The Daily Howler
http://www.dailyhowler.com/GUILD CARD EARNED: Big mainstream journalists rarely address the vexing question of “media bias.” The Post’s Gene Robinson goes there today. The result is predictably gruesome.
“Are the news media being beastly to Hillary Clinton?” he asks as he starts. “Are political reporter and commentators...basically in the tank for Barack Obama?” Robinson tilts the discussion a bit through his use of the language of ridicule (“beastly”). But these are very good questions to ask, and Robinson asks them from the front lines. He is, after all, a Hardball regular, and he’s a regular panelist during MSNBC’s long-winded primary coverage. He has therefore been on the front lines in one of the battlegrounds of this alleged beastly media conduct. Just how silly has it gotten on the programs where Robinson works? On this morning’s Post op-ed page, Charles Krauthammer, citing Paul Krugman, gives the short answer:
KRAUTHAMMER (2/15/08): You might dismiss as hyperbole the complaint by the New York Times's Paul Krugman that "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality." Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama's Potomac primary victory speech with "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg." When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama "comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."
As everyone knows, Matthews was forced to apologize, just last month, for his endless gender-trashing of Clinton. Another MSNBC regular, David Shuster was forced to apologize, just last week, for engaging in more of the same.
Robinson has been on the front lines as this network’s strange Clinton-trashing has unfolded. For that reason, few people are better positioned than he to evaluate the questions he has asked.