Milbank and the Mainstream

We mentioned Dana Milbank’s excellent argument yesterday for the mainstream media, and he followed it up today with a very interesting chat where he took on many a critic–some valid, some whiny.

The best exchange, in our humble opinion:

Alexandria, Va.: Seeing that you’re a former writer for the New Republic, isn’t your attempt to label yourself “objective” as questionable as someone from The Weekly Standard or The National Review labeling themselves “objective?”

Dana Milbank: Aha. So I am a liberal because I worked for the New Republic? Then the same goes for Fred Barnes, Andrew Sullivan and Charles Krauthammer? Famous liberals, those.

But the real point is that I wasn’t labeling myself “objective” — that’s an impossible and undesirable standard. I was asserting that you need to come to the mainstream press to get a full presentation of facts.

Incidentally, I think the response to the piece underscored the importance of the mainstream media: If Rush Limbaugh had given such a commentary, liberals wouldn’t have heard it. If Salon wrote about it, conservatives wouldn’t have read it. The Post has run it, and many people will disagree with it, but the important thing is here we all are discussing it, people of all ideologies.

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