Mark – That reminds me. For whatever reason I end up catching that show quite often on Sundays while walking Cosmo. I find it interesting because it is so unapologetically leftwing in its assumptions about the press while at the same time pretending that any discussion of ideology in media coverage (at least in terms recognizable from the right) is patently absurd. A couple weeks ago I happened to catch an interview with Greg Mitchell, the thoroughly leftwing editor of Editor & Publisher, who has a new book out about media coverage of the Iraq war.

A big part of the discussion involved how terrible it is that the media is covering Iraq so much less than it used to. Fair enough. I think that’s bad too. But nowhere in this discussion did it occur to anyone that the success of the surge might have anything to do with the decreased coverage. I mean, I don’t think the lack of bad news explains everything and I wouldn’t expect leftwing journalists to buy into the theory that the press is ideologically driven to ignore progress in Iraq. But I would expect a leading watchdog of the press being interviewed on a press watchdog program to at least raise the idea, if only to shoot it down. But instead it didn’t occur to anyone to even bring up the subject.