From MediaReview:
Lloyd Grove in Friday’s Washington Post column The Reliable Souce provides space for ABC executives to hit back at the White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan for White House involvement in Wednesday’s Drudge Report link to this Advocate article. The article points out that reporter Jeffrey Kofman is openly gay (yawn) and Canadian (shocking!). For some reason Drudge went completly spinless and blamed unnamed sources in the White House communication shop for the tip, even though a Google search on this name highlights the article in question in the number 3 spot.
ABC and other media outlets don’t have a problem characterizing non media types by their past actions and/or affiliations, but apparently its no fair to pick on a member of the Third Estate. A network insider was quoted as saying, “Playing hardball is one thing. But appealing to homophobia and jingoism is simply ugly.” If we’ve learned anything about reporting in the blogosphere it is that the biases of the individual reporter do matter when reading or viewing their reporting (see, Fisk, Scheer, Coulter, etc ). Playing the full disclosure game obviously pisses off the media establishment, all the more reason to keep it up.
The White House denies any involvement.
