Who Can Really Say?

Disclaimer

I saw this disclaimer on Instapundit last night but wasn't sure of the point at the time.

InstaPundit is not an unbiased news service. It consists entirely of my opinions and such links to factual items as I find interesting. Its whole purpose is as a vehicle for my biases, in fact. It is not unbiased and objective in any fashion, but rather is opinionated and slanted, much like other, more respectable, outlets such as The New York Times and TonyPierce.com.

Hmmmm. I'll have to remember this the next time one of my commenters complains that I didn't write about this or that.

Jeff Jarvis reveals the background.

I feel as if I had too much to drink at my own party and slept through all the good stuff. Well, I did have too much to drink (a nice cabernet, thank you; couldn't resist that last nip) and the party was happening in the comments here: I thought I was writing one of my high-altitude (low-oxygen) musings on the future of media but thanks to Tony, Glenn, and Oliver, it turned into late-night boozy brawl in the rec room. Well, not actually, but I enjoyed the image, didn't you?

To recap for those of us who slept it off last night, after my media musings in that post below, I said that commenters had called out Jon Stewart for hiding behind his comedy-show label when, in fact, he is a news provider and a critical member of the national conversation today. Tony Pierce then said in the comments I should call out Glenn Reynolds similarly because Glenn, he says, hides behind his I'm-not-a-news-service label. Oliver Willis piled on. Glenn responded to them here.

And he links to the quote I posted above. But Instapundit wasn't done, and takes down Oliver Willis in an update:

Meanwhile, further down in the comments, Oliver Willis calls me "partisan." In the sense of supporting a candidate, sure, since I pretty much gave up on Kerry quite a while ago, but not in the sense of supporting a party regardless of candidate. I'm not, you know, a paid flack for one party like, say, Oliver, and part of my disgust with the Democrats stems from their stubborn unwillingness to be serious about the war, or to tolerate candidates who are. If the Democrats had put forth somebody decent on this front I'd likely have voted for him/her. But it's not as if I pretend not to have opinions. I think that Oliver mistakes a reluctance to engage in name-calling with a facade of above-the-fray I-have-no-opinions "nonpartisanship." But in fact, it's possible to have opinions, even strong ones, and to express them in a non-abusive fashion. That's probably easy to forget when you work for David Brock, but I hope that he'll grow out of this confusion, eventually.

I might add (indeed, I am doing so now!) that Jarvis's original post about Stewart's appearance on CNN's Crossfire is well worth the read, and it has a link to the video which itself is well worth the watch. Stewart was hilarious, and there's nothing better than seeing stuffed network shirts get what's coming to them. But Jim Treacher had some fair shots at Stewart as well.

Posted by Peter at October 19, 2004 06:40 PM