Dana Milbank's snotty attack on critics of White House behavior as revealed in the Downing Street memos illuminates a carefully concealed truth about the media: its definition of objectivity stops at the edge of anything left of center. Standard Democratic policy is okay, even a liberal quote or two, but anything further to the left is simply excluded from coverage unless - as in Milbank's case - it is there to ridicule.
Milbank's dislike for the left began long ago and writes of it in a style that might be called unmaturated preppie. For example, in September 2000 the Washington Post reporter said one of the presidential candidates, Ralph Nader, that his "only enemy is the corporation." Skull & Bonesman Milbank also described Greens as "radical activists in sandals." Since your editor was soon to speak with Nader at an event in Washington, I brought along a pair of sandals so Milbank's description would not be totally false. Of course, he didn't show up because Nader and the Greens fell into that classic media category: important enough to scorn but not important enough to cover.
Being among the last progressive journalists in the capital I am conscious of the massive disinterest of the rest of the media in anything left of center. When I started in 1964, my work was appealing enough to mainstream journalism to be offered jobs at the New York Times and the Washington Post. I was frequently called by journalists wanting to know what was going on in the civil rights or anti-war movement. These calls were seldom hostile: the left was a reality that needed to be covered and even the Post had some good reporters on the case. I tried, then as now, to serve as an helpful interpreter rather than as a rhetorical advocate and even developed a few friends along the way.
But these days I rarely get calls from the conventional media. Jim Ridgeway of the Village Voice, down the hall from my office, reports a similar phenomenon. Two guys with decades of history and background about progressive politics that is considered totally irrelevant by establishment Washington. The left, progressive movements, and social change are simply not thought to be worthy subjects by the corporate media - or by NPR for that matter.
The rest is at
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0506/S00308.htm
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