www.AndrewSullivan's Blogger Manifesto

This is the future of journalism? Not quite, but it definitely is a new addition to the mix. Especially with so many informed, articulate people out there whose views are never represented in the press. That is hardly true of Andrew Sullivan or Glenn Reynolds or many other bloggers who regularly appear in print.

The ones who get recognized are either already pretty well known, or get mentioned in traditional media. Being edgy and good with sarcasm seems to help, as well. People don't particularly want a balanced, "on the other hand" kind of discussion of issues. They seem to like it better when bloggers go right for the groin.
This, I think, is because most of us have had the Liberal party line up to our rising gorge.

Speaking of Liberal bias, I watched Bernard Goldberg discussing his book Bias on CSpan2 on Sunday. He seemed to anxious to explain what he was NOT charging. He claimed that he was a liberal politically, but I wasn't sure he was right until someone in the audience wanted to ask him about the effects of Jewish ownership and concentration in the media and Goldberg basically shouted him down and refused to discuss it with him. Some things you just don't talk about.

As for the basic point of the book, that television broadcast networks have a liberal bias, well, how many of us need to be told that? I saw Goldberg confront Marvin Kalb on the Newshour a few weeks back, and Kalb lost all pretense of a reasoned, rational exchange. He treated Goldberg just like Goldberg treated the guy who asked about Jews in the media.
(No, I don't believe that the media is liberal because it is dominated by Jews. I think it has more to do with an Ivy League connection, and the assumption that what everybody from Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton seems to think must be true.) That exchange was enough to prove Goldberg's thesis if I needed any.

Goldberg is possibly more persuasive because he retains so many of the annoying qualities of his former buddies. He's arrogant, lecturing, defensive and tends to try to yammer others.

He did defend Fox News Channel as being less biassed that most politically correct think it is. He says this impression is due to the fact that hearing news people presenting both sides and giving them a chance to speak, is so unusual and different from all other television news that it feels unbalanced. I'm not so sure about this, because so many of Fox's people have real attitude toward the Liberal rightspeak, not that there's anything wrong with that.

My favorite thing on Fox is Britt Hume's program, on which he features Mara Liasson, Juan Williams, Mort Kondracke, Cece Connnelly and Jeff Birnbaum, who are hardly rightwingers. He doesn't come across as having an agenda, but just concerned that other points than the ones you get on the BC's and the BS networks, the NYTimes and the WaPo should be mentioned. He's very smart and is the real deal when it comes to fair and balanced (or as close as any human being can get).