Slanted Press or Slanted Blogs?

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick : "All anyone can talk about is how darn humble John Roberts is, and poor Alito--who really is humble--just has to sit there and take it . . . Alito's own opening statement contains no central theme, image, or metaphor; no neat word-picture to sell his own jurisprudential views, unless, perhaps, it's this one: 'My family was too poor to afford a judicial philosophy.'"

Kos has this bit of media criticism: "The Alito hearings are covered on MSNBC, and they couldn't find a single Democrat or liberal to comment on them? Not one? Instead, they gave us Pat Buchanan, Ed Gillespie, and Bill Frist."

Another fine story that the media should have done long ago: USA Today says only 28 percent of federal fines against mining operators in the last seven years has actually been collected.

Editor & Publisher has the back story on why you haven't heard about the Christian Science Monitor reporter kidnapped in Iraq--until now:

"The abduction of a Christian Science Monitor reporter in Iraq on Saturday was not disclosed by major U.S. media outlets for nearly two days after the Monitor requested that the incident, and the reporter's name and affiliation, be withheld. A translator was killed in the incident and the reporter, now identified by the Monitor as Jill Carroll, is still being held.

"Numerous foreign news outlets and several leading wire services disclosed the incident -- and in a few cases, the reporter's name. Such stories did not appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other U.S. papers and their Web sites. The Associated Press ran at least one story out of Baghdad, but without the newspaper or reporter's name, and it did not appear in any major newspapers Sunday or Monday. The AP held off all further reports at the request of the Monitor, which did not release the information until Monday afternoon."

How is it that Rupert Murdoch's New York Post is no longer slicing and dicing Hillary daily. In the New Republic, Ben Smith credits "an active courtship on Clinton's part--including access for Post reporters. Unlike some politicians brutalized by the Post--notably this year's Democratic mayoral nominee, Fernando Ferrer--she and her staff never cut off the paper, however shrill it got. Her top campaign communications aide, Howard Wolfson, had arrived with a respect and understanding for the tabloid's power from his time with Westchester Representative Nita Lowey, whom he helped engineer into an unlikely Post favorite. Clinton's courtship of the paper has ranged from her warm relations with the paper's Capitol Hill staff--one former reporter, Vince Morris, was a particular favorite--to her keen awareness of some of the paper's favorite crusades . . .

"Last year, when the paper was wrapped up in an all-out assault on the International Freedom Center, a planned museum at Ground Zero that the Post warned would be a 'monster' and 'a forum for America-bashing,' Clinton joined in. Already under heavy fire, the project died--people involved say--the day Clinton came out against it in an interview with the Post. She got the wood, and an editorial labeled the move 'Hillary's home run.'

"The distance from the devious carpetbagger the Post portrayed in 2000 to the serious junior senator who, for the most part, occupies its pages today is hard to match in America's political press . . . Both sides, though, insist this is journalism as usual . . .

"Beyond these bromides is a realization by both Clinton and Murdoch that their relationship can be mutually beneficial. Murdoch's history with Prime Minister Tony Blair offers the blueprint: After then-candidate Blair flew to Australia's Hayman Island to address executives of Murdoch's News Corporation, Murdoch's British papers abandoned the Tories to support him. Murdoch would go on to benefit from Blair's media deregulation."

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, while praising Tom DeLay for bowing out of the House leadership, scoffs at Denny Hastert's talk of lobbying reform:

"This is a junior-achievement version of what Democrats did in responding to the Clinton fund-raising scandals by adopting the cause of 'campaign-finance reform.' Why is it that whenever Congress gets into an ethics scrape, its first reaction is to further restrict the Constitutional rights of other Americans to influence Members of Congress? We can only hope these 'reforms' will be as trivial as they sound.