Conservative journalists bust NewsBusters' 'liberal media' myth
August 21, 2009 4:35 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
Brent Bozell's team is going to hate this first-person account by conservative journalist Conor Friedersdorf. He not only laments the constant state of victimhood espoused by the right-wing, but demolishes the notion that conservatives are somehow cast out of liberal newsrooms.
In fact, some journalists interviewed for the piece said it was a professional advantage to be conservative:
J.P. Freire, an editor at the Washington Examiner, is one young conservative journalist for whom this rings true. “I think it’s kind of an ace in the hole,” he says. “As a conservative in a liberal field, you come up with angles other people don’t consider, get stories no one else thinks of doing.” Freire wrote for a movement publication in college, worked as managing editor of the American Spectator (where he is now a contributing editor), and before that at the New York Times, where he served as an assistant to former op-ed columnist John Tierney. Later, he was offered a job heading up the team of Times newsroom assistants, which he’s long regretted having turned down. “I liked the environment. I thought everyone was fine, and I was openly conservative,” he says. “The reporters I talked to seemed very fair. I think most of them knew they were to the left and tried to control for it.”
Eddie Barrera has had a slightly different experience. He’s an editor at Adotas, a Web magazine devoted to media and technology. A onetime New York Post reporter who later worked for The Los Angeles Newspaper Group, rising from staff reporter to desk editor, Barrera says that though it may have once been true that conservatives had a tough time getting a fair shake, it’s no longer the case. “As far as the bosses I’ve had, I’ve been treated very well in my career,” he says. “I’m pretty outspoken, and I haven’t always been treated well by all of my colleagues. But it hasn’t hurt my advancement.” Asked how he’d advise a young person starting out in the field, Barrera says that one rises in accordance with one’s talent and work ethic.
He was amazed that he was treated like a regular person? Imagine if the roles were reversed.
If he were liberal, he would not even gotten into the door at Washington Times or Fox News because they blatantly ONLY want a right-wing persuasion.
If your goal in life is to begin everything you write with "Imagine" and then let your fancy take flight and just make it up and run with it and nobody ever asks you to exactly cough up a "fact" or nugget of "knowledge" let alone "wisdom" then the cottage industry of "hate on the liberal main stream state-sponsored media" will always have a warm spot by the fire for you and your ilk.
I used to get fundraising letters from William F. Buckley's National Review and I'd write him back and say "Bill I thought you believed in capitalism and free enterprise and I don't want you to start living on handouts and expecting people to bail you out every time you go over budget. Let the markets decide what publications survive! That's the American way!"
Only he never did get around to writing me back guess he was too busy selling advertising and keeping the little magazine afloat.
That Craig T. Nelson was on Bull O'Really's? show and said he used to live on welfare and food stamps and nobody ever did help him out! Except for the welfare and foodstamps, of course, but neither Craig T. nor Bull figured that actually counted probably because Craig T. had already brought it up and it would have just been rude for Bull to suggest yes indeed those were a help to you weren't they Craig T. and didn't that aid come from the Federal government (and if you were a darn site better actor you wouldn't have needed them anyways) but yes that would have been a tad bit rude and frankly I think Craig T. Nelson spoke for himself.
And that's all I have to say about that!
A lot of money between a liberal reporter and the public.