I’d say it’s a trait common with many sharks, but I’m probably biased.
Neal Gabler asks, “Why do left-leaning journalists eat their own?”
It’s an interesting piece. However, it appears to me that Mr. Gabler isn’t so much asking left-leaning journalists to return to, as he puts it, the story being the star, but, instead, that they back off bashing their guy to show how like the Everyman they are.
Is that really the solution? Doesn’t seem to me like it is.
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I tried to read the Gabler piece, but pretty much every paragraph, sometimes every sentence, contained something I found questionable on the history or the facts, and I finally gave up in frustration about 2/3rds into it because, while I can see where he’s going (and I kind of like Gabler) I was just too intellectually dizzied by the whole thing.
Journalists who cover political candidates, especially Presidential ones, enjoy disparaging them. There are a variety of reasons for this, none of it political. The very best book illustrating this that I’ve ever read was Frank Bruni’s "Ambling Into History," which is about the Bush 2000 campaign where he was assigned to follow the candidate and did so for pretty much a whole year. It’s a hilarious and insightful book even if, shock of shocks, the New York Times reporter was not a Bush supporter.
But the book isn’t about Bush, not really; it’s about reporters who cover a major Presidential campaign. What it seems to boil down to is that if you’re attached to any Presidential candidate as a journalist for weeks or months at a time, you grow utterly exhausted, and talking down the muckamuck you’re following around starts to feel natural, even necessary. Partly because eventually you don’t have much else to do (most campaign events are a relentless repeat of each other) and partly because that much exposure to anyone will make you a little crazy.
I also don’t see a lot of evidence that the left is more likely than the right to tear into people on "their side." Indeed, many on the right express pride in ripping into Republican politicians and the Republican party. Which is just another reason why I found the Gabler piece so headache-inducing.
Dean
Funny I had the exact same problem before I read your comment. That’s in the LA Times huh? I’d be embarrassed if that poorly written and supported piece was on my blog. Is this what they are teaching in J-school these days? Glad I skipped it.
Ahhh, I just got the feeling that he thought the media wasn’t sufficiently in the Democrat camp.
Back on the reservation with you!
Dishman
Hmph. Yep I think that was his intent. He should have just written "The media should be biased towards the Democrats." Of course that’s much shorter than his 750 POS.
I think he is onto something. Because Democrats/Liberals don’t look at themselves as biased people with no true values. So he describes what it feels like to be a liberal journalist, maintaining his credibility/marketability. Indeed, any "professional creative intellectual" has to deal with these issues – especially "how do I get career advancement or even paid for telling people the clear and obvious truth"? Therefore, creative intellectuals very often have a finanical interest in tearing down the fabric of the existing society, in order to make their mark. They  must cleverly show "its not like people think", even when, it really is like people think. Hence the terrible deterioration of the country’s moral values which comes from our American "intelligencia".  And they even need to tear down their own society, for the same reasons above.
So, he’s flat-out asked liberal newsies to stop writing things that fail to support liberals?
I remember a time, back when we were still having that "are journalists biased, and does their product reflect that bias?" debate, when making such a point explicitly and publicly was a big no-no.
I’m glad to see that truth did, in fact, out.
And, yes, he’s right, whores should dress like whores.
Pre Woodward & Bern. I don’t remember the relentness need for journalists to tear down every aspect of society; maybe I was just too young to realize. I am under the impression that W&B changed the way journalism is taught, that now changing society is more important than reporting. The number of reporters who say they see journalism as a way to "postively" affect society is bizzare.
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