'More Mainstream Than It Truly Is'

Now is the time at Ed Driscoll.com when we juxtapose!

Bloomberg News on Tuesday:

The Huffington Post may have been founded as the liberal answer to the conservative Drudge Report, a place for progressive wound-licking in the wake of George W. Bush’s re-election.

But on Monday, Arianna Huffington was distancing herself from the lefty label as she announced the sale of HuffPost to AOL for $315 million.

“We don’t see ourselves as left,” she told POLITICO. “And I think it’s one area where news consumers are ahead of the media, because they know that continuing to see everything that’s happening as a right-left issue is missing what’s happening, and is also making it much harder for us to be properly informed.”

The Politico, January 5, 2011: “Daou’s alleged ‘Huffpo’ proposal: ‘Appear more mainstream:'”

The “1460” document — plaintiffs’ Peter Daou and James Boyce’s proposal, named for the number of days between presidential elections — outlines plans for a liberal Drudge. It also suggests with unusual bluntness a level of disingenuousness that is, perhaps, more common in the partisan media than some are comfortable admitting.

The site would be, they say: “[A] Democratic-leaning site with enough non-partisan news as to appear more mainstream than it truly is; this is critical for credibility and advertising revenue.”

A year before Newsweek was sold by the Washington Post for a dollar, Andrew Ferguson asked, “Are there really 1.5 million magazine readers–the number of subscribers Jon has promised advertisers–who want a liberal opinion magazine written by liberals who don’t want to admit they’re liberals?”

But then, when do liberals ever want to admit that they’re liberals?

(Concept via SDA)