Lost in the hurricane over Harriet has been this confirmation, courtesy of Howard Kurtz, of
extensive liberal media bias within the confines of his paper, the
Washington Post:
On Thursday, [Post] Book World Editor Marie Arana,
noting that she had been "a Young Republican at 15, a marching
SDSer at 20, and roundly disgusted by the blue-team, red-team
political dialogue by the time I turned 30," criticized an article
on what was called a "stealth evangelism" festival by saying: "The
elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear
liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and
opinions....We're not very subtle about it at this paper: If you
work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive,
a Democrat. I've been in communal gatherings in The Post, watching
election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues
cheer unabashedly for the Democrats."
Ms. Arana's remarks came in one of the internal e-mails in which
Post employees have been commenting on the state of their
paper. Her boss, executive editor Len Downie, found her comments
make clear the paper has "a diverse staff when it comes to
ideological backgrounds." So a single conservative balances out
scores of liberals? That's a heady thought. Coming next: How many
liberals does it take to change a conservative light bulb?