My must read of the day is "The Golden Egg," by Matthew Continetti in the Washington Free Beacon:
And yet: Even as the Victorian gentlemen of the press debated the newsworthiness and propriety of the Free Beacon scoop, even as some of the most prominent correspondents in America publicly stated that the story was beneath contempt and unworthy of notice, reporters and producers were booking flights to Fayetteville to see what else they could find inside the Diane Blair archive. Suddenly CNN, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, ABC, and others were devoting manpower and work hours and financial resources to cover a story they had neglected for years, all in the hopes that the supposed partisanship of the Free Beacon had led us to overlook some crucial element of the narrative, some nugget that would reveal Hillary Clinton as the saintly and courageous Tiger Mother of liberal dreams. And what have these crack reporters found that wasn’t covered in Goodman’s original report? "The former first lady coped with severe back pain from wearing heels," says CNN. Stop. The. Presses.
This may seem like a kiss-up must read, but bear with me. My boss’s column is important.
I’m from Atlanta, Ga., and grew up watching CNN. My love for CNN was like my reverence for Coke products; I loved them over their competitors because they are Atlanta. I remember my dad taking my sisters and me to the CNN studios on a Saturday, sitting behind a replica news desk, and thinking: This is the coolest place in America. For a year after that trip, my sisters and I would make our own fake news programs that we recorded on an old camcorder. I did a solid weather report from my back porch, but I didn’t wander too far because I was a pro and knew we needed to keep the camcorder plugged in at all times.
The point is, I have always loved the old school, stuffy, more "mainstream" media, but I’ve increasingly realized that it’s ridiculous when many reporters pretend they don’t have an agenda. Any time a journalist covers a story, she’s making choices. She decides what to cover, and what her angle will be. She decides who to interview, and which experts to cite in the story. There is an inherent bias in reporting, no matter how much we try to avoid it. So why not acknowledge it, and get on with our jobs?