The brouhaha surrounding photographer Jill Greenberg’s work for The Atlantic and her gleeful confession of tricking John McCain into posing for unflattering, bottom-lit photographs, which she later doctored in hideous ways, is a textbook example of what media bias really looks like. It’s not a conspiracy among editors and reporters, but a shared worldview. It’s not policy, it’s personnel. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg comments here:

I don’t know Greenberg (I count this as a blessing) and I can add nothing to what James Bennet told the Post except to say that Greenberg is quite obviously an indecent person who should not be working in magazine journalism. Every so often, journalists become deranged at the sight of certain candidates, and lose their bearings. Why, this has even happened in the case of John McCain once or twice. What I find truly astonishing is the blithe way in which she has tried to hurt this magazine.

But of course he does know Greenberg — or dozens of others quite like her. That’s who you meet in journalism. Her brand of infantile leftism is what passes for sophisticated in that world. If Greenberg hadn’t ranted in public — if she’d just called McCain a bloodthirsty warmonger in private — nobody would have thought much about it. She’s not in trouble for her bias, but for making her bias known in a vulgar and embarrassing fashion.