Conflicts of Interest

Usually when I'm reading some article and the journalist in question writes "full disclosure," there usually follows something like "I worked with this person once," "I was once employed by someone who was connected to this," or the like. It usually doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's good to know they want to put anything that could be influencing them up front.

It's amazing then, to read this column by Robert Kagan, and see no mention of the fact that the surge is basically the brainchild of his brother, Frederick Kagan. What's more, the Post's media critic, Howard Kurtz, who thinks anonymous comments on the Huffington Post are noteworthy, doesn't think this is a big deal because Robert Kagan was always pro-war.

Amazing. Glenn Greenwald has a good post on the subject asking why anyone would even listen to Robert Kagan anymore, as does Matthew Yglesias.

The Weekly Standard, not to be outdone, has Fredrick Kagan's wife Kimberly write about the success of the surge. I wonder why Kagan is so eager to embrace the surge, as I seem to recall him recommending 50,000 troops, and getting less than half that.

The fact that this is not huge news outside of the blogosphere is another indication that we do not, in fact, have a liberal media. What we have is a perception of a liberal media, and a media that is eager to avoid any hint of appearing liberal, while Fox News can be unabashedly conservative (and there's nothing wrong with that) and still be seen as an similar media outlet.

Far more than any political persuasion, it seems to me, the media is influenced by ITS OWN INTERESTS. Why did the media let us down before Iraq? Because war is great for all types of media. We stay glued to CNN for hours, read the paper daily for updates and the like. Why is the media not reporting all the "good news" from Iraq? The same reason that school openings don't make the headlines here: if it bleeds, it leads (and the fact that the school in question immediately becomes a target for collaborating with the aggressors). No hidden partisan motivation is needed; it's simpler and more reasonable to attribute this behavior to self-interest.