After penning a number of stories toeing the Democratic line on a variety of issues, Washington Post reporter Shailagh Murray decided to make it official: the Post announced Friday that she has taken a job in the office of Vice President Joe Biden.
Murray marks the 18th journalist to move from a reporting position to a post in Democratic politics or vice versa since President Obama took office. The revolving door between journalism and the Democratic Party underscores the extent to which the ideologies of each overlap.
The bias dossier on Murray is thinner than, say, Katie Couric's, but contains a number of telling items. Let's review a few of the highlights.
Just last month Murray labeled GOP budget cuts "drastic" and "painful" - while giving Republicans a single paragraph to defend them, next to six paragraphs of Democrats' attacks - even as WaPo hailed the Obama budget's "cautious trades."
Murray has also been quick to write of the unpopularity of Obama's economic policies to failures in "messaging" - a popular tactic among White House officials and congressional Democrats who simply cannot comprehend that Americans are not fans of their schemes. Murray shares that confusion, apparently. "How can nearly $1 trillion flush through the U.S. economy, with tangible results, and still leave voters dubious?" she wrote of the stimulus.
Vice President Biden has been the administration's point man on touting the supposed successes of various economic policies, so it seems Murray will fit right in.
Murray has done more than simply wonder how various White House policies could be so unpopular; on one occasion she even proactively lauded the president's unpopular stance on school choice, calling his move to kill the popular Washington DC school voucher program a "middle way on a contentious issue."
"Love all these objective journalists signing up to sell Dem agenda," quipped Jonah Goldberg on Twitter after the news of Murray's move broke. But hey, at least now it's official.
