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His slander was publicly broadcast, and Yahoo fired him. That didn’t prevent David Chalian, Washington bureau chief of Yahoo News, from declaring heatedly that Republicans were “not concerned at all,” but were “happy to have a party with black people drowning.”Ĭhalian didn’t realize he was speaking into a live mike. (They did the same thing in response to Hurricane Gustav in 2008, when their convention was in Minnesota.) Clearly the GOP was at pains to show respect for those in the storm’s path. Republicans canceled the entire first day of their convention last week in response to the threat posed by Hurricane Isaac. But I wonder if it doesn’t cause more distortion than it prevents.Ĭonsider the mainstream media’s fixation on the supposed racism of the Republican Party. The ideal of objective, unbiased journalism may be admirable. Yet they are expected to keep their own strong and emotional views - which everyone knows they have - entirely separate from their coverage. Reporters and editors cover political developments and public controversies that generate strong, even emotional, views. For decades newspapers and broadcasters have tried to maintain a façade of impartiality. When nearly everyone in the newsroom is a liberal Democrat, casting conservatives and Republicans - and their ideas - in a negative light can become second nature.īut maybe that wouldn’t be such a problem if news organizations were more forthright about hoisting their ideological colors. If you are “surrounded by a culture of like minds,” as Brisbane wrote of the “hive” at The New York Times, it’s easy to assume that your own political prejudices represent the neutral center. But human beings have a great capacity for believing in their own objectivity. Is this willful blindness? By my lights, the leftward tilt of the “mainstream” news broadcasters - ABC-CBS-CNN-NBC-NPR - is as self-evident as the rightward tilt of the notable exception, Fox News. When the question was repeated, Stephanopoulos walked away. At the Republican convention in Tampa last week, ABC’s chief political correspondent George Stephanopoulos - who first gained fame as a former aide to President Clinton - was asked whether he sees a liberal bias in the media.