Kurtz Objects: Aren't 99 Percent of Reporters Fair and Nonpartisan?

Out of kindness to his Washington Post colleague, Howard Kurtz dedicated a second segment of CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday to the Post's Dana Milbank to plug his new book, Homo Politicus. While Milbank wrote that the media's split into liberal media and conservative media, Kurtz objected that CBS or the New York Times would be considered liberal or favorable to Democrats, that it's unfair to compare conservative editorial pages or opinion journals with "mainstream" media like CBS.

Later, Kurtz wondered: "Aren't 99 percent of Washington journalists hard-working folks who aren't whack jobs or cheerleaders for one side or the other?" Milbank wasn't jumping on that bandwagon, so Kurtz followed up: "More than a majority?" From the CNN transcript:

KURTZ: There are all kinds of strange characters in Washington. And one columnist seems drawn to them like a magnet. Dana Milbank writes about the city's tribal ways in his book "Homo Politicus," and the fact that he waited around to rejoin us shows us why three-quarters responding to a poll on Wonkette.com described him as a publicity whore.

All right, Dana Milbank. You write about the media being the chorus in the Washington drama, and you say that one chorus champions Republicans -- Fox News, Washington Times, Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal editorial page. Then you say The New York Times, CBS, other major newspapers, networks and magazines, are broadly assumed to be friendly to the Democrats. Assumed by who? Is that fair?

DANA MILBANK: Well, assumed by the general public out there. It has very little to do with what we actually do in our world, but we're -- everybody in Washington is forced into a particular category or tribe. There is a Republican tribe and the Democratic tribe, and political figures or bloggers or whoever else out there will force everybody into one of those. Some people force us into both at the same time.

KURTZ: But you seem to equating, you know, mainstream organizations, which, you know, many people think lean to the left, but we should at least try to be fair with outfits like The Weekly Standard, and Wall Street Journal editorial page, which are journals of opinion.

MILBANK: That's right. But for that matter, you can throw in Jon Stewart, you can throw in -- you know, there is a variety of opinion shows, and some often a mix when you look at something like Fox News.

KURTZ: Let's talk about some of the journalists that you write about. Bill Kristol, he is the editor of The Weekly Standard, Fox News commentator, former Republican strategist. Just announced today he's going to become a weekly columnist for "The New York Times." And a strong advocate of the war. And you write, "With each false prophecy" -- meaning about the Iraq war -- "Kristol became only became more certain of success." How does that work?

MILBANK: Well, I look at it -- the press, I call them the Greek chorus, which in turn is sort of from the cult of Dionysus. If you know from reading the Greek plays...

KURTZ: Is there going to be a pop quiz here?

MILBANK: Well, there will be at the end. But basically the chorus is always jumping in and singing and dancing and drawing attention to itself instead of the actual figures in the action. So that's what I call -- the Washington journalists are the chorus.

KURTZ: But you're singling Kristol out as an Iraq war cheerleader and kind of suggesting that he doesn't deserve his success. But there are a lot of other people who supported the Iraq war, even on the liberal side.

MILBANK: Absolutely. No, no, no, I picked many. I picked some from the conservative side, everywhere from Jeff Gannon, speaking of a particular kind of prostitute, but to Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard in a much more respectable way. But what happens is the Republicans have their favorites, the Democrats have their favorites, and they talk to that side and they give them their side of the story. And that element of the chorus just parrots back or repeats back what that -- you know, what either the Republican tribe or the Democratic tribe is saying.

KURTZ: With no critical judgment whatsoever?

MILBANK: Frequently there is no critical judgment whatsoever. But you have to consider that Washington -- I call it Potomac Land -- is a very primitive place, very -- you know, there's -- human sacrifice goes on and all kinds of barbaric rituals.

KURTZ: Political sacrifice. Bob Woodward, you write about him as kind of the ultimate beltway insider. And you note that he was much more favorable to George W. Bush in his first two books about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, a much harsher portrait of the president in "State of Denial." What was your point?

MILBANK: Well, there was no coincidence that the president and the White House were cooperating with Woodward in the first case, the second case of his book. They were not cooperating with him in the third. No accident that it became a whole lot more negative there. A lot of people in this town, in the Greek chorus part of it, rely on access to people, and they are friendlier to the people who are friendly to them. So that's only to be expected.

KURTZ: Of course Woodward says that he found out new things as the war went on and as things did not go so well. Judy Miller, recently of "The New York Times," she of course reported a lot of the stories that turned out to be erroneous, or some of the stories, I should say, about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Then she got caught up in the Scooter Libby case, went to jail, ended up leaving the times.You write, "In her loyalty to her patrons over her newspaper, she had become bad news." Loyalty to her patrons?

MILBANK: Yes. Her patron was being Chalabi from...

KURTZ: Ahmed Chalabi.

MILBANK: Yes, we may have forgotten his name over the last couple of years, but one of the figures who -- the expatriates who led us into Iraq there. She was very faithful he was being a secretive source to her, but because he was giving her those scoops they turned out to be wrong. But that wasn't important at the time that he was -- his side of the story was being very favorably presented. So that's a common element of the Greek chorus.

KURTZ: Aren't 99 percent of Washington journalists hard-working folks who aren't whack jobs or cheerleaders for one side or the other?

MILBANK: I don't -- not sure it's 99 percent, but there are a lot of hard-working...

KURTZ: More than a majority?

MILBANK: There are a lot of hard-working, honest journalists in this town, by I would exclude them from the "Homo Politicus" frame I'm using here.

KURTZ: They're not members of the tribe...

MILBANK: No, they are not admitted to the tribe. If they are fair and balanced, they are not going qualify as a Potomac man.

KURTZ: OK.