Fascinating blog post today from Mike Hashimoto of the Dallas Morning News, regarding that newspaper’s editorial-board discussions about the John Edwards story. Hashimoto thought media bias should be a big part of their commentary. His colleagues didn’t.

I was taken aback that one colleague quite vociferously disagreed. “The media is an easy target,” this colleague said. “I do not find the media’s role very compelling in this case.” This colleague went on to argue that we didn’t know whether any big-time media outlets, like either Times (New York or LA version) or the Washington Post or the broadcast networks, pursued any or all of the Edwards story. Fair point, I guess. My argument was that the evidence was on their front pages or evening newscasts, in that it didn’t exist. They had nine months and appeared, at least to the naked eye, to have said, “Nope, not a story for us. Not now, not until he confesses.” My secondary point was that this never would have happened had the candidate in question been, oh, Giuliani or Thompson or Huckabee — you know, Republican also-rans.

The whole post is worth reading.

Newspapers do themselves an enormous favor when they use the web and their other outlets to pull back the curtain and share with readers how decisions actually get made. Most readers simply do not understand how editorial decisions happen; as a newspaper editor, I routinely met readers who assumed that we wrote stories about certain people because those people paid us to do so. They didn’t think this was scandalous — just part of business, and they’d call up from time to time to ask me how much it would cost them to have a story written about something or another. (Yes, it was tempting to respond, “Fifth-grade Halloween carnival preparations? That’ll be $500. Cash only.”) Part of the reason people don’t trust Big Media is because they don’t understand how it works. The other reason people don’t trust Big Media is because it’s sometimes untrustworthy.

But hooray to the Dallas Morning News for being open.