What’s that old cliche? The first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem.
Several political reporters covering the presidential campaign seem to have that down pat. The Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut, for example, explained on MSNBC in October:
“I have to say we in the media are spoiling for a fight. Usually we are biased in favor of a good tussle at about this point. … I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere between now and January 3, now that we know that’s when the Iowa caucuses are going to be, to see some kind of reverse, some kind of Obama surge or an Edwards surge. Something that is going to knock Hillary down a few pegs. Whether it’s a media creation, or something that actually happens on the ground. I would be shocked if there were nothing like that.”
It sounds like a healthy first step. Kornblut identified a common media problem — the media likes to manufacture a fight, and take down a frontrunner whether the facts warrant it or not.
But as Greg Sargent explained today, it’s the second step that seems to be the trouble:
[P]undits and commentators have a strange and widespread tendency to talk about their profession’s collective failings — but without displaying any desire to change them, without showing any awareness that these failings could be changed with a little effort, and even without betraying any awareness or concern that they themselves might be contributing to the problem.