Yesterday, David Chalian, then the Washington bureau chief of Yahoo News, stated of the Republicans, “They’re not concerned at all [about Hurricane Issac]; they’re happy to have a party with black people drowning.” Such statements by leftists, including some in the MSM, aren’t rare. Living in the Washington D.C. area, I’ve heard them made by people answering to these descriptions. In fact, I heard them following Hurricane Katrina.
Nor should anyone who even glimpses Yahoo’s wallpaper be surprised that a highly-placed Yahoo newsie would make such a remark. As John Hinderaker has said, Yahoo News is the great (though hardly the only) unrecognized source of left-wing bias.
The difference last night was that Chalian made his insane remark on an open microphone. Accordingly, Yahoo News had no choice but to fire him, and they did. After all, you can’t remain an unrecognized source of left-wing bias if your star reporters expose their bias to this extent.
Yahoo said that “David Chalian’s statement was inappropriate and does not represent the views of Yahoo.” The first statement is true and I hope the second is, as well. But the general bias reflected in Chalian’s statment does represenet the views of Yahoo. Otherwise, its news page would not constantly demonstrate such bias.
Chalian formerly worked at ABC News, as political director, until 2010. So what does that tell you about ABC News during that period?
Like I said, you don’t need to spend much time in Washington, D.C. news circles (mercifully, I have spent very little) to hear the kind of remark Chalian made, and see it greeted with approval, as Chalian surely expected last night. It’s pretty much the conventional wisdom among a good many in the MSM.
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