Conservative journalists bust NewsBusters' 'liberal media' myth
Written by Eric Boehlert
Published
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.