To lefty pundit Paul Waldman, journalists are like detectives, not activists. They relish discovering and exposing the secrets of politicians, but they don’t much care whether the pols are liberal or conservative, given that “ideological bias is among the[ir] least important” motives.
For example, regarding recent New York Times stories about Marco Rubio’s driving record and personal finances, Waldman claimed in a Sunday American Prospect column that “no one who thinks about the news media in a serious way could believe that articles like these are driven by an ideological bias. If that were the case, then the Times would be giving Hillary Clinton a free ride, and they've done anything but…That goes for the rest of the media as well; whatever you think about Hillary Clinton, she's hardly a favorite of political reporters.”
And, who knows, some might even make the case that the media are pro-Rubio. After all, commented Waldman, they’ve “done plenty to elevate [him] from an ordinary first-term senator into a legitimate presidential contender.”
From Waldman’s column (bolding added):
I will offer a bold prediction for the presidential campaign: Republican presidential candidates will complain about the coverage they get from the mainstream media…
Okay, maybe that's not so bold…because it happens in most elections…
It isn't a mystery why Republicans enact this performance of faux outrage, particularly during the primaries, since the voters they're after are fed on a steady diet of complaints about the mainstream media. For a couple of decades now…people who watch Fox News or listen to conservative talk radio [have been] told that they can't trust any mainstream, purportedly objective news organization. Anything they hear from The New York Times or NBC News or NPR is not just infected with liberal bias, it's crafted that way intentionally by the people who produce it, engineered to…foist upon them a poisonous liberal worldview opposed to everything they hold dear.
In fact, there may be no more pervasive and oft-repeated theme in conservative media… Obama's foreign policy is a failure—and the media don't want you to know it…The Affordable Care Act is a failure—but you can only learn that by listening to us and tuning out what the liberals tell you through their news outlets…
What many on the right…have trouble accepting is that while the news is full of biases, ideological bias is among the least important. Let's look, for instance, at the [Times] article about [Marco] Rubio's traffic tickets. Did the Times publish it because…Rubio's a conservative, and they want to destroy him? No. They looked into the story in the first place because of a bias that says that what's most important to know about a candidate is what's personal and out of the public eye...
In the end, there wasn't much there…
The story about Rubio's finances was more complex, but even there, the connection between what it revealed and the office Rubio is seeking is tenuous at best…
But no one who thinks about the news media in a serious way could believe that articles like these are driven by an ideological bias. If that were the case, then the Times would be giving Hillary Clinton a free ride, and they've done anything but…I think it's safe to say there are few if any politicians who have had more critical articles written about them in the New York Times than Bill and Hillary Clinton. Some of these have been perfectly justified and others have been deeply problematic (the paper's original Whitewater reporting, for instance, was riddled with errors), but no one could accuse the Times of pursuing the Clintons with insufficient zeal.
That goes for the rest of the media as well; whatever you think about Hillary Clinton, she's hardly a favorite of political reporters. And the political media has done plenty to elevate Marco Rubio from an ordinary first-term senator into a legitimate presidential contender.
