Dan Eggen

Are you a liberal journalist looking for a way to gloss over an interest group's liberal bent?

Just follow the lead of Washington Post staffer Dan Eggen and call it a "public-interest" or "consumer advocacy" group.

That's how Eggen tagged the Media Access Project (MAP) in an article on the March 24 Washington Post "Fed Page" (emphases mine):

While conservatives were shocked at a video showing liberals at a Common Cause rally suggesting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should have his toes cut off one by one, be lynched alongside his wife, or be put "back in the fields," The Washington Post seems to find mostly a burst of liberal pride. On Thursday's Fed Page on A-17, reporter Dan Eggen's story is headlined "Uncommon forcefulness from Common Cause."  The Thomas remarks don't surface until  the end, in paragraph 17. The story begins with a smile, for the nerds have gotten rowdy:

Common Cause has long been something of a nerd among the jocks. While other activists staged loud demonstrations and nervy stunts, the 40-year-old good-government group was more likely to hold a forum on filibuster reform or the vagaries of redistricting. 

But suddenly Common Cause is manning the barricades, leading a rowdy campaign by liberal groups decrying the outsized role of big money in U.S. politics.

Four years ago, frustrated with President Bush and the Republican Congress, voters handed over to Democrats the gavels to the House and Senate chambers.

Weeks before the 2006 election, the Washington Post matter-of-factly noted that "Outside Groups [Were] Shoveling Cash Into Tight Races."

In that 24-paragraph October 3 article, Post staffers noted massive independent expenditures being spent by left and right-leaning groups -- including $40 million for Democrats/against GOP candidates by labor unions -- but recorded only mild annoyance by some Republican candidates:

Monday’s Washington Post should be retitled Washington Happy Talk. Topping the right side of the page is the headline "Democrats upbeat on health-care bill" and below that, the headline "Obama priority shift could help his party." This is quite a shift from the gloom-and-doom days of President Bush.

The first story, by Post reporter Dan Eggen, noted the obvious point that votes are still lacking, but he played up what he called "the most optimistic talk" on the Sunday shows. Well, not exactly. He reported White House spokesman Robert Gibbs "declared ‘this is the climactic week for health-care reform.’"

But Gibbs was bolder than that. On CBS, he promised that by next Sunday, "[We]'ll be talking about the House having passed that proposal and us being a signature away from health care reform in this country."

Eggen used to be a Justice Department reporter pounding away at what liberals considered the Bush administration’s war on the Constitution. But this is all he could muster on the "Slaughter solution" talk in paragraph 15:

Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen scored a front page hit on...wait for it...conservative advocacy groups that oppose Obamacare. (See Funding for Health-Care Interest Groups Often Fuzzy.) Eggen is scandalized that (big) business interests want to fund groups that oppose President Obama's plans to socialize insurance in the U.S. Eggen singles out a handful of non-leftists groups and complains about "opaque financing" and "hidden support from insurers, drugmakers [and] unions."

The second part of Eggen's report similarly blasts left-of-center groups that take corporate money to support Obamacare. Yeah, right. Actually, Eggen expends just one paragraph mentioning that liberal groups might be "beholden to labor unions and liberal foundations with deep pockets." No serious discussion of the fact that industry lobbyists have been a huge backer of Obamacare - or, specific provisions thereof. (See, for example, DC Examiner author and columnist Timothy P. Carney's article this week on PhRMA's influence within the Obama administration and, last week, on another major trade association, America's Health Insurance Plans.)

Isn't it curious that Eggen omits entirely any examination of what corporate interests fund left-wing groups?

The Cold War wasn't really a war per se but a decades-long struggle with the Soviets and their proxies, yet it was not and is not tagged dismissively in print news media as the "Cold War." Yet the same convention was not followed recently in the pages of the Washington Post when it comes to the Global War on Terrorism in the Washington Post.

From Dan Eggen's May 23 article, "Bush Tours Once-Squalid Latrine":