Say it with me, mainstream media: 'Washington. Free. Beacon.' - POLITICO.com:
And yet when the ultra-conservative Washington Free Beacon published previously available documents
about Hillary Clinton -- showing that she had once vouched for a single
payer health-care system, called Monica Lewinsky a "narcissistic loony
tune," and bashed the press as "big egos and no brains," among other
things -- many members of the mainstream media went head-over-heels to
avoid crediting the site. (CNN, to its credit, interviewed the author of the Free Beacon article, Alana Goodman.)
On NBC Nightly News, Andrea Mitchell did an entire segment on the documents and only credited an "anti-Clinton website." In a post for Time Magazine, Joe Klein referred only to
"the 'publication' that 'broke' this story," complete with quotation
marks around "publication" and "story." Free Beacon made a full video
(above) with a litany examples of the mainstream press avoiding the
website's title.
Perhaps these members of the media are so disgusted by Free Beacon's
political agenda -- or, just as likely, it's upstart attitude -- that
they can't bear to utter the name without gagging. But the gag is on
them: Because in addition to falling short of their journalistic duty,
which is to give credit where credit is due, they're reinforcing the
idea that they, and the mainstream media in general, have a liberal
bias.