E.J. Dionne: "Traditional media are so afraid of being called liberal" they'll run

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Dionne: "Traditional media are so afraid of being called liberal" they'll run with "any kind of right-wing propaganda ... as news"

Video at link
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201007250019


Transcript
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38384219/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts
(snip)
MR. GREGORY: Right. Let me bring you into this, E.J., because you wrote in a column this week, "Yet the Obama team was reacting to a reality: the bludgeoning of mainstream journalism into looking timorously over its right shoulder and believing that `balance' demands taking seriously whatever sludge the far right is pumping into the political waters." What do we take from this?

MR. E.J. DIONNE: Well, that--yeah, that's my column tomorrow in the Post. I mean, first of all, you asked right at the beginning a good question: Can we have a good discussion on race? We can't have a good discussion on race if the facts don't matter. And I think it's, it's not only that Shirley Sherrod was smeared, it was a perverse smear. Because, if you look at that speech, what she was giving is a speech about racial reconciliation. She was saying poor blacks and poor whites have a lot in common. And this was twisted into a, an allegation, false allegation that she was somehow a black racist.

Now, what's going on here? I think the traditional media are so afraid of being called liberal, God forbid they be called liberal, that they are willing to run with any kind of right-wing propaganda and treat it as news. Challenging propaganda, or not running it, or taking your time before you run with a story, that's not liberalism, that's journalism. And I think that the right has been running this campaign for 30 years, they've had a lot of success, and we should worry about it. With the--you got to look over both shoulders, and you got to look at the facts.