Slanted Press or Slanted Blogs?

"The conservative blogger who calls himself Patterico (and is, behind the curtain, a Los Angeles county prosecutor named Patrick Frey) posted a remarkable 11,000-word work of propaganda in the guise of his annual review of the Los Angeles Times's alleged crimes of liberal bias.

"Frey, with whom I once had a perfectly cordial exchange by e-mail, claims to have documented 'an entire year's worth' of 'omissions, distortions, and misrepresentations' by this newspaper, and congratulates himself enthusiastically for making the effort. (Self-congratulation is a common characteristic of partisan blogs, like snouts on dogs.) As I will show in a follow-up post, Frey's exercise is chock-a-block with plenty of omissions, distortions, and misrepresentations of its own. But the details aren't my main topic today. Rather, I propose to examine the broader features of conservative criticism of the press.

"Frey has several qualities in common with many other right-wing bloggers who have set themselves up as watchdogs of what they categorize, self-revealingly, as the 'mainstream media.' . . . The class includes a wide range of conservative and reactionary blogs for which it's an article of faith that the traditional press is secretly devoted to inculcating the nation's innocent readers with their liberal agenda.

"None of these critics appears to be genuinely interested in correcting factual errors or improving this newspaper's, or any newspaper's, performance as a journalistic institution -- which are certainly legitimate goals. Their main purpose is to hunt down deviations from a political orthodoxy that they themselves define. Their techniques include a promiscuous use of labels as shorthand slurs ('leftist' and 'liberal' being, of course, their most popular denigrations). They no doubt find this technique valuable because once they can hang a label on a newspaper or a journalist, they can dispense with anything so fundamental as discussion or argument. Some also favor imputations of treason or unpatriotism; contentions that the offending reporters and editors are detached in spirit from their readership; and suggestions that what underlies their political deviancy is moral turpitude.

"To back up their assertions, they often quote articles selectively, take out of context what they do quote, and ascribe imaginary motivations to reporters and editors, which they then feel free to decry. As any student of history knows, these are tools and techniques that were used to great effect during the Stalinist show trials of the '40s and '50s. The functionaries who wielded them then had the same goals as the self-anointed press watchdogs on the right do today: To support the regime in power through intimidation and threat and to impose ideological conformity, while avoiding at all costs debate on the merits.

"These critics equate a newspaper's failure to parrot a conservative, Republican, or Bush Administration line with inaccuracy, or cavalierly interpret it as evidence of 'bias.' Unconcerned with a free press's duty to challenge official versions of events, they fault newspapers and newsmagazines for failing to fall into lockstep in support of George W. Bush and his policies . . .

"Such reveling in ignorance of one's subject is a new phenomenon in criticism. You don't hear movie critics bragging about never going to the cinema, TV critics dropping their cable subscriptions, or book critics swearing off reading. But it's not at all unusual to hear the blogging critics urge readers to cancel their subscriptions to their daily newspapers, as though their goal is to reduce their followers to the same state of blissful benightedness to which they aspire themselves."

All right, now to Alito . . . I agree with Keith Olbermann that it was like watching a 0-0 baseball game for two innings with plenty of rain delays.

"Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. began his public drive for a seat on the Supreme Court today by offering a reassurance of his belief that judges should have no agendas of their own," says the New York Times , "but he steered clear of any discussion about his views on abortion, presidential power and other divisive issues, setting up a more direct confrontation with Democrats on Tuesday over his suitability for the Supreme Court.

"On the opening day of the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Alito sketched his background and traced his outlook in part back to two influences: what he called the unpretentious community in New Jersey in which he grew up, and, by contrast, his students days at Princeton and Yale in the late 1960's and early 1970's, when, he said, he witnessed privileged students behaving irresponsibly.

"He chose not to extend that implied character description to whatever views he holds on the divisive issues that are likely to dominate the hearings in coming days, and instead set out only a very generalized description of a belief in the need for independent-minded jurists."

A majority of the public favors Alito's confirmation, by a 53-27 margin, says a Post-ABC poll .