CYA? A Is For Anchor

James Lileks has some thoughts on the Ra^therGate report.

Meanwhile, add Van Gordon Sauter, the former of president of CBS News, to the ever-growing list of journalists willing to go on the record that the media is biased.

Maybe somebody should tell Hugh Downs. James Taranto observes this exchange between Hugh and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country:

Scarborough: Is there a liberal bias in the media or is the bias towards getting the story first and getting the highest ratings, therefore, making the most money?

Downs: Well, I think the latter, by far. And, of course, when the word liberal came to be a pejorative word, you began to wonder, you have to say that the press doesn’t want to be thought of as merely liberal.

But people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they are closer to events and know a little more about what the background of what’s happening. So, I suppose, in that respect, there is a liberal, if you want to call it a bias. The press is a little more in touch with what’s happening.

As Taranto wryly observes:

So you see, it’s not that journalists are biased, it’s just that they know more than everyone else and thus are “more liberated in their thought”! Don’t you feel silly for thinking they were arrogant elitists?

Oui, monsieur!