On Sunday, Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler sat down with CSPAN’s Brian Lamb for a Q&A about the year’s worst political lies. While much of the hour-long interview focused on numerous statements made by Democrats and Republicans throughout 2014, Kessler claimed that both Republicans and Democrats have bought into the "myth of the liberal media."
The Post fact checker argued that “Democrats tend to get a little more upset because I think they have bought into the myth of the liberal media, and they kind think that the media is on their side whereas Republicans, they firmly believe in the myth of the liberal media.”
Kessler continued to dismiss the notion of a liberal media bias and insisted that Republicans expect to be treated badly by the press because they fully believe in the “myth of the liberal media”:
They kind of expect that they are going to be -- you know, oh it’s a reporter from the Washington Post calling, they are not going to be fair to me. I hope that over the last four years, I have done enough back and forth, treated both parties with equal fervor, that people have come to grudgingly say, okay, you are someone we can do business with.
See relevant transcript below.
CSPAN’s Q&A with Glenn Kessler
December 28, 2014
BRIAN LAMB: Who gets the maddest? Who protests the most when you’re about to put one of these four Pinocchios in the Washington Post?
GLENN KESSLER: I would say, just speaking as a general matter, I think Democrats tend to get a little more upset because I think they have bought into the myth of the liberal media, and they kind think that the media is on their side whereas Republicans, they firmly believe in the myth of the liberal media, so they kind of expect that they are going to be -- you know, oh it’s a reporter from the Washington Post calling, they are not going to be fair to me. I hope that over the last four years, I have done enough back and forth, treated both parties with equal fervor, that people have come to grudgingly say, okay, you are someone we can do business with.
I know that the Senate Majority PAC, which is affiliated with Harry Reid, they stopped answering my questions midway through the campaign season because they felt they were not getting a fair shake from me Now I would disagree. I did find that a lot of their ads were really reprehensible, and I gave a lot of four Pinocchios. So at a certain point they just wouldn’t even bother to explain themselves and I think that is unfortunate.
