Feb 16, 2006 
For an example of how Left and Right aren’t viewing the same reality, check out this post at rightie blog Radio Blogger. There is a transcript plus link to an MP3 file of an interview by Hugh Hewitt of reporter Helen Thomas, in which Hewitt shamelessly badgers the 85-year-old Thomas until she finally hangs up.
In Rightie World, this is called “winning an argument.” I call it “bullying.”
Several rightie bloggers are celebrating this travesty as if it proves something bad about news media. But all it proves is that Hugh Hewitt is a bullying, knee-jerking, Kool-Aid drinking Bush apologist who wouldn’t recognize professionalism or objectivity if it bit his butt.
See Tbogg for more on what is loosely called the Hewitt interview “style.”
Meanwhile, Peter Daou posts
A Challenge to Rightwing Bloggers Who Blame the Media for the Cheney Mess: Prove it.
Peter writes,
Despite the glaringly obvious fact that major media narratives favor the right, we get bloggers like this, this, and this attacking the “MSM” for hyping the Cheney hunting scandal. Rather than waste cyber-ink explaining why it’s a big deal that the Vice President of the United States shot a man in the face and heart and went to bed without letting the American people know about it, let me share a question I asked of a blogger at Real Clear Politics who questioned my premise about the pro-Bush press:
I know the assertion that [supposedly neutral or liberal] reporters favor rightwing narratives blows your mind; after all, the liberal media fiction is hard-wired into the right’s political nervous system. But why should I believe your foregone conclusion that these people are left-leaning? Just because you say it with such conviction? Give me concrete examples of bias, not of negative coverage. (How can there not be negative coverage of the mess in Iraq? Or Katrina? Or the Plame outing? Or the NSA fiasco? Or do you want our media to simply fawn over the government? Is anything less than total pro-Bush propaganda considered media bias?)
The thing is, righties can’t tell the difference between negative but factual coverage and bias. For righties, anything they don’t want to hear about their dear leaders is “biased.” Whether a report is true or not is just an insignificant quibble.
Update: See also Tristero at Hullabaloo.
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