Busting big fat liars

You mentioned the Gore campaign coverage, which now has become almost a case study in bias and how the mainstream press essentially adopted the Republican National Committee's talking points. Looking back, it's amazing to note the deafening silence with which that phenomenon was greeted even by the so-called liberal mainstream press. People who knew what was going on -- columnists and so forth -- sat on their hands and did nothing. Why do you think so many progressive columnists and media people didn't do anything then?

I'm not quite sure. I'm an expert in the conservative media. I've never worked at the New York Times, so it's hard for me to say, and I don't like to attribute motive.

Well, do you think this could ever happen again on that scale, that the right would be able to dictate campaign coverage to the mainstream media? Or is the hope with the new infrastructure to be able to make a fuss when misinformation starts to flow?

The hope is to do that. And part of it is providing the factual information in a reasonably quick time -- and through the creation of institutions to give [the media] some backbone so people don't feel out on a limb by themselves.

Do you think Gore felt that way during the 2000 campaign, wondering when people in the press were going to come forward and correct the media misinformation? I got the sense the campaign didn't want to start arguing about newspaper columns because it would seem petty.

Right. And perhaps there was not an understanding of what was happening, or people just kind of laughed it off.

One significant problem is that people [on the left] are in denial about the impact of conservatives in the press. They dismiss something as one story and don't think it will snowball. Liberals don't think these people matter; they think they're crackpots. They may well be crackpots, but they matter. There may be a slow learning curve about understanding that.

Are folks on the left sadly mistaken if they think the Al Hunts and the Margaret Carlsons of the D.C. press corps are going to stand up to the noise machine? As you mention in your book, they don't see that as their job.

I think there's just more genuine independence among columnists and pundits who might be considered liberal. But then there is also that more moderate establishment that doesn't see its job as defending the Democratic Party -- which is not meant to be critical of the people who don't want to engage in that fight. But who else will do it?

Those moderates are certainly presented on the "Crossfire"-type shows as the counterbalance to the Republican noise machine.

I've been carrying around this ad from a few months ago for the MSNBC lineup for what I believe was a debate night. It had Chris Matthews in the middle and then Norah O'Donnell, an MSNBC journalist, and then Keith Olbermann, who is a neutral MSNBC host, and then [former Republican speechwriter] Peggy Noonan and [former Republican speechwriter] Pat Buchanan and [former Republican congressman] Joe Scarborough. What is that? Forget about pundits who write columns that may be moderate to liberal. The worst of it is that TV producers position journalists and reporters against these right-wingers. Not only is it not a fair fight -- because the journalist isn't going to engage in a partisan debate -- but it reinforces the notion that the press is advocating a liberal agenda. It happens all across cable television.

• View blog reactions