Disclosure Row Over White House Coverage

Believe me, there's nothing like a journalistic cat fight to get the blood flowing. Well, spats between intellectuals - especially fought out on the back pages of the New York Review Of Books - rate a close second. But you get the real deal when reporters square off over who sits on the side of the angels (and by process of elimination, who is not.)

We've got one brewing right now. Yuval Levin, who worked in the White House domestic policy staff as an aide to George W. Bush, now has got a gig writing news stories for Newsweek. The Nation's Ari Melber, who got wind of this, notes that when Levin's first piece ran in the magazine last March, the editors slugged it as an analysis from "a Bush veteran." No such notation was attached to Levin's new piece chronicling why "right-of-center candidates are succeeding in the age of Obama." A few months earlier, Levin even co-authored a Tom Bevan in RealClearPolitics tries. Sort of.

"If Melber is worried about a reporter's ideological bias affecting their reporting, maybe he should direct some of his indignation at Richard Wolffe, the "Senior White House correspondent" who covered Obama for the 2008 campaign for Newsweek. Wolffe was so chummy with the Obama inner circle he wrote a book about it, and hopes to write another - when he's not busy appearing on Keith Olbermann's show, that is."

Ouch. Well, let me try and bridge the gap as both scribes make valid points. Melber is entirely correct to wonder what part of the term "conflict of interest" the Washington Post Company can't understand. The corporation's assertion that a previous single declaration of disclosure covers all bases until the end of time is, um, how to put this politely - pure nonsense. At the same time, Bevan's snark doesn't detract from his perfectly sensible complaint about MSNBC's rather liberal (no pun intended) policy regarding guest selection. Knowing what we now know, did John McCain and Sarah Palin truly receive a fair shake from Wolffe during all those appearances on Olbermann's program the last couple of years? I'll leave you to decide that one.