Via Firedoglake, Media Matters has a wonderful bit up about our wonderfully unbiased press:
In a November 13 column, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell addressed reader requests for the Post to conduct its own polls to measure public support for impeachment:
First, there was a swarm to me and to Post Polling Editor Richard Morin asking that The Post do a poll on whether President Bush should be impeached. Whoa. Since we get mail all the time saying that we are biased against Bush or are in his back pocket, why would The Post want to do that? The question many demanded that The Post ask is biased and would produce a misleading result, Morin said; he added that the campaign was started by Democrats.com.
But Howell’s defense doesn’t ring true. Her reference to complaints that the Post is “biased against Bush or are in his back pocket” is simply an irrelevant dodge; it has nothing to do with the question. It’s simply the same tired and lazy strategy that news organizations often fall back on in the face of criticism: saying, essentially: hey, both sides complain, so we must be doing everything right.
Further, Howell didn’t explain how “the question many demanded the Post ask is biased,” she just asserted it (attributing the assertion to Morin). But how would it be biased? Surely it must be possible to design a poll question to measure the public’s support for impeachment that isn’t “biased.” After all, the Post did it repeatedly when there was a Democratic president.
For example, A January 1998 Post poll conducted just days after the first revelations of Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky asked the following questions:
“If this affair did happen and if Clinton did not resign, is this something for which Clinton should be impeached, or not?”
“There are also allegations that Clinton himself lied by testifying under oath that he did not have an affair with the woman. If Clinton lied in this way, would you want him to remain in office as president, or would you want him to resign the presidency?”
“If Clinton lied by testifying under oath that he did not have an affair with the woman, and he did not resign, is this something for which Clinton should be impeached, or not?”
Morin was the Post’s polling director at the time, and he wrote the January 26, 1998, article reporting the poll results.
By the way, if you’re not reaading the incredibly valuable Firedoglake (the only blog I check more often than my RSS feed allows), you are missing out. It is the sine qua non for explaining all things Fitzmas — seriously, the ins and outs of what Judy and Scooter and Karl and Woody have been up to have been parsed and translated for the lay reader in a way that’s utterly beautiful… and it takes the mainstream media a couple of days or even weeks to crib from them and put sort-of explanations in the papers.