The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Semi-Smear

Posted on | June 27, 2011 | 22 Comments

“If you agree with him, you think what he does is citizen journalism. If you don’t, his work is little more than crowd-sourced political sabotage that freely distorts the facts.”
Jeremy W. Peters, “The Right’s Blogger Provocateur,” New York Times

No need to guess which view of Andrew Breitbart the New York Times endorses. Peters managed to work “jowly” and “husky” into his description of Breitbart, but the key to the presentation is how he depicts Breitbart as (a) a media whore, and (b) a controversial ideologue. “Part performance artist, part polemicist, Mr. Breitbart, 42, has used his network of Web sites and their legions of followers to bring conservative media red meat.”

Perhaps someone can do a Lexis-Nexis search and tell me if the New York Times ever described David Brock’s Media Matters, Ariana Huffington’s Huffington Post or Markos Moulitsas’s Daily Kos in similar terms.

It’s fascinating to see how these reporters feel the need to provide little cues to tell their readers what to think.

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