Major print and broadcast outlets in Colorado allegedly feature a lot more commentators who tout the Republican party (me included) than those who tout the Democratic party. So says local media critic Jason Salzman of BigMedia.com in a recent Huffpo article, “GOP Partisans Overwhelm Democrats in Denver Media.”
Salzman compiled the tally according to which voices explicitly identify as R or D, not according to who is ideologically conservative or libertarian or right on the one hand, versus who is liberal or progressive or left (as he himself admits to being) on the other.
After listing those of us who unapologetically back the GOP, and (accurately) finding no one on the explicitly Democrat side, he concludes: “there is obviously a partisan commentator gap out there,” adding “Democrats are needed at the Post for basic fairness.”
What accounts for the oddity? My comment to Jason about all this, cited at the end of his story, isn’t just an interesting wrinkle – IMHO it conclusively explains the whole asymmetry he’s alarmed about. Namely, Dems in politics and their allies in the media are seldom willing to identify in a partisan way; they like to position themselves as above all that, just out there for the common good.
Partisan thinking is a tawdry thing Republicans do, don’t you see? Sensible, compassionate, public-spirited people (the identity in which liberals blandly cloak themselves) are above all that.
As in the old vaudeville joke about the fellow caught in Farmer Brown’s henhouse, Dem partisans in the media lamely cluck “Nobody here but us chickens,” instead of fessing up. Wildly implausible, yet they get away with it.
