COURTESY OF ROBERT COSTA
BEYOND HOOKERS,
HAMAS AND HAGEL
stories fell flat, from speculation
that Chuck Hagel wouldn’t be
confirmed as defense secretary to
reports that he’d spoken to a shadowy (and fictitious) group called
“Friends of Hamas.” On March 1,
a prominent conservative writer
and commentator was found to
have been heavily involved in a
paid propaganda operation funded
by the Malaysian government. And
earlier this month, both The Washington Post and ABC News called
into question an explosive Daily
Caller story alleging that Sen. Robert Meendez (D-N.J.) slept with
prostitutes in the Dominican Republic after one woman told authorities she was paid to make up
her account and the network revealed having previously passed on
the story given doubts about the
veracity of the claims.
And so, while outlets like The
Daily Caller, Breitbart News and
the Washington Free Beacon have
sprouted and, in some cases, prospered during President Barack
Obama’s administration, concern
is mounting that they and others in
the conservative media universe are
shedding their credibility by focusing more on supposed scandals
than reporting the basics of who,
what, when, where, why and how.
HUFFINGTON
03.24.13
“There’s absolutely no pretense
from any of these publications of
giving a policy a sort of objective
hearing,” Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative,
told The Huffington Post. “It’s
very clear that it comes from the
same mindset as talk radio and Fox
News. This is something that’s by
and for a particular kind of conservative.” McCarthy hesitated before
asking, “It’s a circle jerk, isn’t it?”
RedState editor Erick Erickson
argued last week that conservative outlets have been “failing to
advance ideas and stories” beyond
their ideological borders. “The echo
in the chamber has gotten so loud it
is not well understood outside the
Robert
Costa, the
27-year-old
Washington
editor of
National
Review
magazine.