About a week ago, Josh Marshall laid out his vision of a “nice try brigade.” The problem is simple enough — mainstream reporters, anxious to avoid the appearance of bias, are writing articles about corruption in Washington, but are going out of their way to highlight at least one suspected Dem so the list of allegedly corrupt politicians isn’t strictly Republican.
The level of public corruption coming to the surface in Washington today is not unprecedented. But there’s a pretty good argument that you have to go back more than a hundred years to find anything comparable. And it’s almost entirely limited to one party, the Republican party, because it all grows out of the same political machine. But Republicans are pushing their line [about corruption being non-partisan]. And lots of reporters, not wanting trouble, are doing their best to comply.
It is quite annoying — and it won’t go away. For example, MSNBC’s Tom Curry had an item yesterday describing why voters hold Congress in low regard.
One reason voters might view Congress with distaste: evidence of corruption among House members and lobbyists.
Last week, Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R- Calif., pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2 million in bribes from a defense contractor. Michael Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe a House member (identified by lawyers in the case as Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio). And last year, former Rep. Frank Ballance Jr., D-N.C., who’d resigned from the House, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge stemming from his diversion of funds given to a charitable foundation he’d set up.
This is silly and gratuitous. Ballance left Congress over a year and a half ago for a transgression that occurred before he was even elected to Congress. I’m not saying what Ballance did was right, but in describing corruption on Capitol Hill, there’s just no reason to superfluously add a Dem just to add a Dem. His controversy is just not comparable.
There are a series corruption scandals overwhelming Congress right now and the most serious charges apply to Republicans — DeLay, Ney, Frist, Cunningham, Pombo, Feeney, Doolittle, and Blunt appear to be leading the pack, and that’s not even mentioning the Bush administration.
For a reporter to say so isn’t a sign of bias; it’s just reality. Striving for some kind of vague journalistic “balance” doesn’t make sense if the facts don’t warrant it.