Washington Post Bias – A

Washington Post Bias – A while back many bloggers (especially Andrew Sullivan, as I recall, but then I don’t think my recall is what it used to be) had great sport pointing out examples of media bias regarding the use of such terms as left/right wing, far left/right, etc. In that regard a recent column by Washington Post (formerly New Republic) writer Dana Milbank is worth a look.

Milbank seems to regard conservative the way eskimos regard snow, i.e., as in need of further refinement to be descriptive. Thus Eliot Cohen, author of a new book on civilian control of the military that the president is reported to be reading on his ranch, is described as “a neoconservative hardliner.”

Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, is — and here’s a new one, or at least I don’t recall seeing it before — an “arch neoconservative.”

Are there any neoconservatives who aren’t arch or hardline? Well, maybe. Milbank does say the question of the hour is whether the president “will side with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the neoconservative civilian leadership at the Pentagon or Colin L. Powell, the establishment types at State and the cautious Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“Establishment types”? That would be [General Brent] “Scowcroft’s establishment wing of Republican foreign policy,” which is said to be “in open revolt.” Nothing new here; this “revolt” apparently is merely a continuation of the “30-year feud between Republican hardliners and moderates on foreign policy.”

Interestingly, there don’t seem to be any conservatives in the Republican party any more. Just “arch” and “hardliner” neoconservatives and wise, moderate, cautious “establishment types.” I wish Milbank or someone at the Washington Post would clue us in at some point on precisely how “arch” and “hardliner” neoconservatives differ from plain, pure vanilla neoconservatives, and how they both differ from the apparently now extinct conservatives. I understand why Bill Kristol’s father was a neoconservative, but I’m not sure why Bill is neo-, unless neo-ness is hereditary.

To be fair to Milbank, this fascination with shades of Republican rightwingedness is not limited to him. Others at the Post also use variations of right wing/hardline terms to describe Republicans much more often than they use similar counterparts for Democrats.

Some quick examples gleaned from the Washington Post file on Nexis:

left wing (and variants) in titles and lead paragraphs since 1/1/1996 368

right wing, same place and time etc. 848

far right since 1/1/1996 over 1,000; too many to count

far left since 1/1/1996 670

far right since 1/1/00 402

far left since 1/1/00 169

Republican within 5 words of (hard line! or far right or radical right or right wing!) after 1/1/1996 355

Democrat/ic (same as above) 116

(Note: searches were not restricted to U.S., so count includes some foreign references.)