Where's the Outrage?

"The American media has drifted toward tabloid journalism and has been cowtailed [sic] by the Bush administration over its coverage of events such as the war in Iraq, a congressional panel organized by Michigan Rep. John Conyers said Tuesday," reports the Associated Press:

"The vast majority of the mainstream media is not only unwilling to accurately report on the failings of the administration, but the few who do have fallen victim to scapegoating and retribution," said Conyers, a Democrat. "We have turned from breaking stories like Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal to celebrity journalism."

Conyers organized the hearing in the aftermath of Newsweek's retraction of a report that claimed investigators had found evidence the Koran was desecrated by interrogators at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay.

In itself this is uninteresting. Left-wing complaints about conservative media bias go back years and have become especially powerful in the past few years with the Democrats out of power. What is interesting is the reaction of the press--or rather, the lack of reaction. Here we have a government official calling official hearings to accuse the press of not doing its job properly. Shouldn't such interference occasion some outrage from the press? It certainly did when Scott McClellan criticized Newsweek last week.

Granted, a member of Congress from the minority party is far less significant than the White House. But suppose that, back when the Democrats controlled Congress, a Republican congressman had held hearings on liberal media bias? Our guess is that the press would have complained quite loudly.

Assuming that we are right about this, what does the lack of outrage over Conyers's hearing tell us? Perhaps journalists don't take complaints of "conservative bias" as seriously as complaints of "liberal bias." But if journalists themselves take the latter more seriously than the former, that suggests that liberal bias is indeed a problem, and journalists know it.

Or maybe journalists actually agree with Conyers's critique. But if they find themselves in accord with one of the most left-wing members of Congress, that would seem to illustrate that they have a liberal bias and don't know it.

James Taranto