Chris Cillizza’s The Fix blog at The Washington Post presents itself as a political reporting blog, not an advocacy blog. It purports to be journalism in a blog format.
That distinction in the mainstream media, of course, really doesn’t exist in the newsroom or the blog sections. Except for blogs or bloggers who expressly are labeled “right wing” or “conservative,” one can assume a pro-Obama, pro-Democratic Party bias. (And even the “conservative” bloggers are suspect, if you know what I mean.)
I’ve never had much of an issue with Cillizza’s blog; while I don’t claim to have studied it carefully, when I have read it I did’t notice anything more than the usual implicit bias which exists throughout WaPo. (FYI, that’s a compliment.)
One of Cillizza’s co-bloggers, Aaron Blake, had one of those clarifying moments on Twitter today, in which that implicit bias was revealed explicitly. Blake called for help from others on Twitter to find material Blake could use against Newt Gingrich:
There were a number of appropriate responses, including these from Ace:
Reminds me of the time WaPo and other mainstream news outlets crowd-sourced Sarah Palin’s e-mails, and were downright giddy. Until they fell flat on their faces.
Update: I had not seen this before the post, but it fits the theme, WaPo ‘Right Turn’ Blogger Trashes Conservative Media; Post Edits It Harsher for Paper:
The Washington Post selected Jennifer Rubin as their “Right Turn” blogger, which to many has seemed like the wrong title. It should be “Romney’s Turn.” But when the Post publishes her blogs in excerpted form in the newspaper, they’re making her even sharper in attacking the “hard right” of the Republican Party.In Monday’s paper, Rubin lashed out at the New Hampshire Union Leader’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich by slamming the entire conservative media as “embarrassingly bad.” The Post’s gleeful headline is “Conservative media blow another story.” But any nuance she placed in this attack on her blog was edited out by the Posties.
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