Former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg wrote about a moment on last Sunday’s Meet the Press and called it “Chuck Todd and the Rosetta Stone of Media Bias.” It was all in the introductions to the panel of guests.
Chuck Todd, who hosts Meet the Press on NBC, opened his show the way he often does, by introducing his panel of journalists. There was Luke Russert of NBC News, and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report, and there was “Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post … and Ken Blackwell, conservative columnist and former Ohio Secretary of State.”
Did you catch it? Eugene Robinson isn’t the liberal columnist of the Washington Post. He’s simply Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post. But Ken Blackwell is identified as a “conservative columnist.”
This, by the way, is not a one-time trick. Here’s a glimpse of Todd the week before on December 21, introducing John Nolte:
CHUCK TODD: I`m Chuck Todd and joining me to provide insight and analysis this morning are: MSNBC`s Chris Matthews, former Bush White House political director Sarah Fagen, former Democratic Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson, and Breitbart news columnist John Nolte....John Nolte, first of all, welcome to Meet the Press.
JOHN NOLTE, BREITBART NEWS: Good to be here.
TODD: This is Breitbart, a conservative news organization.
So Chris Matthews doesn’t earn a label, but John Nolte does. On the same show, he couldn’t quite attach the Democrat to former Al Gore lawyer David Boies: “I'm joined now by David Boies, lawyer for Sony Pictures Entertainment. He is, of course, with League Counsel for Vice President, The Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case in 2000 and her represented the plaintiffs in the California proposition 8 case which legalized same sex marriage in California in 2010 so he`ll be a familiar face to many viewers.”
He couldn’t attach a liberal label to actor Kal Penn, although he lists the Obama item on his resume: “All right, let me bring in the panel, and I have a special guest with the panel, Kal Penn -- comedian and actor -- well known, of course, for many roles including Kumar in the Harold and Kumar movies. He also worked for President Obama as an associate director in the office of public engagement."
This is so common we probably don't flag it enough. Goldberg explained why this matters to him:
This may strike members of the so-called mainstream media as one of those “what’s the big deal?” issues — even though it happens all the time both on TV and in print. But if they’re feeling generous and concede that maybe it is somehow, some way, some kind of offense, it’s a misdemeanor of the lowest order. Journalistic jaywalking — at worst.
Sorry, but it is a big deal. A very big deal. One that goes straight to the heart of bias in the media.
Liberals, you see, don’t have to be identified. Liberals, as far as liberal journalists like Chuck Todd are concerned, aren’t controversial. They’re middle of the road. Moderate. Mainstream. Not so with conservatives. They need a warning label.
They put warning labels on packs of cigarettes and pesticides because they can be dangerous to your health. And, as far as many liberals – both in and out of the media — are concerned, conservatives need warning labels because their ideas can be dangerous to your health. I mean, if liberal views are middle of the road, moderate and mainstream, conservative views, being the opposite, must be fringe. And fringe ideas, in the liberal worldview, are most likely racist, homophobic and misogynist ideas, which are … well … dangerous!
So this little tidbit that Chuck Todd unknowingly offered up at the beginning of his program is the Rosetta Stone. It tells us not only how liberal journalists view conservatives, but it also tells us a lot about how liberal journalists see just about everything from politics to all the hot button social issues of the day.
Goldberg calls Todd a "bias denier," since he's tried to make a tiny admission of tilt that there's a "cultural bias" because "the news media is headquartered in New York City.” That's convenient, since Chuck is based in Washington. As if there's no liberal bias in the nation's capital?
