New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller drew headlines for the odd practice of writing a letter to the editor of his own Book Review. (It's almost like writing a letter to himself.) He's highly offended that anyone would suggest he doesn't have a passion for tough reporting on liberals. (Earth to Keller: how about that little Air America scandal?) The actual letter from today's paper is here. In fighting against the idea that the media is biased (at least to the left), he's joined by Bill Moyers and Eric "What Liberal Media?" Alterman. That says a lot. The original reviewer was libertarian Judge Richard Posner, who posits a liberal bias, but also could draw conservative rebuttals, with sentences like this:
"Conservatives were unembarrassed by the errors of the Swift Boat veterans, while taking gleeful satisfaction in the exposure of the forgeries on which Dan Rather had apparently relied, and in his resulting fall from grace. They reveled in Newsweek's retracting its story about flushing the Koran down a toilet yet would prefer that American abuse of prisoners be concealed."
His original article is here. The first response I saw came from Jack Shafer at Slate ("Maybe Posner should stop composing his essays with a paint roller...") There's your Sunday reading and giggles, too.
