Accuracy in Media

In 1978, Reed Irvine told Katharine Graham, owner of the Washington Post, that her newspaper had a liberal bias. Mrs. Graham maintained her calm, but implied that Irvine was spouting the usual Neanderthal line. (This is an oblique reference to the media’s great non sequitur: Because people on both left and right are critical of them, they must be doing an unimpeachable job.) Irvine challenged Mrs. Graham to name a single reporter on her staff who was politically conservative. Mrs. Graham paused, then said, “Lou Cannon?” This is one of those delicious Graham-isms that should appear in media magazines like the Columbia Journalism Review but never do. The press is too busy walloping right-wing excesses in Washington to chastise its own. When it does turn the lens inward, as in a Time magazine cover story last year, “Accusing the Press,” it ignores chronic maladies and parades peccadilloes as if to say, Hey, ain’t we just the most self-critical, principled bunch of guys and gals?

Criticism of the media from outside the media is regarded as utterly reprehensible, if not unconstitutional. The media must maintain that they are self-regulating in order to justify their claim that they are above the law: that their constitutional mandate to collect information stands taller than all competing claims of privacy, decency, and national security. No wonder that Reed Irvine is viewed as a gnat of the most fulsome, buzzing, stinging sort. Benjamin Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post, calls him a “miserable, carping, retromingent vigilante.”

About the Author

Dinesh D'Souza

Dinesh D’Souza is a writer, scholar, and public intellectual. He is the author of America: Imagine A World Without Her, in which he explores the landscape of a world in which America had lost the Revolutionary War.

Featured Tags

In 1978, Reed Irvine told Katharine Graham, owner of the Washington Post, that her newspaper had a liberal bias. Mrs. Graham maintained her calm, but implied that Irvine was spouting the usual Neanderthal line. (This is an oblique reference to the media’s great non sequitur: Because people on both left and right are critical of them, they must be doing an unimpeachable job.) Irvine challenged Mrs. Graham to name a single reporter on her staff who was politically conservative. Mrs. Graham paused, then said, “Lou Cannon?” This is one of those delicious Graham-isms that should appear in media magazines like the Columbia Journalism Review but never do. The press is too busy walloping right-wing excesses in Washington to chastise its own. When it does turn the lens inward, as in a Time magazine cover story last year, “Accusing the Press,” it ignores chronic maladies and parades peccadilloes as if to say, Hey, ain’t we just the most self-critical, principled bunch of guys and gals?

Criticism of the media from outside the media is regarded as utterly reprehensible, if not unconstitutional. The media must maintain that they are self-regulating in order to justify their claim that they are above the law: that their constitutional mandate to collect information stands taller than all competing claims of privacy, decency, and national security. No wonder that Reed Irvine is viewed as a gnat of the most fulsome, buzzing, stinging sort. Benjamin Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post, calls him a “miserable, carping, retromingent vigilante.”

About the Author

Dinesh D'Souza

Dinesh D’Souza is a writer, scholar, and public intellectual. He is the author of America: Imagine A World Without Her, in which he explores the landscape of a world in which America had lost the Revolutionary War.