Bias is everywhere in the Washington Post. In the Sports section Monday, a capsule of one-paragraph NFL game summaries concluded with Dallas drubbing Philadelphia, 38-17 on Sunday night. The Post broke out its satirical whack-Limbaugh stick:
This game was overshadowed a bit by Eagles Coach Andy Reid's family troubles. His two sons are in jail, and a raid of Reid's house turned up so many pills that a judge described it as a "drug emporium." As someone who has had his own high-profile problems with prescription drugs, Rush Limbaugh was asked to comment; he declared it a tragedy for Reid that Donovan McNabb was so overrated.
Meanwhile, in the New York Times, the big new contract for Glenn Beck is greeted by the headline "A Folksy Guy, In Recovery, Is About to Land Millons." Brian Stelter began:
On his daily radio talk show, Glenn Beck portrays himself as an average guy, a recovering alcoholic and a comedian who regularly injects humor into his conservative politics.
This week he can add another description: very wealthy.
The alcoholism never reemerges as a topic in Stelter's otherwise straightforward (or considering the big bucks, positive) piece. Throwing the "in recovery" line in seems front-loaded and superfluous. Isn't a recovering alcoholic forever "in recovery" -- if he hasn't fallen off the wagon? It's worth noting that Beck can be candid about his personal problems, which could be one way for a ego-loaded talk show host to show humility, or one way for a conservative host to seek mercy from a liberal newspaper. But the Times didn't need to hype it like that.
Stelter's story also contains uncredited Media Matters items on his gaffes so the story doesn't seem too positive.
