A Response to a TNC Comment About Weigel-gate

In reading what the estimable Ta-Nehisi Coates had to say about l'affaire Weigel, this jumped out at me:

As much as I like Dave Weigel, and as much as I respect his work, I think that there is a valid complaint to be made by conservatives about his beat at the Washington Post. For me, the way to approach this is to ask myself what I would think if e-mails like these came out, circa 2008, revealing that a reporter assigned to cover the netroots was actually contemptuous of some its leadership. I think I'd have a problem with that. And I think a lot of other liberals would too.

First thing, as one of TNC's commenters asks, "can you point me to any major, widely distributed articles about the netroots from previous election cycles that didn't contain the words "far-left", "zealots", or "delusional"? I was under the impression that a visceral loathing of anything left-leaning, and doubly so if it was on the Internet, was pretty much a job requirement for any netroots activism reportage."

But the other thing is, assuming this was an alternate universe where the mainstream media didn't mostly crap all over the lefty netroots, the important thing would be the quality of the actual reportage.  Was it honest?  Was it fair?  Did coverage intending to show the general tenor of the netroots represent it fairly, or did they do a lot of nutpicking?

And with respect to any strong opinions that might've been revealed from their private remarks or emails, one would have to ask: could one find the basis for those opinions in the reporting?  If the reporting's good, and one can see from the reporting why the reporter might think poorly of some of those s/he was covering, then what's the big deal?  You don't want reporters going into stories with prejudices, but once they've done their reporting, the facts they report should certainly shape their worldviews, and their views of those they cover.  Journalists shouldn't practice the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

If, in such a world, such emails by a reporter covering the left netroots had come out ca. 2008, I'd have to wonder: contempt of whom? Why?  Exactly what basis would there be for such contempt?  Aside from the political activism component, the netroots really are mostly commentary, an alternative not to reporting but to the op-ed pages and Sunday political talk shows.  And a rational reporter would be hard-pressed to demonstrate why Broder, Will, and other high-profile pundits were less worthy of ridicule than their numerous blogosphere critics.

Now if the reporter were covering the left in, say, 1990, I'd expect a good deal of contempt.  But that's because the left of that era was the leftovers of the American left of 20 years earlier, with little coherent focus, a tendency to focus on tiny issues ('save the left-handed gay whales' wasn't that inaccurate a description of where much of the left was, back then) and a sense that the American public was a little too stupid to realize that they were right, and Reagan and Bush were wrong.  Hell, I couldn't self-identify as a liberal back then, because I was openly contemptuous of a lot of these clowns.

And by the same standards, I'd expect a reporter covering the far right today to have similar attitudes.  Not only is the Tea Party movement mad as hell, without having any clear idea what it's mad about, but the religious right whose influence it seems to have displaced was pretty freakin' nuts too.  The wingnuts are so far out that Sen. Bennett of Utah and Rep. Inglis of South Carolina, both very conservative legislators, don't pass their muster.  And then you look at the GOP Congresscritters who are totally off the wall, and the GOP Senate candidates who are even more so...yeah, none of this should affect what a guy like Weigel says in what he thinks is a private setting.