Contest to find Worst Political Journalist in America (you can vote)

[dumpster_baby]

Matt Taibbi of the NY Press is running the contest (Taibbi, BTW, is a staunch leftist).

some excerpts


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Nonetheless, Novak advances. He advances because of that dreary purse-lipped sadist's face of his. (You've seen that face before: the prison warden meets high school vice-principal of your nightmares, shitting on your wife's back.) He advances because his outing of Valerie Plame is suddenly being upheld as a free-press issue. He advances because he recently told an audience of Penn State students that he is only able to stand James Carville because "CNN pays me a lot of money."

But here's the worst thing about Novak. Six years ago, Novak's column was the favored destination of anonymous leakers from the office of special prosecutor Ken Starr. They gave him such nuggets as the revelation that it was their "educated guess" that Hillary Clinton would be named as an unindicted coconspirator in the Hubbell case ("Clinton's Woes Far from Over," Nov. 26, 1998). At the time, Novak had no problem being the submissive love-slave of an overzealous independent prosecutor seeking, in a clearly inappropriate manner, to try his case in public.


As for Bumiller... Let's make one general observation about campaign reporting. For the traveling press regulars, even the ones working for an overstaffed organization like the Times, it is a given that there are going to be slow days when you're just going to be forced to pull 850 words out of your ass. If you have a sense of humor, that piece is going to be funny. If you are a sensitive, reflective person, accidentally employed as a journalist, the piece is going to be full of cogent observations gleaned over time from your privileged spot at the summit of the American political process.
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http://nypress.com/17/40/news&columns/feature.cfm