It’s actually not very enjoyable to see someone you know get smeared on FOX News. That’s true even when you have your own disagreements with that person. Opinions vary on the meaning of Newsweek’s decison to hire Markos Moulitsas as a opinion columnist. Many share Bob Johnson’s initial reaction:
Just what we need…Another fucking pundit.
Within the blogosphere, the concern is not with Newsweek hiring a left-leaning activist to provide political analysis, it’s more about what it means for the Daily Kos community. We haven’t seen anything quite like this…the head of a major blogging community taking up a seat next to Howard Fineman at the cocktail frankfurter buffet. It will be difficult to wear those two hats at the same time. How Markos handles it will tell the rest of us a lot. The situation certainly has a lot of potential pitfalls.
None of this, however, justifies the treatment Markos received from FOX News.
Take Juan Williams, referring to the now infamous Blackwater incident from 2003.
“The fact is that (Moulitsas is) not a journalist in terms of someone who knows how to do reporting, someone who reflects balance in what he portrays. To the contrary, he engages in the kind of hyperbole and extreme statements that are represented by that crass and I think offensive statement that he made about those dead people. But you know what? I think that’s just what’s going on in journalism. I think that there’s more and more opinion, less and less people who know how to do the job. All you gotta do is shout, say something on the blog that offends and attacks the other side and suddenly you have the credentials and you’re said to be a journalist. I think it’s a great lie.”
Williams actually had the gall to say this on the Hannity & Colmes program. Sean Hannity didn’t notice the irony. We are subjected to a mainstream media that tolerates Don Imus, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity…and actually embraces them. We have serial liars like William Safire and Charles Krauthammer making shit up in order to justify making war on innocent people. We have ostensibly left-wing concern trolls like Richard Cohen, David Broder, and Maureen Dowd, consistently telling us that no matter what happens it redounds to the Republicans’ benefit.
We have a complete right-wing tilt in media. Want proof? A real left-wing perspective…main stream liberal perspective…is on display at PBS whenever Bill Moyers takes to the air. Have you seen anything like Moyers on cable news or the Sunday morning talk shows…ever?
And Markos won’t change that. He’s not a mainstream liberal. You won’t see mainstream liberals’ views represented in Newsweek. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s not a knock on Markos or on Newsweek. It’s just true. If you want to see a mainstream liberal voice in a major news weekly, you have many options: Digby, Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, Pam Spaulding, Meteor Blades, etc.
FOX News is committed to the fiction that Markos is a far-left bomb-thrower and that MoveOn.org is a radical group. But it’s not true. And one more thing…why shouldn’t the far left have a voice in the national dialogue? What’s wrong with that.