The Atlantic points out what I've always noticed about conservative media (but doesn't really explain it.)

Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic has a great piece on why so many conservative "news outlets" got the election wrong:

"It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio. If you're a rank-and-file conservative, you're probably ready to acknowledge that ideologically friendly media didn't accurately inform you about Election 2012. Some pundits engaged in wishful thinking; others feigned confidence in hopes that it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy; still others decided it was smart to keep telling right-leaning audiences what they wanted to hear."

This brings me to something I noticed a few years ago and never could find an answer for it. Where are the liberals in conservative media? Conservative Media always blames the mainstream media as having a liberal bias. Think of the "liberal media" for a second:
- MSNBC? A former Republican Congressman hosts a three-hour morning news show (which, in case you're wondering, is three hours more than any liberal hosts a show on Fox News).
- New York Times? David Brooks and Ross Douthat have regular columns in the Op-Ed pages.
- Washington Post? Same with Michael Gerson, Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker, George Will...

I ask again, where are the liberals in conservative media? Alan Colmes? Sure, he makes a token appearance from time-to-time on Fox News but it's not like he hosts his own TV show anymore (and even then, it was Hannity & Colmes). Thomas Frank? Nope, not with the Wall Street Journal anymore, and even when he was, his column printed less frequently than Brooks or Douthat do with the New York Times.

I'm not saying conservative media should swing to the ideological middle. There is a need for both, objective and partisan media. However, if you only offer your viewers partisanship without an intellectually honest counterpoint, you're likely to end up in the exact same place the Republican Party is sitting in today. And in the long term that's not good for the party or for the country.

Please welcome to the stage, a very funny guy...

I liked the appointment of Austan Goolsbee already, but this line in the article makes me like him even more:

"...Mr. Goolsbee, an amateur comic as well as an economist..."

It's definitely a better post-comedy career choice than becoming a human target, like this guy. Either way, both of them give me hope.

Fox News and Shepard Smith Earlier Today

I saw something earlier today on Fox News that actually surprised me. At the top of the 3:00PM hour, anchor Shepard Smith was reporting stories about the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races. When he went to the reporter covering the Chris Christie campaign, the reporter had actually managed to get Chris Christie on the air for a brief interview. After completing the interview, Smith asked the reporter when Gov. Corzine would be interviewed. When the reporter replied that they were still waiting to hear back from the Corzine campaign, Smith said he had no idea the interview was to take place, apologized to the television audience that it happened, and said that if he had control of the situation, it would not have taken place at all.

I'm not sure if video of that segment is stored or saved on YouTube somewhere, but is it possible that by criticizing Fox News (appropriately so, in most cases) any responsible journalists on the network are actually losing their credibility? I've subscribed to the Alan Colmes podcast for months now and although he is put in an awkward situation as a liberal working for Fox News, he often cites Shepard Smith by name when defending the news programming on Fox News and distinguishing it from the opinion programming.


Updated: the video was posted on YouTube: