Yglesias admits ignoring Berger story

Cheers to Matthew Yglesias for noting the Sandy Berger debacle. Unfortunately, he admits that he previously ignored the story for ideological reasons:

With what I consider a great deal of justification, I tried to rigorously ignore the story of Sandy Berger poaching documents when it was first being pushed by conservatives who wanted to use it as a lever to continue grossly failed foreign and domestic policies. That said, it's a long way from Election Day and, seriously, a new Inspector General report says he "removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday." Hid them under a a trash collector!

One assumes this will make it difficult for Berger to obtain any high-level executive branch appointments in the future.

I don't mean to pick on Yglesias, who I think is unusually honest and reflective, but I wanted to note his admission, which perfectly illustrates the selection bias that plagues the blogosphere. Too many ideological bloggers just ignore uncomfortable stories for tactical reasons. If you read a daily newspaper, that's no problem. But if readers who stick to ideological news sources like Atrios, Power Line, Air America, Rush Limbaugh, etc. may literally have almost no idea about these sorts of stories. Look, for instance, at the paltry list of Atrios mentions of Berger. And Yglesias is far more substantive than those guys. It's a little depressing.

[Disclosure: Atrios and I had a dispute earlier this year.]

Comments

[Lettuce]

And Brendan Nyhan cotinues to ignore the Bryan Keefer story.

[Lou Delgado]

And you could have included FOX NEWS.