David Shuster's Online Reading List a Who's-Who of Far-Left Opinion

January 31st, 2010 12:11 PM

How can journalists possibly claim to be "objective" (in the Old Media, I-have-no-opinions sense of the term) when they get their news only from hyper-partisan sources on one side of the political spectrum? To do so should make any reporter blush.

But David Shuster, apparently, has no issue with undertaking such objective journalistic endeavors as "fact checking and analyzing", while gathering information from the left's most prominent online talking-point repositories.

Not content with simply relaying those talking points to his viewers, he makes sure to direct them (via Twitter) to websites where they can get their fills of the latest lefty banter. Johnny Dollar took the liberty of compiling a chart of the sites to which Shuster directed his Twitter followers throughout the month of January. The results are striking:

 



Anyone who has ever seen Shuster's show (or taken a look at his Twitter feed) is probably unsurprised. Who, after all, could get their news from these decidedly liberal sources and manage to refrain from, say, shouting at people who support the airing of a controversial Super Bowl ad featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow?

What sensible person could base their opinions on the rants spewing forth from Daily Kos and Media Matters and still manage to offer James O'Keefe the presumption of innocence--or get the facts of the case correct, for that matter?

This graph would certainly explain why Shuster continues to refer to politically energized grassroots protesters with the crude term "teabaggers." He probably doesn't know they've ever been called anything else!

If Shuster wants to keep "fact checking and analyzing", maybe he should try approaching the facts without his noticeably left-wing slant. Or maybe he should just abandon any presumption of objectivity. Either would be more honest than pretending to present the truth and simply parroting the latest lefty meme.