Starting From Zero

Mark Hemingway, with an assist from Byron York, compares and contrasts legacy media coverage of the Van Jones story — or the lack thereof:

MSNBC’s First Read says “Remind us again how the media is biased“:

The ability of some conservatives to create media firestorms is still much greater than liberals these days. How effective is the conservative media machine? Just ask Van Jones…

Byron York provides the necessary reminder:

From a Nexis search a few moments ago:

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

If you were to receive all your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving President Obama’s Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, your response would be, “Huh?” If you heard that that adviser, Van Jones, had apologized for a number of remarks and positions in the recent past, your response would be, “What?”

If Jones does indeed go under the van (sorry), he will be yet another in a string of political stories where the legacy media will be reporting the consequences of news they themselves virtually never reported while the story was breaking. And yet somehow, the majority of their readers are aware of at least the basics of the story.

I know the modern definition of the media is keeping stories out of the news, but at some point, doesn’t this trend become embarrassing to those journalists who at least have a vague recollection of why they got into the business in the first place? (Besides “changing the world”, of course.)