested feed is now available.

That’s an outstanding response by the Dallas Morning News.

In contrast, I emailed the Chron.com folks on Jan. 20 asking that they either include the columnists in the RSS feeds for individual sections of the newspaper, or set up an RSS feed for the columnists, like many other newspapers.

The response at the time: They have “other priorities.”

There is still no RSS feed for the columnists on Chron.com.

One newspaper gets kudos for responding promptly to a reader request. One does not.

Would the local blogosphere benefit from a blog critic? (Dwight Silverman, Chron.com)

Would Houston’s blogging community benefit from a blogging critic?

I’m not thinking about an attack dog . . . God knows there are enough of those in the blogosphere! I’m thinking of someone who points out great local blogging; who understands the form and has thoughts and ideas about how to make bloggers more effective; and who isn’t afraid to call out blog posts that are misleading, sloppy with facts, or plain dishonest.

This person would have to be someone who’s non-partisan, who’s been blogging awhile, and who has the respect of the blogging community.

This is an old post that I never got around to answering because I’ve been blogging a bunch about topical local political news at the little cityblog, in addition to the little podcast experiment.

My initial reaction to this (as a good former Lence student) was: What a bad question.

And that’s the reaction I’ve had since.

The question is bad because it is loaded with some old-media assumptions.

The local blogosphere already has plenty of blog critics. For example, any blogger who takes up Houston politics and media is a potential critic of posts on blogHOUSTON. And blogHOUSTON is a potential critic of blog posts on those same topics. That’s the independent, distributed nature of the blogosphere at its best. The best blogs are having a conversation with each other, and with readers. “Blog criticism” is active and distributed. The old-media model of “Here’s the finished product and a bunch of J-School rules, now let’s have a ‘critic’ judge it” is SO NOT what the blogosphere is about. For better or worse, readers and other bloggers are the critics — and that’s the fundamental nature of the media form itself!

The local blogosphere can always benefit from new bloggers with something to say — in other words, potential blog critics. The notion that it somehow needs a single “blog critic” who has the imprimatur of a professional journalist from the Houston Chronicle continues to strike me as bizarre. The suggestion from several bloggers that a hub site might do a better job as a portal/guide to the local blogosphere is a good one, though (and one that involves work for someone!).

BLOGVERSATION: TBIFOC, Big Pink Cookie, Mike McGuff, Greg’s Opinion, Off the Kuff.

The Dallas Morning News is the best newspaper in the state, yet doesn’t seem to have an RSS feed for its state news section.

Nice.

White House Press Corps Exposed: Sitting in armchairs waiting for handouts not the best way to get scoops (Jon Ham, Carolina Journal, via Anne)

Members of the elite White House press corps this week have acted more like animals that have been kept in captivity for so long that they can

Quite a while back, Laurence and I had a discussion about blogging during which he described blogs as glue.

I thought it was an apt description of what some of the most interesting blogs do.

Read more »

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist (UCLA News, 12/14/2005, via Brothers Judd)

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

“I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican,” said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study’s lead author. “But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.”

“Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left,” said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

This really comes as no surprise, but I’d be interested in seeing their methodology. Unfortunately, the journal is subscriber-only, so it’s going to have to wait (unless some reader out there is a subscriber and would be kind enough to forward the article).

UPDATE (01-31-2006): My friend Ethan sends along a link to this page, which has a link to a pre-publication version of the article.

Blogger extraordinaire Matt Welch, who created the term “warblog” and has penned his share of articles for alt media, is now officially a member of the mainstream.

He’s announced on his blog that he is now an assistant opinion editor for the Los Angeles Times. That’s a good move for the Times, which will be getting a unique combination of talent and experience with Matt. This LA Voice blog post suggests that this move is part of a bigger effort at the Times to fight “the dead-tree entropy affecting all newspapers….”

Welch was a co-founder (with Ken Layne) of the L.A. Examiner blog, which set the standard for what a cityblog should be. (Anything good about blogHOUSTON, I ripped off from those guys; the bad is all on me). He’s going to be a great addition for the Times. (Update: And they could use some great additions).

Other newspapers suffering from dead tree root rot ought to consider shaking up their news and opinion operations similarly, especially given the talent just floating around our local blogosphere.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid writes a letter (Steve Sebelius, Las Vegas CityLife, via Brothers Judd)

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid writes a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, urging her to reject an Indian tribe’s application to open a tribal casino.

One day later, a rival tribe opposing the casino request sends Reid’s PAC $5,000, while a second rival tribe ponies up another $5,000.

Coincidence? Or the kind of quid pro quo of which federal indictments are generally made?

The question has been repeatedly asked in the past month, after the Associated Press revealed a massive letter-writing campaign from both Republicans and Democrats on behalf of Indian tribes represented by controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Reid’s March 5, 2002 letter (also signed by U.S. Sen. John Ensign) was part of that campaign. Reid has collected a total of $67,400 from Abramoff-connected clients between 2001 to 2004. Ensign took in $16,293, although he has reportedly given that money to the Nevada Patriot Fund, a group that takes care of service members killed in the Iraq occupation.

Was Reid wrong? Did he perform an official favor for Abramoff, who was frantically seeking congressional support to bar the Jena tribe of Choctaw Indians from opening a casino in Louisiana that was opposed by the Louisiana Coushattas and the Mississippi Choctaw tribes, both of which operate casinos that would have competed with the Jena operation? (In all, 33 lawmakers — including U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. — wrote letters to Norton opposing the Jena plan, and shared in an estimated $830,000 awarded by clients of Abramoff.)

Just another day in the wake of a “Republican” scandal, eh?

The entire story is an interesting read, actually. It would be an informative (but time-consuming) exercise simply to track the purely local coverage of all pols affected by this scandal, and to try to figure out which local news outfits get into the details heavily, and which local outlets take the lazy route and talk about “links” without much substantiation. Stories of national interest with local angles give local news organizations a real chance to shine, but they don’t always take the opportunity (remember the Chronicle — but not the Houston Business Journal — getting scooped on Enron by national newspapers?)

Of course, for executive editors who like shiny things, sometimes it’s more exciting to hire a new cartoonist than to cover the local/state beat fanatically.