John Hawkins has a post up at ChronWatch that really gets to the heart of why Rathergate is such a milestone for the media:
In fact, the way that CBS has treated these fake memos is particularly ironic in light of the old media's reaction to the charges made by the Swift Boat Vets against John Kerry. If Dan [sic] Killian, the man who was supposed to have written the forged memos, was alive and saying something negative about John Kerry instead of George W. Bush, we could be almost certain that the old media would immediately write him off as untrustworthy.
So why is the old media adopting ''Enquirer'' standards as to what are ''credible'' allegations, when George Bush is involved? Many people believe it's because of this:
''The New York Times conducted an informal poll of journalists at the recent Democratic convention that showed they favor John Kerry for president over President Bush by 3 to 1, while reporters based in Washington, D.C., support the Massachusetts senator by 12 to 1.''
The old media's liberal bias is on display day-in-and-day-out. It's in the questions they ask to each candidate, which stories are on the front page and which ones get buried on back pages, news stories that are filled with liberal opinion, a preponderance of liberal writers on the editorial pages, and a dozen other small ways in which ideologs trump the old media's supposed neutrality.
That's why it makes no difference if bloggers, particularly conservative bloggers, wear their ideologies on their sleeve. CBS, The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post--they all have viewpoints too, but unlike bloggers, they're not honest about where they stand.
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